# AMD

> Source: https://aiwiki.ai/wiki/amd
> Updated: 2026-06-21
> Categories: AI Companies, AI Hardware
> From AI Wiki (https://aiwiki.ai), a free encyclopedia of artificial intelligence. Quote with attribution.

Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. (AMD) is an American semiconductor company that designs the CPUs, GPUs, and data-center accelerators powering one of the largest AI compute build-outs in the industry. Its AI strategy rests on the Instinct line of data-center GPUs, the open ROCm software stack, and full rack-scale systems, anchored by an October 2025 agreement to supply OpenAI with 6 gigawatts of GPUs. AMD reported record revenue of 34.6 billion dollars in 2025, up 34 percent year over year, with its Data Center segment reaching 16.6 billion dollars.[1][2][5]

Headquartered in Santa Clara, California and founded in 1969, AMD designs central processing units (CPUs), graphics processing units (GPUs), data-center accelerators, and adaptive computing hardware such as field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs). For most of its history AMD was known as the main competitor to [Intel](/wiki/intel) in the x86 processor market and to [NVIDIA](/wiki/nvidia) in consumer graphics. Since the mid-2010s it has grown into one of the largest suppliers of high-performance computing silicon, and since the early 2020s it has become a significant vendor of [data center](/wiki/data_center) hardware for artificial intelligence.[1][2]

AMD has been led since 2014 by Lisa Su, who became chair of the board in 2022. Under her tenure the company introduced the Zen CPU architecture, regained server and desktop market share from Intel, and surpassed Intel in market capitalization for the first time in 2022.[3][4] AMD does not manufacture its own chips; like most modern chip designers it is a fabless company and outsources production to foundries, principally Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC).[2]

Much of the company's recent growth comes from its EPYC server processors and its Instinct line of data-center GPUs, which compete with NVIDIA's accelerators for training and running large AI models. Fourth-quarter 2025 revenue was a record 10.3 billion dollars, up 34 percent year over year, with Data Center segment revenue of 5.4 billion dollars, up 39 percent.[5] In October 2025 AMD and OpenAI announced a multi-year agreement to deploy 6 gigawatts of AMD GPUs, one of the largest computing commitments in the industry to that point.[6][7]

## Infobox

| Field | Detail |
|---|---|
| Company | Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. |
| Founded | May 1, 1969 |
| Founders | Jerry Sanders and seven colleagues from Fairchild Semiconductor |
| Headquarters | Santa Clara, California, United States |
| CEO and Chair | Lisa Su (CEO since 2014, chair since 2022) |
| Industry | Semiconductors |
| Key products | Ryzen and EPYC CPUs, Radeon GPUs, Instinct data-center accelerators, Versal and Virtex FPGAs |
| Architectures | Zen (CPU), RDNA (consumer GPU), CDNA (data-center GPU) |
| Manufacturing | Fabless; chips fabricated by TSMC |
| 2025 revenue | 34.6 billion USD |
| Employees | More than 25,000 |
| Stock symbol | NASDAQ: AMD |

## History

AMD was incorporated on May 1, 1969 by Jerry Sanders and seven colleagues who had left Fairchild Semiconductor.[8] The company first operated out of the home of co-founder John Carey before moving to Santa Clara and then, in September 1969, to a new headquarters at 901 Thompson Place in Sunnyvale, California, where it remained for decades.[9] AMD's earliest products were logic chips and memory, and it became a second-source manufacturer of components designed by other companies.

In 1975 AMD entered the microprocessor business, initially by producing chips compatible with Intel's designs.[1] A 1982 agreement made AMD a licensed second source for Intel's x86 processors, supplying parts for IBM personal computers. The relationship later broke down and led to years of litigation over x86 licensing rights, which AMD largely won, securing its ability to make x86-compatible chips. Through the 1990s AMD competed with Intel using the Am486 and K5 processors, then the K6.

The company's competitive position improved sharply with the K7 generation. The Athlon processor launched on June 23, 1999, and in 2000 AMD shipped the first x86 processor to reach a clock speed of 1 gigahertz, narrowly beating Intel to that mark.[10] The Athlon 64 and Opteron lines that followed introduced 64-bit extensions to the x86 instruction set, an approach Intel later adopted.

