AMD just drew a line in the sand. The chipmaker will begin shipping its Helios platform to customers in the second half of 2026, with Microsoft deploying it at scale on Azure for AI inference.
Helios isn’t a single chip. It’s an entire rack-scale system integrating AMD’s next-generation Instinct GPUs alongside its 6th-generation EPYC CPUs, codenamed Venice.
What Helios actually delivers
A single Helios rack can push up to 1.4 exaFLOPS of FP8 compute and 2.9 exaFLOPS of FP4 compute. Each rack also comes loaded with 31 terabytes of HBM4 memory.
The GPU side of Helios features the MI455X and MI450 models built on AMD’s CDNA 5 architecture. The platform was first unveiled at the 2025 Open Compute Project Global Summit as an open-source alternative to proprietary AI systems, combining AMD Instinct GPUs, EPYC CPUs, and advanced networking technologies. AMD has also announced strategic partnerships with Celestica and Super Micro to support deployments.
