The following is excerpted from the question-and-answer section of the transcript.
(Questions from industry analysts are provided in full, but answers are omitted - download the transcript to see the full question-and-answer session)
Question: Timothy Arcuri - UBS - Analyst
: <_ALACRA_META_ABSTRACT>So Forrest, I wanted to start, you've got the broadest portfolio of data center silicon. You've got some new networking technology.
You have [DPU], which feeds GPU. Maybe you can start by broadly talking about your strategy around your entire data center portfolio.
Forrest Norrod - Advanced Micro Devices Inc - Executive Vice President, General Manager - Data Center Solutions Business Unit
Sure. Yes. We've been embarked over the last decade. I joined AMD almost exactly 10 years ago now, to build out a portfolio of data
center technology, to really take -- eventually take leadership in providing silicon solutions for data centers. So we began, of course,
with the CPU.
That's where we had some heritage. We began with the EPYC line of the CPU, and that's done very well. We're about 34% share right
now. And then we built out the GPU and then we acquired a networking team and began building that out. And the purpose of
having all of those pieces is that in the end, we do believe that to really optimize the solutions, particularly in the AI era, that having
all of the elements in-house is very helpful.
And so our intent is to build out reference solutions for AI systems that incorporate world-class CPU, world-class GPU, world-class
networking and the sum of the parts is greater -- the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. And we believe that we were well
on the way to offering the best possible solutions easy to adopt the mid (inaudible) for customers to adopt and that they can source
through a variety of partners.
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DECEMBER 03, 2024 / 7:15PM, AMD.OQ - Advanced Micro Devices Inc at UBS Global Technology and AI
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Question: Timothy Arcuri - UBS - Analyst
: Got it. I wanted to ask you about Turin and what Turin brings to the table and how you see it stacking up with (inaudible) for [e-core]
and for [Granite Rapids] how does it back up? And sort of what's the early customer reaction to Turin?
Forrest Norrod - Advanced Micro Devices Inc - Executive Vice President, General Manager - Data Center Solutions Business Unit
Yes. Turin continues our strategy of providing leadership CPUs, both performance as well as power performance. And I think the
third-party measurement so far, there's very limited Granite Rapids out there, but there's been some third-party benchmarking that's
showing, like (inaudible) should across a very wide suite of 200 different benchmarks. Turin is 40% faster than the top end of the
Granite Rapids stack. And so I think that sort of continues our clear performance leadership with Turin.
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DECEMBER 03, 2024 / 7:15PM, AMD.OQ - Advanced Micro Devices Inc at UBS Global Technology and AI
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Against (inaudible) there is no comparison. I mean, (inaudible) is -- it's a great part don't get me wrong, but with the e-cores, it's
much, much lower performance both on a per thread as well as an overall socket level. And so it's really not -- it's not competitive
at all. We see great success with Turin, both at the 128 as well as the 192 cores. See great success there.
And I think that's going to continue. I think we've got another generation of absolute double-digit performance leadership across
every application.
Question: Timothy Arcuri - UBS - Analyst
: Definitely. Let me shift over to GPU. You're shipping MI300, you're just starting to ship MI325X, really more in Q1 than in this quarter.
So your road map is really beginning to evolve. You recently extended the TAM.
You took it from 427 to 528, the accelerator TAM. There's a bunch of questions around that. And really, they are, how do you see
your position in that TAM? And sort of what would define success? I've heard Lisa in the past say, well, look at our share in CPU.
We're not saying that that's what the goal is, but that we're in the market to be a major player. So what would define success?
Forrest Norrod - Advanced Micro Devices Inc - Executive Vice President, General Manager - Data Center Solutions Business Unit
Well, I think I'm going to keep myself out of trouble by agreeing with her. I would anyway. No. Look, I think we certainly aspire to be
relevant to the market and to be relevant to the market to be important to the market. I think you have to be strong double-digit
percentages some people would say 20%.
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DECEMBER 03, 2024 / 7:15PM, AMD.OQ - Advanced Micro Devices Inc at UBS Global Technology and AI
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I think over time, that's -- that we're looking to -- I'm not giving you an exact number, but we're looking to make sure that we're
relevant, were important to the ecosystem.
Question: Timothy Arcuri - UBS - Analyst
: So if I said that in the few years, if your -- if you achieve 20%, is that a failure or is that a success?
Forrest Norrod - Advanced Micro Devices Inc - Executive Vice President, General Manager - Data Center Solutions Business Unit
Well, look, again, I don't want to validate a specific goal -- specific share goal. But we -- again, we aspire to be relevant. We aspire to
be important in this market. And I think we certainly are looking in any similar number in such a large market is a huge revenue
opportunity for us.
Question: Timothy Arcuri - UBS - Analyst
: Can you talk about just the success you've had in software. One thing, I mean NVIDIA has done a fantastic job with [CUDA] and with
all their transformer models and you've been playing catch-up and maybe acquisitions and you've come a long way. But where --
sort of where do you assess where you are today versus where you need to be? Do you have all the transformer models you need?