In 2006 AMD acquired the Canadian graphics company ATI Technologies in a deal valued at about 5.4 billion dollars at closing, combining roughly 4.3 billion dollars in cash with 58 million AMD shares.[11] The acquisition gave AMD the Radeon graphics business and the engineering base for its later combined CPU and GPU products. Integrating ATI proved expensive, and AMD took large write-downs on the deal in subsequent years. In 2009 AMD spun off its manufacturing operations into a separate foundry, GlobalFoundries, completing its transition to a fabless model.

AMD's modern resurgence began with the Zen microarchitecture, first shipped in 2017. Zen was sold as Ryzen for desktops and laptops and as EPYC for servers and workstations.[1][12] Successive generations (Zen 2, Zen 3, Zen 4, and Zen 5) closed and in many benchmarks reversed AMD's performance gap with Intel, and aggressive pricing helped the company take market share in both consumer and server segments. By 2022 AMD exceeded Intel in market value for the first time.[4]

### Why did AMD acquire Xilinx?

In February 2022 AMD closed its acquisition of Xilinx, a maker of FPGAs and adaptive computing chips, in an all-stock transaction with a total purchase consideration of about 48.8 billion dollars, widely described as the largest semiconductor deal to that date.[13] The deal added Xilinx's Versal and Virtex product lines and formed the basis of AMD's Adaptive and Embedded Computing group. AMD also acquired data-center systems company Pensando in 2022 and, in 2024, the server-maker ZT Systems to strengthen its rack-scale AI systems capability.

## CPUs

AMD's processor business spans consumer, commercial, and server markets. The Ryzen brand covers desktop and mobile CPUs built on the Zen architecture, and competes with Intel's Core line. Ryzen processors are widely used in gaming PCs and workstations, and AMD's 3D V-Cache technology, which stacks additional cache memory on top of the processor die, has been particularly popular for gaming.[12]

In servers, the EPYC line is the foundation of AMD's data-center growth. EPYC processors offer high core counts and memory bandwidth, and AMD has used them to take a substantial share of the server CPU market from Intel's Xeon. The fifth-generation EPYC processors, code-named Turin and based on Zen 5, launched on October 10, 2024 with configurations up to 192 cores, and AMD said the top-of-stack part delivers up to 2.7 times the performance of the competing chip.[14] By the fourth quarter of 2025, Mercury Research data placed AMD's server CPU revenue share at a record 41.3 percent, the first time the company exceeded 40 percent of server revenue.[15]

EPYC processors also anchor several of the world's fastest supercomputers. The El Capitan system at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, which became the top-ranked machine on the TOP500 list in November 2024 with a measured performance of about 1.742 exaflops, is built on AMD's MI300A APU, which combines Zen 4 CPU cores and CDNA 3 GPU compute on a single package.[16] El Capitan uses 43,808 MI300A units, each pairing 24 Zen 4 cores with a CDNA 3 GPU and 128 gigabytes of HBM3 memory.[16] The earlier Frontier supercomputer at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, the first to exceed one exaflop, also uses AMD EPYC CPUs paired with Instinct MI250X accelerators.

AMD's next server CPU generation, code-named Venice and based on Zen 6, is built on a 2-nanometer-class TSMC process and is planned to scale to 256 cores. Venice is intended to pair with the company's MI400 GPUs in its Helios rack systems, where it contributes more than 4,600 CPU cores per rack.[17]

## GPUs and the Instinct line

AMD's graphics products fall into two families. The Radeon brand and the RDNA architecture serve gaming and consumer markets, while the Instinct brand and the CDNA architecture target data centers and high-performance computing. The split lets AMD optimize each line for its workload: RDNA emphasizes graphics rendering, while CDNA removes fixed-function graphics hardware and concentrates on the matrix and vector math used in scientific computing and AI.[18]

The Instinct line is central to AMD's AI strategy. The accelerators use a multi-chiplet design and large amounts of high-bandwidth memory (HBM), which is important for AI inference because it lets a single GPU hold larger models and process longer context windows without splitting work across many devices.

### What is the AMD Instinct MI300X?

The [Instinct MI300X](/wiki/amd_instinct_mi300x), launched in December 2023, is built on the CDNA 3 architecture using a 5-nanometer process. It carries 192 gigabytes of HBM3 memory with about 5.3 terabytes per second of bandwidth, and uses 304 compute units across eight accelerator chiplets.[19] At launch its memory capacity was larger than that of NVIDIA's then-current H100, a point AMD emphasized for memory-bound inference. The companion MI300A is an APU variant that shares a unified memory pool between CPU and GPU and is used in the El Capitan supercomputer.[16]

The [Instinct MI325X](/wiki/amd_instinct_mi325x), announced in October 2024 with broad system availability from early 2025, kept the CDNA 3 architecture but increased memory to 256 gigabytes of HBM3E at about 6 terabytes per second.[20] AMD positioned it against NVIDIA's H200, citing larger memory capacity and bandwidth.

