AMD preps Mega Pod with 256 Instinct MI500 GPUs, Verano CPUs — Leak suggests platform with better scalability than Nvidia will arrive in 2027

When AMD gave a glimpse at its 2027 rack-scale AI solution earlier this year, the company only said it would use all-new EPYC 'Verano' CPU and Instinct MI500-series GPU accelerators as well as feature more compute blades than its 2026 Helios rack-scale offering. SemiAnalysis this week shared some additional information about the product and revealed that it will pack 256 Instinct MI500-series GPUs. With early plans, however, it's possible details can change.

AMD's 2027 rack-scale 'MI500 Scale Up MegaPod' will pack 64 EPYC 'Verano' CPUs and 256 Instinct MI500-series GPU packages, which will exceed 72 GPUs inside AMD's Helios due in 2026 as well as Nvidia's Kyber-based NVL576 featuring 144 Rubin Ultra accelerators (that pack four compute chiplets within a GPU package). SemiAnalysis gives no performance estimates for the 'MI500 Scale Up MegaPod,' though it is natural to expect the new solution to be considerably more powerful than AMD's 2026 Helios due to a larger number of GPU packages and revamped microarchitecture.

The planned 'MI500 UAL256' architecture (the name is tentative, of course) spans three linked racks. Each of the two side racks is expected to include 32 compute trays packing one EPYC 'Verona' CPU and four Instinct MI500-series accelerators, while the central rack houses 18 trays dedicated to UALink switches. In total, the system comprises 64 compute trays serving 256 GPU modules.

Compared to Nvidia's Kyber VR300 NVL576 pod with 144 GPUs, AMD's MI500 UAL256 configuration offers around 78% more GPU packages per system. However, it remains to be seen whether AMD's MI500 MegaPod offers competitive performance compared to the mighty NVL576, which is set to feature 147 TB of HBM4 memory and 14,400 FP4 PFLOPS.

AMD's MI500 UAL256 will use liquid cooling both for compute and networking trays, which is not surprising given that AI GPUs that are becoming more power-hungry and creating more heat.

AMD's MI500 MegaPod is expected to become available in late 2027, which is around the time when Nvidia's VR300 NVL576 Kyber machines are likely to debut. If this is the case, then both AMD and Nvidia will ramp up production of their Instinct MI500-series and Rubin Ultra-based rack-scale solutions in 2028.

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