AMD Cloud Efforts Get Boost From Alibaba
15 October 2016 - 5:20AM
Dow Jones News
Chip maker Advanced Micro Devices Inc., largely left behind in
the cloud-computing boom, has received a helping hand from Alibaba
Group Holding Ltd.
The Chinese e-commerce company on Friday said it would use AMD
graphics chips as part of its cloud infrastructure services, which
run computing operations for other companies. The companies also
said they plan joint research efforts.
No financial details were disclosed. But any endorsement in the
data center is good news for AMD, whose rivals have reaped the
benefits as cloud companies spend heavily on servers and other
hardware.
Sunnyvale, Calif.-based AMD competes with Intel Corp. in selling
microprocessors using the x86 design that is standard in most
personal computers and servers. In the past decade its chips
briefly accounted for about a third of x86 server chip sales, but
its share of that business dwindled to less than 1% as Intel
developed more attractive technology.
AMD also sells chips called graphics processing units, or GPUs,
which are best known for generating images in videogames played on
PCs and gaming consoles. But rival Nvidia Corp. has been much more
successful in pushing GPUs for other purposes, particularly for
scientific calculations and an emerging class of computing chores
at companies such as Alphabet Inc.'s Google, Facebook Inc. and
Microsoft Corp.
AMD's shares, which have more than doubled this year, jumped 6%
Friday following news of the Alibaba deal.
Alibaba also uses Nvidia GPUs and announced a collaboration with
Nvidia in January that included new Nvidia-powered services and a
joint research lab.
Simon Hu, president of Alibaba Cloud, said adding AMD technology
to the technologies it uses will bring customers more "diversified"
cloud-based graphics processing solutions.
Write to Don Clark at don.clark@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
October 14, 2016 14:05 ET (18:05 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2016 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOG)
Historical Stock Chart
From Aug 2024 to Sep 2024
Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOG)
Historical Stock Chart
From Sep 2023 to Sep 2024