Amazon Web Services (AWS) will initially not use new AI chips from AMD in its cloud services. According to Gadi Hutt, Senior Director for Customer and Product Development at Amazon’s chip division Annapurna Labs, the decision is based on customer demand. Currently, there is no significant demand for AMD’s MI300 series, as he mentioned in an interview with Business Insider.
Instead of AMD, AWS is focusing on Nvidia and its own Trainium chips. At the re:Invent conference, Amazon announced the use of Nvidia’s next-generation Blackwell graphics units in its EC2 P6 instances. These units are optimized for generative AI and offer 2.5 times higher performance, according to the company. Additionally, Amazon introduced EC2 instances and UltraServers powered by Trainium2 chips, developed by Annapurna Labs, an Amazon subsidiary. The team is already working on a successor that promises to be more energy-efficient and four times more powerful than the current generation.
Last year, when AMD began mass production of its Instinct MI300 accelerators, the company was optimistic. The Instinct MI300X, for example, is a cost-effective alternative to Nvidia’s H100 chip. Despite AMD’s growing revenue from AI chips this year, the company still lags behind its competitors. According to stock market reports, Nvidia leads the AI accelerator industry with a market share of about 80%.
Amazon continues to use AMD CPUs for its servers. Hutt does not rule out the future use of AMD’s AI accelerators. In other areas, Amazon maintains a strong partnership with AMD. AWS uses AMD’s EPYC series as server processors. Compared to Intel’s Xeon CPUs, AMD processors offer more cores and a faster memory subsystem, which provides advantages in compute and memory-intensive server instances.
In summary, while AWS is not currently adopting AMD’s new AI chips, it remains open to future possibilities. The company’s strategic choice to use Nvidia and Trainium chips highlights its focus on high-performance, energy-efficient solutions tailored to customer needs. Meanwhile, AMD continues to play a crucial role in AWS’s server infrastructure, showcasing the ongoing collaboration between the two companies.