Do you have the capabilities you need?
Forrest Norrod - Advanced Micro Devices Inc - Executive Vice President, General Manager - Data Center Solutions Business Unit
I think, again, it's a journey, not a destination because even as we're developing NVIDIA's -- and again, great set of software resources,
they're continuing to advance. But I think where we are today is that, as I mentioned a moment ago, where customers that already
have a model or want to develop or fine-tune model, we're at a point where it's very easy to do so. We don't have the same level of
vertical solutions that NVIDIA has for that.
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We're really focused on working with the other members of the ecosystem to develop those. But I think we're at the point where it's
-- again, it's relatively easy to adopt, relatively easy to move over to AMD, or to add AMD more realistically add AMD as an alternative
for your infrastructure and then place the workloads between NVIDIA and AMD, where you get most benefit.
Question: Timothy Arcuri - UBS - Analyst
: And do you feel like -- I'll just ask you directly. So you feel like if the challenges from that main -- or from that large supplier persists
that you still have other sources of supply?
Forrest Norrod - Advanced Micro Devices Inc - Executive Vice President, General Manager - Data Center Solutions Business Unit
Sure. We work on the memory side, for example, we work with all of the major vendors, and we've got great relationships with all
of them.
Question: Timothy Arcuri - UBS - Analyst
: What about from a rack scale point of view because your first product that's fully rack scale not until MI400. So will that aspect hold
you back? Will the market want rack scale so much in the back half of '25 that that's a factor that maybe could constrain 350? I'm just
kind of wondering if that's like another.
Forrest Norrod - Advanced Micro Devices Inc - Executive Vice President, General Manager - Data Center Solutions Business Unit
I don't think it's going to be a major issue, and that's certainly not what from our customers. The question is really how well does it
fit in the data centers? What's the level of performance they can get? And are they stranding anything. Are they straining power
cooling or anything else?
And I think we've been thoughtful about the design and our customers are flexible enough in their data center deployments that
that's not an issue that, that won't for (inaudible). We will have full rack scale infrastructures available, of course, in the 400 time
frame. And that's the point where -- you're starting to get up into the 200-plus kilowatt per rack regime, in which case you really do
need to have a complete rack scale architecture.
Question: Timothy Arcuri - UBS - Analyst
: Can we talk about the --
Forrest Norrod - Advanced Micro Devices Inc - Executive Vice President, General Manager - Data Center Solutions Business Unit
I'm sorry, you asked me that there was a rationale. This is worth touching on as well. The rationale for buying ZT really is twofold.
The first is that as we're designing for these 200-kilowatt plus racks, you really do need to comprehend the requirements at the
racking cluster level as you're designing the silicon. And so being able to do that, design that system in cluster level design very early
on allows you to define and design a better piece of silicon to fit into it.
And so that's a big part of it. And then the second part is, look, we want to support the ecosystem and adding value to our solutions.
And so we don't want to take the approach that we have a one size fits all. We're not trying to take the Henry Forward Model T
approach of you can have your hyperscale data center rack anyway, any color you want as long as it's this color black, we're not
taking approach.
So we're investing in enough systems engineering, not only to produce a great set of base designs and elements, but also to allow
others in the ecosystem to do variations to add their own value.
That actually takes a little bit more engineering upfront to add the hooks and design the components such that others can do that.
But we think by doing so, we better harness the engineering talent really across the industry to accrete value to our ecosystem.
Question: Timothy Arcuri - UBS - Analyst
: So bottom line question that I'm asked all the time, when do you think -- given what you know about your road map and given what
you know about NVIDIA's road map, when do you think you're going to have a product in the marketplace at the same time as them
that is equivalent or better that you've caught up?
Forrest Norrod - Advanced Micro Devices Inc - Executive Vice President, General Manager - Data Center Solutions Business Unit
From a day 1 perspective, right, since I would say right now, the products in the market from NVIDIA are H100 and H200 and I think
we're very well positioned with 300 and 325 against it. But you're saying, when are we going to introduce it at the same time?
Look, we're taking the same approach on the GPU side as we did on the CPU side, which is build a multigenerational road map, put
in place the engineering discipline to retire technology risk during the development cycles in a predictable way and run them down.
And so that's what we're doing. So we're doing the same general approach on the GPU that we did on the CPU.
And I think that we're -- by the time you get to the middle of next year, [DB200], I think, really will be deployed in volume at that
point. That's when is really going to starting to ramp up in volume. I think we're going to be there with 355. And I think there's no
questions, no (inaudible) on our MI400 generation. We aspire to be there with the leadership training and inference and chain of
thought solution with MI400.
Question: Timothy Arcuri - UBS - Analyst
: Thank you, Forrest.
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DECEMBER 03, 2024 / 7:15PM, AMD.OQ - Advanced Micro Devices Inc at UBS Global Technology and AI
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Forrest Norrod - Advanced Micro Devices Inc - Executive Vice President, General Manager - Data Center Solutions Business Unit
Thanks a lot.
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