In an effort to compete with NVIDIA, AMD’s Lisa Su has let out the details regarding the next-generation Instinct MI400-series GPUs and the Helios rack-scale AI platform in her keynote speech at the CES(Consumer Electronics Show) 2026. Like Jensen Huang’s keynote, the one from AMD had also been much-awaited.
While both Huang’s and Su’s presentations were centered around artificial intelligence, it was clear that NVIDIA and AMD were taking two different approaches to deploying their AI-based goals. While NVIDIA had mostly focused on systems-level simulation, AMD had taken an approach that had its focus pinned on performance-per-dollar and market availability.
AMD’s Focused Approach Captures Consumer Interest
AMD’s approach with the keynote speech for CES week 2026 appeared more measured and focused on the broader consumer sector. It was evident from Lisa Su’s own words that “AMD technology touches the lives of billions of people every day.”
This consumer-friendly approach was clearly visible in AMD’s keynote speech by Lisa Su, since it included mentions of immediate AI PC upgrades, gaming processor Ryzen 7 9850X3D, broad OEM support, and practical software integration.
With the Ryzen AI 400 Series chips, AMD is aiming to serve its consumers with a very competitive product that offers 60 TOPS(trillions of operations per second) of NPU performance. This directly translates to a better performance in the Copilot+PC segment, which addresses the concerns of the general public.
The CES week’s AMD keynote also addressed the gaming community as it introduced the Ryzen 7 gaming GPU. As one of the core market segments for companies like AMD and NVIDIA, this announcement came as happy news for the customers.
The AMD Revolution In Data Center Chips
AMD’s keynote speech regarding its latest data center chips was widely regarded as a direct response to NVIDIA’s dominance in the segment. There were two chips mentioned in the keynote speech. The MI440X, which is designed to fit into smaller systems, is a great choice for smaller data centers that are already functional.
The more powerful chip, the MI500 series, will debut only in 2027. According to Lisa Su, this chip is 1000 times more powerful than the existing MI300 series. At the same time, the MI455X is the AI accelerator that is positioned to compete directly with NVIDIA’s upcoming Rubin architecture.
However, the showstopper was the Helios Rack system that Lisa Su brought with her onto the stage during her keynote delivery. The Helios system is considered the direct competitor to NVIDIA’s Vera Rubin NVL72, and Lisa’s comment on Helios as the “world’s best AI rack” was a direct hit aimed at NVIDIA.
The Helios rack is a massive liquid-cooled system, consisting of 72 AMD Instinct MI455X GPUs. The Helios rack is powered by the next-generation AMD EPYC “Venice” CPUs. On the Zen 6 architecture, this CPU has a total of 256 cores.
This rack can deliver up to 2.9 AI exa FLOPs in FP4 precision. The 31 TB of HBM4 memory per rack, which is 50% higher than that of NVIDIA, was yet another highlight of the Helios rack.
