AMD
In plain wordsAn American chip company that makes computer processors and graphics chips, and Nvidia's main rival in the chips used for artificial intelligence.
An American semiconductor company and the principal merchant competitor to NvidiaNvidia, prop. n.: An American chip company whose graphics processors became the main hardware for training and running AI, making it one of the most valuable companies in the world. in data-center AI acceleratorsAI accelerator, n.: Any chip built or tuned to speed up AI — graphics chips, Google's TPUs, phone 'neural engines' and many startup designs. Such chips do the heavy math of training and running models.; besides graphics processorsGPU, abbr.: A computer chip first designed to draw video-game graphics that turned out to be ideal for AI, because it can do thousands of simple calculations at the same time. it designs central processors and adaptive (programmable) chips. Its Instinct line, which became competitive with the MI300X (2023), offered more high-bandwidth memoryhigh-bandwidth memory, n.: Very fast memory made by stacking memory chips on top of each other and placing them right next to the processor, so AI chips can be fed data quickly enough. per chip than contemporary Nvidia parts, an advantage for inferenceinference, n.: Drawing a conclusion from evidence. In today's AI it most often means running an already-trained model to get an answer, as opposed to training it. on large models; later generations moved toward rack-scale systems. Its open-source ROCmROCm, prop. n.: AMD's free, open-source software for programming its graphics and AI chips — its answer to Nvidia's CUDA, letting AI software run on AMD hardware. software stack has historically trailed CUDACUDA, prop. n.: Nvidia's software system for programming its graphics chips to do general calculations. Most AI software is built on it, which is a big reason Nvidia chips dominate AI. in maturity, which analysts cite as the main barrier to wider adoption. In October 2025 OpenAI agreed to deploy six gigawatts of AMD GPUs, receiving warrants for up to about 10 percent of AMD's shares. Like Nvidia, AMD designs its chips and has them manufactured by TSMCTSMC, prop. n.: The Taiwanese company that manufactures most of the world's advanced computer chips, including nearly all of the specialized chips used to train and run AI..
Origin
Founded in 1969 in Sunnyvale, California, by Jerry Sanders and seven colleagues from Fairchild Semiconductor. It entered graphics by acquiring ATI Technologies in 2006 and adaptive computing by acquiring Xilinx in 2022; Lisa Su has been chief executive since 2014.
Related
- NvidiaNvidia, prop. n.: An American chip company whose graphics processors became the main hardware for training and running AI, making it one of the most valuable companies in the world.
- GPUGPU, abbr.: A computer chip first designed to draw video-game graphics that turned out to be ideal for AI, because it can do thousands of simple calculations at the same time.
- AI acceleratorAI accelerator, n.: Any chip built or tuned to speed up AI — graphics chips, Google's TPUs, phone 'neural engines' and many startup designs. Such chips do the heavy math of training and running models.
- ROCmROCm, prop. n.: AMD's free, open-source software for programming its graphics and AI chips — its answer to Nvidia's CUDA, letting AI software run on AMD hardware.
- high-bandwidth memoryhigh-bandwidth memory, n.: Very fast memory made by stacking memory chips on top of each other and placing them right next to the processor, so AI chips can be fed data quickly enough.
- TSMCTSMC, prop. n.: The Taiwanese company that manufactures most of the world's advanced computer chips, including nearly all of the specialized chips used to train and run AI.