AMD has showcased its Helios 'rack-scale' product at the Open Compute Project (OCP), showcasing the firm's design philosophy for its upcoming AI lineups.
AMD's Helios Rack Platform Features Massive Capabilities Onboard, Rivaling NVIDIA's Rubin Lineup
For those unaware, AMD announced that it will be ramping up its rack-scale solutions at the Advancing AI 2025 event, and the company did claim that the 'Helios' rack-scale platform will target the likes of NVIDIA's Rubin lineup. Now, at the OCP, the firm showcased a static display of the Helios rack, which is developed on the Open Rack Wide (ORW) specification, introduced by Meta. The firm didn't reveal specific details about Helios, apart from the fact that Team Red is very optimistic that the platform will shape up to be a competitive product.
With ‘Helios,’ we’re turning open standards into real, deployable systems — combining AMD Instinct GPUs, EPYC CPUs, and open fabrics to give the industry a flexible, high-performance platform built for the next generation of AI workloads.
- AMD's EVP and GM, Data Center Solutions Group
Let's discuss AMD's Helios for a bit. We know that the platform will feature next-gen technologies from the firm, such as the EPYC Venice CPUs and the Instinct MI400 AI accelerators. More importantly, for networking capabilities, the rack will employ AMD's Pensando for scale-out. In particular, at OCP, the firm announced that it will focus on an open stack of technologies. For this aim, Helios will utilize UALink (scale-up) and UEC Ethernet (scale-out). Another interesting inclusion with Helios is the use of quick-disconnect liquid cooling, which enables high densities and simplifies field service.
The Helios images shared by Team Red on the occasion of OCP show us a 'double wide' ORW rack, with a central equipment bay and service space along the sides. You can also see horizontal compute sleds, which are another approach from NVIDIA's Kyber, which we discussed earlier, and these sleds account for 70–80% of the rack space. The two fiber-type cables running along are the 'Aqua' and the 'Yellow' runs, which are used for different purposes, but the routing here is defintely top-notch.
NVIDIA hasn't seen much competition in the rack-scale segment; however, with AMD's Helios, things are expected to switch up drastically, with Team Red looking to rival NVIDIA's Rubin rack-scale platform. The Helios showcase was defintely a surprise, but it also shows that the AI industry is up for massive competition.
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