AMD launches Helios, its first rack AI system to rival Nvidia, adding Microsoft as newest buyer
The rack-scale system uses open standards and 72 Instinct MI455X GPUs, with mass production set for 2027, AMD said.
- AMD is launching Helios, a rack-scale AI system designed to compete directly with Nvidia's Vera Rubin NVL72 in the data center market.
- Using open standards like UALink and Ultra Ethernet Consortium specifications, AMD is betting that operators will pay for the flexibility of avoiding proprietary vendor lock-in like Nvidia's NVLink.
- Each Helios rack packs 72 Instinct MI455X GPUs and 31 terabytes of HBM4 memory, delivering 2.9 exaflops of FP4 inference compute across 18 compute trays with EPYC Venice CPU accelerators.
- Engineering samples will ship in the second half of 2026, with mass production scheduled for Q2 2027, targeting hyperscaler budgets given HBM4's significant materials costs.
- While hardware specifications remain competitive, analysts note that software optimization remains a critical hurdle as AMD challenges Nvidia's entrenched market dominance in data center AI.
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45 Articles
With AMD expected to hold ‘AMD Advancing AI 2026’ in San Francisco on the 22nd (local time) and announce the official launch of its next-generation AI accelerator ‘Instinct MI450’ and rack-scale system ‘Helios,’ the semiconductor industry’s attention is focused on the memory specifications of Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix to keep pace. The 6th generation required by AMD’s MI450
(San Francisco = Yonhap News) Correspondent Kwon Young-jeon = Microsoft (MS) [is adding] Nvidia's competitor AMD's artificial intelligence (AI) rack... to its cloud platform 'Azure'.
US technology Microsoft has announced a collaboration with AMD to expand Azure's artificial intelligence (AI) and high performance computing (HPC) infrastructure. This partnership arises from Microsoft's need to respond to AI's workloads, which are scaling faster than any single infrastructure approach can support, and increasing demand for computing capacity. With this partnership, Microsoft will provide Azure, a global cloud computing platform…
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