AMDs MI250 Chip A Viable Alternative to Nvidias A100 for HighPerformance AI Hardware

On July 3, 2023, a San Francisco-based startup called MosaicML conducted a groundbreaking test comparing AI chips from two tech giants, Advanced Micro Devices Inc and Nvidia. Instead of relying on the usual sources, MosaicML used their own innovative tools to evaluate the highly sought-after AMD MI250 and the Nvidia A100, which were one generation behind each company’s flagship chips.

Surprisingly, MosaicML discovered that AMD’s chip could deliver an impressive 80% of the performance achieved by Nvidia’s chip. This remarkable feat was made possible by a new version of AMD software and an open-source software called PyTorch. The Chief Technology Officer of MosaicML, Hanlin Tang, expressed optimism that with further software updates, AMD’s MI250 chip could eventually match the performance of Nvidia’s A100.

In order to put their findings to the test, MosaicML utilized the powerful combination of PyTorch and AMD software to train a language model. Remarkably, they were able to achieve this without making any changes to the underlying code base.