Friday, April 17th 2020
AMD Donates $15 Million Worth EPYC CPUs and Radeon Instinct Accelerators to aid COVID-19 Research
AMD on April 15 updated its COVID-19 response strategy to include a sizable donation of enterprise hardware from its inventory towards COVID-19 vaccine research. The company is giving away $15 million worth HPCs cloud computing nodes powered by EPYC enterprise processors and Radeon Instinct scalar compute accelerators to key research institutions at the forefront of vaccine research for COVID-19. AMD says that these systems will be of a turnkey nature, so they could be quickly deployed and put to use. The company invites any institution conducting COVID-19 related research to contact them for access to the node.
Making the announcement, CEO Dr. Lisa Su writes: "AMD is announcing today a COVID-19 HPC fund to provide research institutions with computing resources to accelerate medical research on COVID-19 and other diseases. The fund will include an initial donation of $15 million of high-performance systems powered by AMD EPYC CPUs and AMD Radeon Instinct GPUs to key research institutions. To ease the implementation and speed the useful impact from these donations, we are working with our HPC system provider partners to provide ready-to-install HPC nodes. Research institutions should contact AMD at COVID-19HPC[at]amd[dot]com to submit proposals for access to these nodes."
Source:
AMD
Making the announcement, CEO Dr. Lisa Su writes: "AMD is announcing today a COVID-19 HPC fund to provide research institutions with computing resources to accelerate medical research on COVID-19 and other diseases. The fund will include an initial donation of $15 million of high-performance systems powered by AMD EPYC CPUs and AMD Radeon Instinct GPUs to key research institutions. To ease the implementation and speed the useful impact from these donations, we are working with our HPC system provider partners to provide ready-to-install HPC nodes. Research institutions should contact AMD at COVID-19HPC[at]amd[dot]com to submit proposals for access to these nodes."
46 Comments on AMD Donates $15 Million Worth EPYC CPUs and Radeon Instinct Accelerators to aid COVID-19 Research
Basically, AMD could have just given $15M a cash to fighting COVID-19 - just like many other organizations did.
Instead, they give away their products that aren't normally used in this niche, so can't be instantly put to action (even if "turn-key").
Seriously, it's a nice gesture for sure. I'm not mocking AMD. I'm mocking you guys for thoughtless praising everything AMD does.
Win win.
I don't think its a bad thing to point that out. The alternative is that this topic is two pages of 'thanks AMD'... who benefits from that? Circlejerks like that tend to give me the shivers. And yes, there is a serious difference in scale when it comes to Nvidia's support of industry and science, versus what AMD brings to the table. This also echoes in their gaming portfolio. GameWorks for example, is a similar thing to them scoring 2nd on that Folding ranking list. It includes multi million dollar investments and manpower. And note: not just now, when its nice to make a headline with your brand name in it, but continuously.
Some things exist in the eyes of the beholder, too... I'm not really following your argument about 'how many people here benefit from', either. There ARE numerous topics about these products and in those topics too, they are discussed for what they're really worth. That is what people do here, too, right?
Nobody, and I do mean, nobody, really disagreed with AMD's gesture. But some did point out the actual merits of it and how they compare to what others have done. And concluded that perhaps they could have better spent that money elsewhere, making the same headline to boot.
I like certain brands but there is a certain crowd that runs around treating them like they are a sports team, and I'm sure they don't know who they are. All that considered, it's not worth feeding them.
Yes. My cousin and her husband have the virus and lives nowhere near a cell tower, in the middle of nowhere-town Montana. Meanwhile I live in a networked wifi and even 5G hellhole and am fine.
Next question?
Also, what virus do they have and how was it confirmed?
Are they well now?
This is still conspiracy territory, and as such, as nicely as I can put this, really not suited for here.
I mean because they need to have this computing power, I believe, for simulating new architectures, etc...
We still don't have successors to Navi 1X that was launched a year ago.
More research with top priority should be directed to how the external electromagnetic field strength works on/with our own human body electric signals. You know that our brain sends and receives electric signals via the neurons.
It takes a lot more equipment than a simple cell tower to do that though. Think super magnets, the kind that can pick up things that aren't metal. He has to go to a local specialist several times a week, and it's weird and unpleasant (he says it makes him have tremors when they do it), but if he doesn't do it he completely shuts down emotionally.
I can say yes, our brains run on electricity TECHNICALLY, but at extremely short range high conduction. if you think microwave beams like that are enough to do anything you are ignoring already existing science saying they don't.