AMD Rises After Morgan Stanley Highlights AWS Win
Shares of AMD (AMD) are on the rise after Morgan Stanley analyst Joseph Moore commented on AMD's graphics win with Amazon (AMZN) Web Services, which joined previously announced Google (GOOG; GOOGL) and Alibaba (BABA) virtualization wins. Moore argued that while Nvidia (NVDA) still retains leadership in the segment, AMD is making progress.
AWS WIN: In a blog post last week, AMD announced that AWS had chosen its Radeon Pro MxGPU - multiuser GPU - technology for its new Graphics Design instance type on Amazon AppStream 2.0. Amazon AppStream 2.0 is a fully managed, secure application streaming service that allows the user to stream desktop applications from AWS to any device running a web browser, without rewriting them. The new Graphics Design instance type runs on AMD's S7150x2 GPU, the virtualized graphics processor of its Radeon Pro graphics product. "With Graphics Design instances, users can run graphics-accelerated applications at a fraction of the cost of using graphics workstations and can lower the cost of streaming a graphics app on AppStream 2.0 by up to 50%. These instances are ideal for delivering applications that rely on hardware acceleration of DirectX, OpenGL or OpenCL," AMD explained.
AMD MAKING PROGRESS: Morgan Stanley's Moore told investors in a research note this morning that while the graphics virtualization market is small and until recently dominated by Nvidia's GRID, AMD has gotten important wins, announcing Google and Alibaba late last year and now AWS. For now, the analyst noted that he would still expect Nvidia to retain leadership share in the segment, but acknowledged that AMD is making progress. The more exciting data center opportunity for graphics chips will be in deep learning training, Moore said, where AMD has also made progress with Baidu (BIDU). While the analyst believes it is a "healthy sign" that AMD's graphics team is building relationships with cloud vendors, he does not think progress in virtualization will correlate with wins in deep learning.
PRICE ACTION: In morning trading, shares of AMD have gained nearly 4% to $13.