On June 14th, the global AI community was eagerly anticipating a press conference. At the event, Lisa Su, the Chairman and CEO of AMD, appeared on stage in a blue Mandarin collar jacket and a smart short haircut. She unveiled a series of new AI hardware and software products, including the MI300X GPU (graphic processing unit) which specifically targets large language models. With this launch, AMD has challenged the reigning champion in this field, NVIDIA.
The MI300X can significantly accelerate the processing speed of generative AI models, boasting a memory capacity of 192GB, surpassing NVIDIA's H100 chip which has 120GB of memory. This means that it can train larger-scale language models compared to the H100 chip.
When NVIDIA dominates the AI computing market with its GPUs, people have always been eager to discuss when AMD would introduce competitive products. Now, Lisa Su has arrived and has caused quite a stir.
This storm involves the three major chip companies worldwide: AMD, NVIDIA, and TSMC. With AMD daring to challenge NVIDIA, the stock of the latter skyrocketed that evening, and as the manufacturer of AMD's products, TSMC, known as the "chaser," received a large number of orders.
The leaders of these three companies, Lisa Su, Jenson Huang (NVIDIA), and Mark Liu (TSMC), are the most prominent Chinese entrepreneurs in the global AI chip industry. This competition between the three represents a microcosm of the most distinctive characteristics of the AI industry in this era.
NVIDIA's GPUs are considered the best products for training large-scale AI models, capturing over 60% market share. AMD is regarded by US investment banks as NVIDIA's most powerful competitor. As for TSMC, it serves as the manufacturer for many chip design companies, including NVIDIA and AMD, and its annual revenue accounts for 30% of the global semiconductor output value.
Since November 2022, with the advent of ChatGPT, a frenzy of large-scale model startups has swept the world. Behind the celebration of large-scale models, there is a competition for AI computing power that is pushing these three companies into the center stage of technology.
Half a month ago, NVIDIA's market value surpassed $1 trillion, making it the first chip company in the world to achieve this milestone. Not long ago, Warren Buffett praised TSMC without reservation at the Berkshire Hathaway annual meeting, stating that no other company in the chip industry can be compared to it.
The global chip industry mainly follows three development models: companies that independently complete all aspects from chip design to manufacturing, such as Intel and Samsung; companies that focus on chip design and development while outsourcing manufacturing to foundries, such as AMD, Qualcomm, and NVIDIA; and companies that specialize in providing manufacturing services for chip design companies without doing their own designs, such as TSMC and SMIC.
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