### What is the AMD Instinct MI350 series?

The MI350 series, comprising the air-cooled MI350X and the liquid-cooled [MI355X](/wiki/amd_instinct_mi355x), launched in mid-2025 and moved to the CDNA 4 architecture on a TSMC N3-class 3-nanometer process. Each GPU contains about 185 billion transistors and 288 gigabytes of HBM3E memory with up to 8 terabytes per second of bandwidth, and adds hardware support for the low-precision FP4 and FP6 data formats used to speed up AI inference.[21][22] A single MI355X delivers roughly 79 teraflops of FP64, 5 petaflops of FP16, 10 petaflops of FP8, and 20 petaflops of FP6 or FP4 compute, with a total board power of up to 1,400 watts in the liquid-cooled configuration.[22][23] AMD reported large generational gains over the MI300 generation, claiming up to 35 times faster inference, and presented the MI350 series as competitive with NVIDIA's Blackwell B200 on inference workloads.[21] Accelerating MI350 series deployments were a primary driver of the Data Center segment's 39 percent fourth-quarter growth in 2025.[5]

The following table summarizes the recent Instinct data-center GPUs.

| Accelerator | Architecture | Launch | Memory | Bandwidth | Notable compute |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Instinct MI300X | CDNA 3 | Dec 2023 | 192 GB HBM3 | ~5.3 TB/s | ~1.3 PFLOPS FP16 |
| Instinct MI325X | CDNA 3 | 2024-2025 | 256 GB HBM3E | ~6 TB/s | FP8/FP16 matrix |
| Instinct MI350X / MI355X | CDNA 4 | 2025 | 288 GB HBM3E | ~8 TB/s | ~20 PFLOPS FP4/FP6 |
| Instinct MI400 series | next-gen CDNA | 2026 (planned) | 432 GB HBM4 | ~19.6 TB/s | ~40 PFLOPS FP4 |

### What is the AMD Instinct MI400 series?

The [MI400 series](/wiki/amd_mi400) is AMD's next data-center generation, planned for the second half of 2026. AMD has stated the MI400 will offer 432 gigabytes of HBM4 memory, about 19.6 terabytes per second of memory bandwidth, and roughly 40 petaflops of FP4 and 20 petaflops of FP8 compute per GPU, with 300 gigabytes per second of scale-out bandwidth.[17][24] At CES in January 2026 AMD detailed the full family: the flagship MI455X for large-scale AI training and inference, the MI440X for on-premises enterprise deployments that drop into existing 8-GPU server chassis, and the MI430X for high-performance computing and sovereign AI with native FP64 acceleration.[17] The MI455X carries about 320 billion transistors, with compute dies built on TSMC's N2 2-nanometer process, and is the first AMD accelerator to support the UALink scale-up interconnect alongside Infinity Fabric.[17]

The series is designed to be deployed at rack scale through AMD's [Helios](/wiki/amd_helios_rack) platform, a liquid-cooled system that links 72 MI400-class accelerators into a single high-bandwidth domain. AMD says a Helios rack provides 31 terabytes of HBM4 memory, 1.4 petabytes per second of aggregate bandwidth, and up to 2.9 FP4 exaflops for inference and 1.4 FP8 exaflops for training, pairing the 72 GPUs with next-generation EPYC Venice CPUs.[17][25] The Helios rack is built on the Open Compute Project's Open Rack design that Meta contributed in 2025, part of AMD's effort to standardize AI rack hardware on open specifications.[26]

## ROCm software

AMD's GPU software stack is called ROCm (Radeon Open Compute). It is an open software platform that includes drivers, compilers, libraries, and programming tools for running general-purpose and AI workloads on AMD GPUs.[27] ROCm's core programming model is HIP, a C++ runtime and kernel language designed to be close enough to NVIDIA's [CUDA](/wiki/cuda) that developers can port existing CUDA code with relatively modest changes.[28]

