Efficient data movement across the chip is a key consideration for reducing power consumption and improving performance on the MI455X.
The CDNA 5 Tensor Data Mover is an improved version of the data movement engine in past CDNA generations. Like Nvidia’s Tensor Memory Accelerator, the TDM accelerates the production of certain tensor-specific memory addresses and facilitates moving the related data from memory without involving the shader engines. In the CDNA 5 generation, the TDM gains the ability to move data directly from DRAM to the WGP LDS cache without staging data at intermediate cache levels.
AMD has also added multicast support for memory reads to the WGPs to take advantage of the fact that AI workloads often need to work on the same weights and activations across multiple WGPs at once. By using multicast, a single memory read can be amplified across many WGPs, increasing effective memory bandwidth, reducing duplicated traffic on the bus, and lowering power consumption. Nvidia has had a similar capability in its GPUs since Hopper, but given AMD’s intense focus on efficient data movement this generation, it’s perhaps unsurprising to see a version of it added here.
All told, the MI455X is AMD’s most compelling Instinct product yet. It delivers a massive generational performance improvement, it puts up peak FLOPS on paper that are competitive with or even superior to Nvidia’s upcoming Rubin GPU, and it offers a massive 432GB pool of HBM4 memory that’s 1.5x larger and even slightly faster than Rubin’s 288GB complement.
Combined with the Helios rack-scale architecture and its 72-accelerator scale-up domain—AMD’s first true answer to Nvidia’s NVL72 rack-scale design—we should expect the race for AI compute superiority to really heat up in the second half of this year as both Nvidia and AMD begin delivering their next-generation products to customers.
(Image credit: AMD) (Image credit: AMD) (Image credit: AMD) (Image credit: AMD) (Image credit: AMD) (Image credit: AMD) (Image credit: AMD) (Image credit: AMD) (Image credit: AMD) (Image credit: AMD) (Image credit: AMD) (Image credit: AMD) (Image credit: AMD) (Image credit: AMD) (Image credit: AMD) (Image credit: AMD) (Image credit: AMD) Image 1 of 17 View Original
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As the Senior Analyst, Graphics at Tom's Hardware, Jeff Kampman covers everything that has to do with graphics cards, gaming performance, and more. From integrated graphics processors to discrete graphics cards to the hyperscale installations powering our AI future, if it's got a GPU in it, Jeff is on it.\u00a0 ","collapsible":{"enabled":true,"maxHeight":250,"readMoreText":"Read more","readLessText":"Read less"}}), "https://slice.vanilla.futurecdn.net/13-4-25/js/authorBio.js"); } else { console.error('%c FTE ','background: #9306F9; color: #ffffff','no lazy slice hydration function available'); } Jeffrey Kampman Senior Analyst, Graphics As the Senior Analyst, Graphics at Tom's Hardware, Jeff Kampman covers everything that has to do with graphics cards, gaming performance, and more. From integrated graphics processors to discrete graphics cards to the hyperscale installations powering our AI future, if it's got a GPU in it, Jeff is on it.
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