But that doesn’t specify that the dollars referenced would come from OpenAI. Others have interpreted the remark as referring to potential increased revenue from companies buying from AMD because of the OpenAI endorsement, and possibly because of OpenAI improvements to AMD’s software. Symonds did not respond to that question.
Rodolfo Rosini, CEO of Vaire Computing, said the supply problems with Nvidia are absolutely a critical background factor for the AMD-OpenAI deal.
“There is unbound demand for Nvidia hardware, but a limited supply, and upstream there is a limited supply of wafers from TSMC to Nvidia,” Rosini said. “So now the demand is overspilling into competing offerings, as AI companies can’t stand still while they wait for an allocation.”
But Rosini also saw some product weaknesses at AMD playing an outsized role.
“AMD’s software stack is bad, but that is a bigger issue for training than for inference. They were always viable for enterprise use. They just could not command premium pricing like Nvidia does, and developers preferred [Nvidia’s] CUDA,” Rosini said. “[OpenAI] directing AMD’s software roadmap instead of the management of AMD will be great. Labs like OpenAI know exactly what they want and will be very vocal about it.”
Chip supplier diversity needed
Another analyst, Jack Gold, principal analyst for J. Gold Associates, agreed.
