According to an AWS executive who spoke with Reuters, Amazon Web Services, the leading cloud computing provider, is contemplating the use of Advanced Micro Devices’ (AMD) new artificial intelligence chips. Although no final decision has been made, the statement was made during an AMD event where the company presented its AI market strategy, currently dominated by Nvidia.
Lisa Su, AMD’s CEO, discussed their approach to attract major cloud computing customers. They aim to offer a range of components required to build systems similar to ChatGPT, allowing customers to select and customize based on their specific needs using industry standard connections. Su believes that customers value choice and customization for their data centers.
While AWS has not publicly committed to incorporating AMD’s MI300 chips into its cloud services, Dave Brown, Vice President of Elastic Compute Cloud at Amazon, confirmed that AWS is considering them. Brown mentioned ongoing collaboration between the teams to determine the optimal implementation of the chips, leveraging the existing design that seamlessly integrates with their systems.
Nvidia does offer individual chip sales, but it also encourages cloud providers to adopt its complete system solution called DGX Cloud. Oracle is currently Nvidia’s first partner for this system. However, AWS declined to participate in the DGX Cloud offering. Brown explained that AWS prefers to design its own servers from scratch due to their extensive experience in building reliable servers and their existing expertise in the supply chain.
In March, AWS started offering Nvidia’s H100 chip as part of its own designed systems. Analyst Jacob Bourne from Insider Intelligence suggests that Amazon’s consideration of AMD’s MI300 indicates a growing appetite among tech companies to diversify their AI development hardware. This could potentially create opportunities for other chipmakers in the future.