### Is ROCm open source?

Software has historically been AMD's main disadvantage against NVIDIA in AI. CUDA has a long head start, a large developer base, and deep integration with the most widely used machine-learning frameworks, which has made it difficult for buyers to switch hardware vendors. AMD's response has been to lean on openness and on tight integration with popular open-source projects rather than to build a closed competitor.[29] [ROCm](/wiki/rocm) 7, released in 2025, added native support for the MI350 and MI325X GPUs, expanded handling of the FP4 and FP8 inference data types, broadened support to Windows and to consumer Radeon GPUs, and provided day-one compatibility with frameworks such as PyTorch and the vLLM inference engine.[30][31] AMD has compared its approach to the Linux development model, arguing that an open ecosystem can improve faster than a single proprietary stack.[29]

## AI strategy and competition with NVIDIA

AMD's AI strategy combines hardware, software, and full-system products, aimed at the market for training and running large neural networks, where NVIDIA holds a dominant position. AMD's pitch to large buyers rests on three points: more on-package memory per GPU, an open software stack, and an annual product cadence intended to match NVIDIA's release pace.[18][32]

Memory capacity is a recurring theme. Because large language models and their context windows are often limited by available GPU memory, AMD has consistently shipped Instinct accelerators with more HBM than the comparable NVIDIA part of the same period, which can let a model run on fewer GPUs for inference.[19][20] AMD has also moved from selling individual accelerators toward selling complete rack-scale systems, the same shift NVIDIA made with its NVL and rack products, so that networking, cooling, and CPUs are designed together with the GPUs. The Helios platform and the ZT Systems acquisition are part of that move.[17][32]

NVIDIA still holds the large majority of the data-center AI accelerator market, helped by the maturity of CUDA and by its NVLink interconnect and networking products. AMD competes on price, memory, and openness, and has won deployments with several major cloud and AI companies, but it has acknowledged execution risk in scaling production and software support to the level its largest customers require.[32] U.S. export controls have also affected the business: AMD recorded roughly 440 million dollars in inventory-related charges in 2025 tied to restrictions on selling its MI308 accelerators to China.[5]

## Partnerships

AMD's data-center GPUs are deployed by several large technology companies. When the MI300 series launched in December 2023, Microsoft, Meta, and Oracle were among the named early adopters.[33] Microsoft offers MI300X accelerators through its Azure cloud under the ND MI300X v5 virtual machine series, and has run production AI workloads, including Azure OpenAI Service models, on the hardware.[34] Meta uses Instinct accelerators for its own AI services and has said it works with AMD on future roadmaps, including the MI400 series.[35] Oracle Cloud Infrastructure was among the first to adopt AMD's open rack-scale design with MI355X GPUs and has announced very large planned clusters built on AMD accelerators.[35]

### What is the AMD and OpenAI deal?

The most prominent partnership is with OpenAI. On October 6, 2025, AMD and OpenAI announced a multi-year agreement under which OpenAI will deploy 6 gigawatts of AMD Instinct GPUs across multiple hardware generations, starting with a 1-gigawatt deployment of MI450 GPUs in the second half of 2026.[6][36] As part of the agreement AMD issued OpenAI a warrant to purchase up to 160 million AMD shares, vesting in tranches tied to deployment milestones and share-price targets, which could give OpenAI a stake of roughly 10 percent in AMD.[7][36] AMD described the arrangement as a strategic compute partnership expected to generate tens of billions of dollars in revenue over its life.[6]

Lisa Su said the deal is "a true win-win enabling the world's most ambitious AI buildout and advancing the entire AI ecosystem."[6] OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman called it "a major step in building the compute capacity needed to realize AI's full potential," adding that "AMD's leadership in high-performance chips will enable us to accelerate progress and bring the benefits of advanced AI to everyone faster."[6]

## See also

- [NVIDIA](/wiki/nvidia)
- [Intel](/wiki/intel)
- [Graphics processing unit](/wiki/gpu)
- [ROCm](/wiki/rocm)
- [CUDA](/wiki/cuda)
- [AMD Instinct MI300X](/wiki/amd_instinct_mi300x)
- [AMD Helios rack](/wiki/amd_helios_rack)
- [Data center](/wiki/data_center)

