Advanced Micro Devices AMD showcased its high-performance computing (HPC) dominance at Supercomputing 2024 with the El Capitan supercomputer. Powered by AMD Instinct MI300A APUs, it became the fastest on the Top 500 list with a 1.742 exaflop High-Performance Linpack score.
The El Capitan supercomputer is housed at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and built by Hewlett Packard Enterprise HPE. It is AMD's second system to have broken the exascale barrier.
AMD now powers 50% of the top 10 fastest and 40% of the 10 most energy-efficient supercomputers globally.
Advanced Micro Devices also announced a partnership with International Business Machines IBM to offer AMD Instinct MI300X accelerators on IBM Cloud, further advancing HPC and AI capabilities.
With this, AMD has significantly strengthened its HPC and AI portfolio, targeting high-performance needs in data centers, scientific research, aerospace, defense and communications markets.
AMD Stock Underperforms Despite Strong Data Center Growth
AMD shares have lost 5.4% in the year-to-date period, underperforming the Zacks Computer & Technology sector's return of 27.8% and the Zacks Computer - IT Systems Market's growth of 9.8%.
The drop can be attributed to weakness in the Gaming and Embedded segments. AMD's fourth-quarter 2024 guidance is not so encouraging.
However, the semiconductor chip provider has been riding on a strong performance of the Data Center segment.
In the third quarter of 2024, Data Center revenues surged 122.1% to a record $3.5 billion and accounted for 52% of total revenues. Sequentially, data center revenues increased 25%.
AMD's top line greatly benefited from the well-grounded Instinct product portfolio and strong growth in the fourth-gen EPYC CPU sales.
The chipmaker has been on an acquisitive spree to strengthen its AI ecosystem. The acquisition of ZT Systems, which provides AI infrastructure to large hyperscale computing companies, is noteworthy. This will enable AMD to simultaneously design and validate its next-gen AI silicon and systems, speeding up large-scale deployment of data center accelerators.
Nod.ai and Mipsology are some other notable acquisitions in the recent past. It recently closed the acquisition of Helsinki, Finland-based Silo AI.
AMD's acquisitiveness is aimed at reducing the technological gap with NVIDIA NVDA in the ongoing race for AI dominance.
Strong Portfolio Boosts AMD's Prospects
AMD's expanding portfolio, which now includes the Instinct MI300 Series data center AI accelerators and the Alveo V80 accelerators in the embedded segment, has been noteworthy.