AMD CEO Lisa Su's China Visit Highlights AI Chip Compatibility with DeepSeek and Alibaba Models

In a significant move, Lisa Su, the CEO of Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), has embarked on her latest sojourn to China. During her visit, she has been vocal about AMD’s pivotal role in bolstering the artificial intelligence (AI) endeavours of China’s leading industry titans, namely DeepSeek and Alibaba Group Holding.

At an AMD conference focused on AI personal computers held in Beijing on Tuesday, Su revealed that AMD chips are fully compatible with DeepSeek’s AI models and Alibaba’s Qwen series. This compatibility has been a catalyst, enabling these Chinese entities to accelerate their technological advancements. It’s worth noting that Alibaba is the proprietor of the South China Morning Post.

Su further elaborated that AMD has witnessed a steady upward trajectory in DeepSeek’s model performance, attributable to the team’s unceasing efforts in optimization.

Joined by representatives from Lenovo Group, Asus, and Microsoft, Su underlined AMD’s dedication to collaborating with the open – source community. She also emphasized the company’s initiatives to cultivate an open and developer – friendly AI ecosystem.

The California – based semiconductor behemoth has been actively promoting its infrastructural backing for DeepSeek’s low – cost yet high – performance models. These models, since their recent debuts, have captured the attention from Silicon Valley all the way to Wall Street. AMD has even provided detailed instructions on running DeepSeek’s V3 and R1 open – source models locally on its Instinct graphics processing units.

AMD, recognized as Nvidia’s primary competitor in the AI chip market, has seen an interesting dynamic play out. Although DeepSeek’s highly efficient models initially stoked fears of a slump in AI chip demand, Chinese companies have continued to amass processors to fuel their AI development and cloud computing services.

On Monday, Su made a visit to the Beijing headquarters of Lenovo. Coincidentally, Lenovo, the Chinese computer behemoth, announced that its AMD – powered AI large – model training server, the Wentian WA7785a G3, can achieve an impressive throughput of 6708 tokens per second when deploying DeepSeek’s full – scale 671 – billion – parameter model with a single server.

Tuesday witnessed AMD showcasing a plethora of new products. This included the Ryzen 9 9950X3D processor for desktops and the Ryzen 9000HX series processors for video – gaming laptops.

The company also disclosed that the number of independent software vendor partners in its Chinese AI Application Innovation Alliance, which was launched in March 2024, has now exceeded 100. Projections indicate that this number is likely to reach 170 by the year’s end.

Last year, AMD’s revenue in mainland China and Hong Kong soared to US$6.2 billion, constituting 24% of its total global sales.

According to a report by the Chinese tech media outlet TMT Post, Su’s China visit is anticipated to span at least a week. During this time, she is slated to participate in the China Development Forum. As of Tuesday, AMD had not yet provided an immediate response to a request for comment.

The China Development Forum, a flagship economic event, is scheduled to take place on March 23 and 24 at the Diaoyutai State Guesthouse in Beijing. Reuters reports that dozens of foreign CEOs will be in attendance. This comes at a time when China is eager to attract international investment amidst the backdrop of heightened geopolitical tensions. President Xi Jinping is set to meet with a select group of foreign business executives following the conclusion of the forum.