Episode 236, this episode aired on October 15, 2024
Analyst(s): Daniel Newman, Patrick Moorhead
Patrick Moorhead and Daniel Newman discuss NVIDIA’s and MediaTek’s potential AI PC partnership, Amazon’s AI logistics and fulfillment announcements, and Tesla’s Robotaxi event. These topics provided a roadmap for discussing the broader implications of AI in both enterprise and consumer technology.
What Are Covered in This Episode:
- AMD’s Advancing AI event and its MI300X chip
- Competition between AMD, NVIDIA, and Intel in AI hardware
- Networking infrastructure’s role in AI data centers
- Amazon’s AI integration in logistics and shopping
- NVIDIA and MediaTek’s potential AI PC partnership
- Tesla’s Robotaxi event and humanoid robots
- Commvault’s focus on cyber resilience and data protection
Access the video link of the October 15, 2024, Six Five episode here.
AMD’s Advancing AI Event: Expanding the AI Ecosystem
AMD’s Advancing AI event was one of the central topics of discussion. At this event, AMD’s CEO, Lisa Su, provided updates on the company’s AI strategy, emphasizing its AI accelerators and CPUs for hyperscalers. AMD’s MI300 series serves AI workloads and is a particularly significant development. The MI300X chip, with its increased memory and efficiency for training AI models, positions AMD as a competitive force against NVIDIA and Intel in the AI hardware landscape.
Lisa Su’s announcement that AMD’s AI accelerator total addressable market (TAM) will reach $500 billion by 2028 showcases the industry’s optimism about the growing demand for AI hardware. This represents a jump from the earlier $400 billion TAM forecast and reflects the rapid expansion of AI workloads across industries. A 60% compound annual growth rate (CAGR) between 2023 and 2028 for AI accelerators reinforces the bullish outlook for AI hardware manufacturers.
AMD’s momentum in the AI space was underscored by its relationship with Meta, which is exclusively using AMD’s MI300X chip for its Llama 405B model. Meta’s reliance on AMD for live AI model traffic (inference tasks rather than just training) illustrates the robustness and reliability of AMD’s chips in high-demand environments. This partnership also sets a precedent for other hyperscalers, such as Google and Microsoft, to consider further expanding their use of AMD’s AI accelerators.
The AI Hardware Landscape: NVIDIA, Intel, and AMD in Competition
NVIDIA, which currently dominates the AI GPU market with around 90% market share, faces increasing competition from AMD. NVIDIA’s position as the leader in AI GPUs is built on its successful Hopper series of GPUs and strong market presence. The company is also working on its highly anticipated next-generation Blackwell GPUs.
However, AMD’s MI300 series, specifically the MI300X chip, provides notable competition to NVIDIA. The MI300X focuses on providing more memory for AI model training, which is increasingly critical as AI models grow more complex. The competition between AMD’s MI300X and NVIDIA’s Hopper GPUs will likely intensify as both companies vie for market share in AI workloads.
Intel, while trailing in the AI training market, still leads in AI inference with its accelerators. However, Intel’s ability to scale its presence in hyperscale data centers lags behind NVIDIA and AMD. While Intel has succeeded with its accelerators in enterprise settings, its challenge remains to catch up with its competitors’ AI-focused solutions.
The AI hardware market is evolving rapidly, with product lifecycles shortening as companies race to meet the demand for faster, more efficient AI training and inference capabilities. The battle is most pronounced in the hyperscaler space, particularly in cloud computing. AMD’s growing influence among hyperscalers, NVIDIA’s leadership in GPUs, and Intel’s strength in inference will shape the future of AI hardware for years to come.
Networking for AI: The Crucial Role of Infrastructure
AI workloads require immense computational power, but just as critical is the ability to move data quickly and efficiently between compute nodes. This is particularly relevant in AI model training, where network bottlenecks can slow down progress.
AMD’s entry into the AI networking space, with its AI networking cards designed to prevent breakdowns in data center performance, demonstrates its commitment to addressing this challenge. These cards, built on technology from AMD’s acquisition of Pensando, aim to reduce latency and ensure that AI models can be trained and deployed with minimal interruptions.
Since networking failures are one of the leading causes of delays in AI model training, AMD addresses a critical pain point in the AI infrastructure space by focusing on AI networking solutions. This also positions AMD as a more comprehensive AI solution provider, offering AI accelerators and the networking infrastructure needed to support them.
Amazon’s AI Initiatives: Leveraging AI for Logistics and Shopping
Amazon’s efforts to integrate AI into its logistics and fulfillment operations were another critical point of discussion. Amazon’s use of AI for optimizing delivery routes, specifically with its vision-assisted package retrieval system (VAPR), aims to reduce delivery times by 30 minutes per route. This is a significant efficiency improvement in an industry where speed is paramount, especially as Amazon pushes for faster and more reliable delivery options, including same-day delivery.
