AMD Instinct MI450 AI GPU Will Take The Fight To NVIDIA With 2nm Chip Tech
AMD's next-generation Instinct MI450 AI accelerator for the data center will tap into TSMC's 2-nanometer (N2) process technology, at least for part of the GPU's construction. Company CEO Dr. Lisa Su confirmed as much during an interview with Yahoo Finance to discuss AMD's massive AI chip deal with OpenAI, which includes OpenAI committing to buy several generations of Instinct accelerators and investing a 10% stake in the chip designer.
While Dr. Su does not specifically mention TSMC, we can reasonably assume that is where the chips are being fabricated. It's worth nothing that this is not AMD's first foray with TSMC's N2 node. Back in April of this year, AMD announced that its next-generation EPYC server processors codenamed Venice and based on Zen 6 became the first HPC product to be taped out and brought up on TSMC's advanced N2 process technology.
"TSMC has been a key partner for many years and our deep collaboration with their R&D and manufacturing teams has enabled AMD to consistently deliver leadership products that push the limits of high-performance computing," said Dr. Su said at the time. "Being a lead HPC customer for TSMC’s N2 process and for TSMC Arizona Fab 21 are great examples of how we are working closely together to drive innovation and deliver the advanced technologies that will power the future of computing."
Unsurprisingly, AMD's Instinct MI450 will follow suit. Here is the pertinent part of the interview....
Dr. Su talked about AI workloads requiring a lot of on-demand compute horsepower, hence why AMD is joining OpenAI to flesh out an AI infrastructure that is multiple gigawatts and comprised of millions of GPUs. She was then asked how difficult it is to build out this kind of massive infrastructure. While answering that question, Dr. Su confirmed that AMD's Instinct MI450 accelerators will be built with 2nm chip tech.
"It is incredibly difficult, but we have been working on this for years and, you know, sort of our technology is really around the chips, about ensuring that, you know we are constantly looking for pushing the envelope on sort of the next generations. So we're really excited about our MI450 generation. It has two nanometer technology, so the most advanced fabrication capability, it has rack scale solutions. So we're really putting all of these compute elements together," Dr. Su said.
We'll have to wait until next year for a full reveal of Instinct MI450, but according to a post on X by leaker @Kepler_L2 (as spotted by Videocardz), it's the accelerator core die (XCD) that will feature TSMC's 2nm process technology. Both the active interposer die (AID) and media interface die (MID) are being made on TSMC's 3-nanometer process (N3P).
In semi-related news, SeDaily reports that AMD is tapping Samsung to be the main supplier of HBM4 chips for its Instinct MI450 accelerators.
It will be interesting to see how everything plays out next year and beyond as competition with NVIDIA heats up. To that end, NVIDIA's next-generation Rubin GPU and Vera CPU will be built on TSMC's N3P node.
