AMD buys data center memory optimization startup Mext

Chipmaker Advanced Micro Devices Inc. said today it has snapped up the flash memory optimization startup Mext Corp. in an effort to help its customers solve their growing headaches around memory supply constraints in artificial intelligence data centers.

The price of the acquisition was likely small since the terms of the deal were not disclosed, but AMD said the startup’s technology can help its customers to enhance system efficiency, lower their operating costs and deploy large-scale AI workloads much more rapidly.

Mext is the creator of an AI-native memory tiering technology that shifts infrequently accessed data to NAND-based flash storage rather than keeping it held within expensive dynamic random-access memory. Flash storage can cost orders of magnitude less than standard memory.

The startup’s technology is based on a predictive memory engine that continuously analyzes memory access patterns and uses AI algorithms to try and guess which data stored in flash systems might be needed next. It proactively transfers that data back into the DRAM when it believes it might be needed, so that applications can access it without any latency, thus ensuring the same level of performance for AI applications.

The deal takes aim at a growing challenge facing operators of large-scale data centers. As AI models, high-performance computing, virtualization and data analytics workloads become larger and more complex, they require vast amounts of memory, which is facing acute supply problems.

Simply put, there aren’t enough memory chips to go around, and that has had the impact of driving up prices and limiting availability. The lack of memory resources is therefore becoming a major performance bottleneck in some data centers, yet in many cases, the way DRAM is employed by applications is extremely inefficient.

AMD believes that Mext’s technology can help to address this problem, solve data center efficiency challenges and accelerate data center performance. Mext basically increases the amount of usable memory available for applications, which improves the utilization of existing infrastructure while reducing the need to buy more expensive DRAM.

The chipmaker believes the technology can help to reduce the total cost of ownership for cloud providers and enterprises alike, and enable larger workloads to run on their existing data center hardware. Moreover, it’s not just AI data centers that can benefit – even traditional data center workloads can enjoy the same advantages.

AMD said it will incorporate Mext’s technology into its broader data center portfolio. It already sells integrated hardware and rack-scale systems that combine its processors, AI accelerators, networking technologies and software, and it seems likely that Mext’s tech will be able to complement these systems.

Dan McNamara, AMD’s senior vice president and general manager of compute and enterprise, said the acquisition expands the company’s ability to offer differentiated full-stack compute and AI solutions. “By integrating Mext’s technology across the AMD data center portfolio, we expect to help enterprise customers unlock greater value from their infrastructure investments while accelerating AI deployment,” he added.

Additionally, the deal brings Mext’s talented team of engineers with extensive experience in memory architectures, infrastructure software and large-scale computing systems to AMD.

Benchmark analyst Code Acree told MarketWatch that AMD is unlikely to see any substantial boost in its near-term revenue, but gains a nice alternative for its memory architecture system design. “The deal is just a nice technology tuck-in that adds to its memory optimization capabilities,” he said.

Nonetheless, Wall Street seemed to react positively to the acquisition, as AMD’s stock briefly surged during the regular trading session to take its market capitalization above $900 million for the first time. However, it later surrendered some of those gains to end the day up 6%.

Image: Mext