The deployment of AI in 1,000 Amazon delivery vans is part of the company’s broader push to use technology to enhance its logistics operations. This initiative underscores how AI transforms traditional industries, such as transportation and logistics, by automating and optimizing complex processes.
In addition to logistics, Amazon uses AI to enhance the shopping experience. Through AI-powered personalized recommendations and visual shopping tools, Amazon is making it easier for customers to find products and take advantage of savings. These AI-driven tools are integrated into Amazon’s advertising platform, which has become a $40 billion business. The ability to use AI to deliver highly targeted ads and personalized shopping experiences is a crucial driver of Amazon’s continued growth in e-commerce.
NVIDIA and MediaTek: AI PCs and the Future of Computing
As NVIDIA is already a dominant player in the GPU market for high-performance computing, its partnership with MediaTek could allow it to enter the consumer PC space with AI-enabled devices. AI PCs might evolve in the coming years, focusing on efficiency, battery life, and performance. By integrating AI capabilities directly into the hardware, NVIDIA and MediaTek could create PCs optimized for gaming, video editing, and machine learning tasks.
The future of AI PCs could involve tightly integrated CPU, GPU, and NPU (Neural Processing Unit) architectures. These systems would improve power efficiency and performance, especially for AI-driven tasks. As more applications rely on AI, the demand for AI-enabled PCs is expected to grow, creating new opportunities for companies like NVIDIA and MediaTek.
Tesla’s Robotaxi and Humanoid Robots: The Future of Autonomous Technology
Tesla’s Robotaxi concept goes beyond traditional autonomous vehicles by envisioning a future where cars are not just for driving but become mobile workspaces. Musk’s vision includes vehicles without steering wheels or traditional controls designed for passengers to relax, work, or even sleep while traveling.
In addition to autonomous vehicles, Tesla’s humanoid robots, which Musk claims could be used for tasks such as package delivery and household chores. While these robots are still developing, their potential to revolutionize the logistics, retail, and home care industries is significant. Although the long-term implications of Tesla’s robotics efforts could be profound, Musk’s timelines are often overly ambitious.
Cyber Resilience: Commvault’s Focus on Data Protection
Commvault’s SHIFT event and its focus on cyber resilience. With the proliferation of cloud infrastructure, data is more distributed than ever, making it harder for companies to protect their assets from cyberattacks. Commvault’s Cloud Rewind, which restores systems to a pre-breach state, was highlighted as a key innovation in data protection.
Commvault’s partnership with Pure Storage to comply with the EU’s Digital Operations Resilience Act (DORA) further illustrates the growing importance of data protection and compliance in today’s digital landscape. As companies increasingly rely on cloud infrastructure to manage their data, ensuring robust cyber resilience strategies is critical to maintaining business continuity.
Looking Forward
As the race for AI hardware dominance intensifies, the tech landscape is poised for rapid transformation. AMD’s aggressive advancements in AI accelerators and its deepening partnerships with hyperscalers like Meta could redefine market dynamics, challenging NVIDIA’s longstanding dominance.
Meanwhile, innovations from companies like Amazon, Tesla, and NVIDIA will continue to push the boundaries of AI’s application in logistics, personal computing, and autonomous systems. The future of AI isn’t limited to data centers and cloud environments but will increasingly become integral to everyday devices and experiences.
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Disclosure: The Futurum Group is a research and advisory firm that engages or has engaged in research, analysis, and advisory services with many technology companies, including those mentioned in this article. The author does not hold any equity positions with any company mentioned in this article.
Analysis and opinions expressed herein are specific to the analyst individually and data and other information that might have been provided for validation, not those of The Futurum Group as a whole.
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Author Information
Daniel is the CEO of The Futurum Group. Living his life at the intersection of people and technology, Daniel works with the world’s largest technology brands exploring Digital Transformation and how it is influencing the enterprise.
From the leading edge of AI to global technology policy, Daniel makes the connections between business, people and tech that are required for companies to benefit most from their technology investments. Daniel is a top 5 globally ranked industry analyst and his ideas are regularly cited or shared in television appearances by CNBC, Bloomberg, Wall Street Journal and hundreds of other sites around the world.
A 7x Best-Selling Author including his most recent book “Human/Machine.” Daniel is also a Forbes and MarketWatch (Dow Jones) contributor.
An MBA and Former Graduate Adjunct Faculty, Daniel is an Austin Texas transplant after 40 years in Chicago. His speaking takes him around the world each year as he shares his vision of the role technology will play in our future.
Six Five Media is a joint venture of two top-ranked analyst firms, The Futurum Group and Moor Insights & Strategy. Six Five provides high-quality, insightful, and credible analyses of the tech landscape in video format. Our team of analysts sit with the world’s most respected leaders and professionals to discuss all things technology with a focus on digital transformation and innovation.
