AMD At Supercomputing 2019: New Platforms, Deal Wins & More

Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMD) recently unveiled new platforms based on its EPYC processors, which support latest Radeon Instinct accelerators, at Supercomputing 2019 event held at Denver, CO.

The company also introduced ROCm 3.0 with support to new compilers and integrated with latest ML frameworks for HPC applications. ROCm 3.0 also enables deployment of workloads with tools including, Singularity, Kubernetes, SLURM and TAU.

Moreover, AMD announced that its processors will power the Frontier supercomputer, scheduled for 2021 release.

At the event, the company also announced a slew of deal wins, which came on the back of portfolio strength and continued innovation in high performance computing (HPC) ecosystem.

Robust Features Favor Adoption

AMD’s 2nd Gen EPYC processors offer robust manufacturing application performance. Per company’s estimates, the processors deliver “up to 60% faster Life Sciences simulations” when compared with solutions from Intel (NASDAQ:INTC) .

Further, Radeon Instinct GPU accelerator facilitates “up to 6.6 peak theoretical TFLOPS Double Precision performance for HPC workloads.”

Additionally, 2nd Gen EPYC processors and Radeon Instinct GPU accelerators support PCIe 4.0 enabled devices, accelerating compute processes across heterogenous systems.



The robust features are bolstering adoption of the company’s offerings, which is instilling investor optimism in the stock. Shares of AMD were up 3.4% on Nov 18, eventually closing at $39.88. Notably, the stock has soared 116% year to date, significantly outperforming the industry’s rally of 40.4%.

Deal Wins Deserve a Special Mention

AMD is optimistic about extended utilization of its 2nd Gen EPYC processors by Amazon’s (NASDAQ:AMZN) cloud computing platform, Amazon Web Services (or AWS), in upcoming Amazon EC2 (or Elastic Compute Cloud) compute-optimized instances, namely C5a and C5ad.

Moreover, EPYC processors are enabling the company to feature in 54th edition of TOP500 supercomputers. Notable EPYC deal wins in supercomputing domain include Atos’ BullSequana XH2000 supercomputers, ETH Zurich’s Euler VI system and NEC’s Deutscher Wetterdienst.

Notably, Joliot-Curie supercomputer, developed by Atos and France-based, GENCI, is operational, and has been named in TOP500 supercomputers list. It is powered by AMD’s EPYC 7H12 64-core processor.

Moreover, Microsoft’s Azure HBv2 virtual machines are leveraging AMD’s EPYC 7742 processor for HPC applications.

AMD’s Radeon Instinct GPU accelerators and 2nd Gen EPYC processors are supporting partners including Broadcom (NASDAQ:AVGO), Mellanox and Samsung (KS:005930) to deliver PCIe 4.0 enabled devices.

The company’s 2nd Gen EPYC processors are enabling GIGABYTE to introduce new G-Series GPU servers. Moreover, Penguin has rolled out new Altus XE4218GT, which can support up to eight GPUs, utilizing 2nd Gen EPYC processors and Radeon Instinct MI50 accelerators in a bid to accelerate complex workloads involving ML and big data analytics,.

The company’s 2nd Gen EPYC processors are enabling Tyan’s new HPC and database platforms.

Wrapping Up

AMD has been securing notable customer wins on the back of its high-performance portfolio of latest EYPC, Ryzen and Radeon processors. Moreover, alliances with Baidu (NASDAQ:BIDU), Amazon, Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) and JD.com bode well.

We believe deal wins from the industry bellwethers will instill confidence in the company’s stock and enhance financial position in the longer haul.

However, stiff competition from Intel and NVIDIA (NASDAQ:NVDA) , which are enhancing their position in supercomputing and HPC market, remains a concern.

Zacks Rank

AMD carries a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold). You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.

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