Nvidia Rules A.I. Chips, but Amazon and AMD Emerge as Contenders

On the south side of Austin, Texas, engineers at the semiconductor maker Advanced Micro Devices designed an artificial intelligence chip called MI300 that was released a year ago and is expected to generate more than $5 billion in sales in its first year of release.

Not far away in a north Austin high-rise, designers at Amazon developed a new and faster version of an A.I. chip called Trainium. They then tested the chip in creations including palm-size circuit boards and complex computers the size of two refrigerators.

Those two efforts in the capital of Texas reflect a shift in the rapidly evolving market of A.I. chips, which are perhaps the hottest and most coveted technology of the moment. The industry has long been dominated by Nvidia, which has leveraged its A.I. chips to become a $3 trillion behemoth. For years, others tried to match the company’s chips, which provide enormous computing power for A.I. tasks, but made little progress.

Now the chips that Advanced Micro Devices, known as AMD, and Amazon have created — as well as customer reactions to their technology — are adding to signs that credible alternatives to Nvidia are finally emerging.