## References

1. Wikipedia, "AMD," accessed 2026. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AMD
2. Britannica Money, "Advanced Micro Devices, Inc." https://www.britannica.com/money/Advanced-Micro-Devices-Inc
3. AMD, "Dr. Lisa Su, AMD Chair and Chief Executive Officer." https://www.amd.com/en/corporate/leadership/lisa-su.html
4. Wikipedia, "Lisa Su," accessed 2026. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lisa_Su
5. AMD Investor Relations, "AMD Reports Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2025 Financial Results," February 3, 2026. https://ir.amd.com/news-events/press-releases/detail/1276/amd-reports-fourth-quarter-and-full-year-2025-financial-results
6. AMD Investor Relations, "AMD and OpenAI Announce Strategic Partnership to Deploy 6 Gigawatts of AMD GPUs," October 6, 2025. https://ir.amd.com/news-events/press-releases/detail/1260/amd-and-openai-announce-strategic-partnership-to-deploy-6-gigawatts-of-amd-gpus
7. TechCrunch, "AMD to supply 6GW of compute capacity to OpenAI in chip deal worth tens of billions," October 6, 2025. https://techcrunch.com/2025/10/06/amd-to-supply-6gw-of-compute-capacity-to-openai-in-chip-deal-worth-tens-of-billions/
8. History of Information, "Jerry Sanders and Colleagues from Fairchild Semiconductor Found AMD." https://historyofinformation.com/detail.php?id=879
9. Wikipedia, "AMD (history and headquarters)," accessed 2026. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AMD
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11. AMD, "AMD Completes Acquisition of ATI (Form 8-K press release)," October 2006. https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/2488/000119312506217735/dex991.htm
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13. Electronic Design, "AMD Closes 49 Billion Dollar Acquisition of Xilinx, Largest Chip Deal Ever," February 2022. https://www.electronicdesign.com/technologies/embedded/article/21216849/electronic-design-amd-closes-49-billion-acquisition-of-xilinxlargest-chip-deal-ever
14. AMD, "AMD Launches 5th Gen AMD EPYC CPUs, Maintaining Leadership Performance and Features for the Modern Data Center," October 10, 2024. https://www.amd.com/en/newsroom/press-releases/2024-10-10-amd-launches-5th-gen-amd-epyc-cpus-maintaining-le.html
15. VideoCardz, "AMD surpasses 40% server CPU revenue share for the first time," February 2026. https://videocardz.com/newz/amd-surpasses-40-server-cpu-revenue-share-for-the-first-time
16. Wikipedia, "El Capitan (supercomputer)," accessed 2026. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/El_Capitan_(supercomputer)
17. Tom's Hardware, "AMD touts Instinct MI430X, MI440X, and MI455X AI accelerators and Helios rack-scale AI architecture at CES," January 2026. https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/artificial-intelligence/amd-touts-instinct-mi430x-mi440x-and-mi455x-ai-accelerators-and-helios-rack-scale-ai-architecture-at-ces-full-mi400-series-family-fulfills-a-broad-range-of-infrastructure-and-customer-requirements
18. AMD, "AMD Instinct MI350 Series and Beyond: Accelerating the Future of AI and HPC," 2025. https://www.amd.com/en/blogs/2025/amd-instinct-mi350-series-and-beyond-accelerating-the-future-of-ai-and-hpc.html
19. AMD, "AMD Instinct MI300X Accelerators." https://www.amd.com/en/products/accelerators/instinct/mi300/mi300x.html
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21. Tom's Hardware, "AMD announces MI350X and MI355X AI GPUs, claims up to 4X generational performance gain," June 2025. https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/gpus/amd-announces-mi350x-and-mi355x-ai-gpus-claims-up-to-4x-generational-gain-up-to-35x-faster-inference-performance
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33. AMD, "AMD Delivers Leadership Portfolio of Data Center AI Solutions with AMD Instinct MI300 Series," December 6, 2023. https://www.amd.com/en/newsroom/press-releases/2023-12-6-amd-delivers-leadership-portfolio-of-data-center-a.html
34. AMD, "AMD Instinct MI300X Accelerators Power Microsoft Azure OpenAI Service Workloads and New Azure ND MI300X V5 VMs," May 21, 2024. https://www.amd.com/en/newsroom/press-releases/2024-5-21-amd-instinct-mi300x-accelerators-power-microsoft-a.html
35. AMD, "AMD Unveils Vision for an Open AI Ecosystem, Detailing New Silicon, Software and Systems at Advancing AI 2025," June 12, 2025. https://www.amd.com/en/newsroom/press-releases/2025-6-12-amd-unveils-vision-for-an-open-ai-ecosystem-detai.html
36. OpenAI, "AMD and OpenAI announce strategic partnership to deploy 6 gigawatts of AMD GPUs," October 6, 2025. https://openai.com/index/openai-amd-strategic-partnership/