Comment on AMD unveils new AI chips amid competition with Nvidia and Intel

In June 1924, a British mountaineer named George Leigh Mallory and a young engineering student named Andrew "Sandy" Irvine set off for the summit of Mount Everest and disappeared—two more casualties of a peak that has claimed over 300 lives to date. Mallory's body was found in 1999, but Irvine's was never found—until now.

Two years ago, Tesla's Optimus prototype was an underwhelming mess of exposed wires that could only operate in a carefully controlled stage presentation. Last night, Tesla's "We, Robot" event featured much more advanced Optimus prototypes that could walk around without tethers and interact directly with partygoers. It was an impressive demonstration of the advancement of a technology Tesla's Elon Musk said he thinks "will be the biggest product ever of any kind" (way to set reasonable expectations, there).

If you're going to eat a bear, make sure it's not rare. You'd be forgiven for thinking that once the beast has been subdued, all danger has passed. But you might still be in for a scare. The animal's flesh can be riddled with encased worm larvae, which, upon being eaten, will gladly reproduce in your innards and let their offspring roam the rest of your person, including invading your brain and heart.

On Thursday, AMD announced its new MI325X AI accelerator chip, which is set to roll out to data center customers in the fourth quarter of this year. At an event hosted in San Francisco, the company claimed the new chip offers "industry-leading" performance compared to Nvidia's current H200 GPUs, which are widely used in data centers to power AI applications such as ChatGPT. With its new chip, AMD hopes to narrow the performance gap with Nvidia in the AI processor market.

After a US court ruled earlier this week that Google must open its Play Store to allow for third-party app stores and alternative payment options, Microsoft is moving quickly to slide into this slightly ajar door. Sarah Bond, president of Xbox, posted on X (formerly Twitter) Thursday evening that the ruling "will allow more choice and flexibility." "Our mission is to allow more players to play on more devices so we are thrilled to share that starting in November, players will be able to play and purchase Xbox games directly from the Xbox App on Android," Bond wrote. Because the court order requires Google to stop forcing apps to use its own billing system and allow for third-party app stores inside Google Play itself, Microsoft now intends to offer Xbox games directly through its app.

Last night, after a wait of roughly an hour after the official start time, Elon Musk spoke to a crowd of Tesla fans and some journalists on a film studio backlot in California to give us an update on the company's much-talked-about pivot to robotics. In an act redolent with symbolism, Musk emerged from a facade built to resemble an actual building, then stepped into an aerodynamically styled two-seater that combined the shape of a Honda CR-Z coupe with the doors from a McLaren supercar.