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Vultr Launches AMD MI355X GPUs for Global Customers
Vultr now delivers AMD Instinct MI355X GPUs on its cloud platform to power demanding AI training, inference, and high-performance computing workloads.
Key Highlights:
- Vultr now offers the AMD Instinct MI355X GPU for global AI applications.
- This new GPU is engineered for high-performance AI inference, training, and scientific workloads.
- It serves as a cost-effective alternative to NVIDIA, offering superior price-to-performance.
- The partnership helps AMD challenge NVIDIA's market dominance and expand its open software ecosystem.
- Vultr aims to bolster this offering by marketing its price advantage and expanding its geographic capacity.
The News
Vultr, a privately-held cloud infrastructure company, announced availability of the AMD Instinct MI355X GPU. For more information, read the Vultr press release.
Analyst Take
Vultr has announced the availability of the AMD Instinct MI355X GPU, a powerful new option for enterprises looking to deploy AI-native applications globally. This new GPU is optimized for AI inference and provides superior performance and cost-efficiency, making it an ideal choice for new agentic AI initiatives.
Powered by the 4th Gen AMD CDNA architecture, the AMD Instinct MI355X GPUs are engineered for demanding workloads. They come equipped with 288 GB of HBM3E memory and an impressive 8TB/s bandwidth, which significantly speeds up AI training, inference, and scientific simulations.
With support for advanced data types such as FP6 and FP4, these GPUs are built for high-performance computing. Additionally, their compatibility with direct liquid cooling and the latest AMD ROCm software stack enables high-density, high-throughput deployments that achieve ultra-low latency.
Vultr already offered various NVIDIA GPUs, and adding the MI355X provides a powerful, cost-effective alternative for AI inference and training, which are areas of intense demand. From my perspective, this not only broadens its appeal to developers and enterprises who are looking for choice and are invested in the AMD ROCm open software ecosystem, but also broadens Vultr’s ability to directly compete against hyperscalers AWS, Google Cloud, and Microsoft Azure, who continue to invest in both NVIDIA and AMD GPUs while advancing their own custom chip development objectives.
By offering a high-performance, price-competitive AMD solution, Vultr is able to better serve a wider range of AI and high-performance computing workloads, particularly for companies focused on maximizing performance for their budget.
Moreover, Vultr's portfolio of AMD solutions includes a wide range of processors and GPUs. For computing, it offers AMD EPYC processors from the 9004, 7003, and 4005 series. On the AI and high-performance computing side, the lineup features AMD Instinct GPUs, including the MI325X, MI300X, and now the MI355X. As a partner in the Vultr Cloud Alliance, AMD helps provide a robust ecosystem of integrated cloud solutions.
AMD's provision of the Instinct MI355X GPU to Vultr is a strategic move to aggressively counter NVIDIA's dominance and broaden its market reach. By partnering with a rapidly growing cloud provider, I find that AMD gains a crucial channel to make its high-performance AI accelerators available to a wider base of developers and businesses. This partnership allows AMD to showcase the MI355X as a powerful, cost-effective alternative for AI training and inference, directly challenging NVIDIA's entrenched position and its proprietary CUDA ecosystem.
Furthermore, it reinforces AMD's commitment to an open software ecosystem with its ROCm stack, appealing to customers seeking flexibility and an alternative to vendor lock-in. Ultimately, providing the MI355X to Vultr helps AMD broaden its portfolio capabilities in the competitive cloud market, proving its hardware's viability for a variety of AI workloads.
Looking Ahead
I believe with the launch of the AMD Instinct MI355X GPU, Vultr is expanding access to next-generation AI infrastructure and setting a new standard for price-to-performance. By integrating this GPU into its global cloud platform, Vultr is providing enterprises and AI innovators with the performance, scalability, and efficiency required for their most demanding projects.
To bolster the global competitiveness of its AMD Instinct MI355X GPU offering, Vultr can make several strategic moves over the next 12 months. A key action is to aggressively market the price-to-performance advantage of the AMD GPUs. Vultr needs to create compelling case studies and benchmarks that directly compare the cost and speed of training and running AI models on their AMD MI355X instances versus competing NVIDIA-based offerings on other clouds. This would directly address the primary decision-making criteria for many AI startups and enterprises operating on a tight budget.
Another critical move is to deepen its partnership with AMD and the ROCm ecosystem. Vultr can work with AMD to offer specialized, pre-configured images and marketplace applications that are fully optimized for the MI355X and the ROCm software stack. This simplifies the deployment process for developers who may be new to AMD's ecosystem and reduces the friction of adopting a new hardware platform. The goal should be to make getting started with AMD on Vultr as seamless and easy as it is with NVIDIA on other cloud platforms.
Finally, Vultr should expand its geographic footprint and service offerings for the MI355X. While the GPU is available globally, Vultr must ensure it has sufficient capacity in key data center hubs to meet growing demand. Furthermore, it can further differentiate by offering specialized services, such as a managed Kubernetes service optimized for AMD GPUs or a robust private network solution that enables customers to build large, multi-node GPU clusters with ultra-low latency. This would attract large-scale AI projects and high-performance computing workloads that require robust, production-ready infrastructure, reinforcing Vultr’s position as a viable alternative to the hyperscalers for serious AI development.
Ron Westfall | Analyst In Residence
Ron Westfall is a prominent analyst figure in technology and business transformation. Recognized as a Top 20 Analyst by AR Insights and a Tech Target contributor, his insights are featured in major media such as CNBC, Schwab Network, and NMG Media.
His expertise covers transformative fields such as Hybrid Cloud, AI Networking, Security Infrastructure, Edge Cloud Computing, Wireline/Wireless Connectivity, and 5G-IoT. Ron bridges the gap between C-suite strategic goals and the practical needs of end users and partners, driving technology ROI for leading organizations.