AMD has announced the signing of a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with the University of Oxford to support open academic frontier artificial intelligence research conducted by the British Open-ended Learning and Discovery Lab (BOLD). BOLD is a U.K.-based AI research lab led by the University of Oxford that brings together researchers affiliated with the University of Oxford, University College London and Imperial College London.
The MOU focuses on BOLD’s research into paradigm-breaking discoveries in fundamental AI. Together, AMD and BOLD researchers intend to explore initiatives spanning compute access, software optimization, research collaboration and open-source development. BOLD researchers anticipate experiments to explore model training techniques beyond backpropagation, discovery using multiagent systems and adaptive physical AI.
“BOLD aims to advance a more open, efficient and human-centered path for AI through collaboration between academia and industry. Working with AMD, the University of Oxford would combine world-leading research with computing technology to test ideas, learn quickly and translate breakthroughs into applications. This support would help BOLD develop approaches to learning, human-AI collaboration and embodied intelligence while expanding open access to computing resources that benefit science, healthcare, education, transportation and public services globally.” — Associate Professor Jakob Foerster, Department of Engineering Science, University of Oxford
“Through our memorandum of understanding with the BOLD lab, AMD is exploring bringing together advanced computing, open software and technical expertise to help researchers pursue ambitious new frontiers in AI. By expanding access to compute and supporting open academic research, our aim would be to help BOLD researchers accelerate experimentation and contribute to the U.K.’s leadership in AI innovation and scientific discovery.” — Thomas Zacharia, senior vice president, Global Public Sector and Strategic Partnerships at AMD
As part of the MOU, AMD would provide up to 5 million pounds in compute resources for BOLD researchers. Support would be provided through infrastructure maintained by AMD, cloud service providers, public-sector partnerships and hardware contributions. The support would span a phased research program with Phase 1 focusing on broad exploratory experiments, and later phases deepening select research directions and validating the most promising ideas.
AMD would work with BOLD researchers across the AI technology stack, exploring novel ways to optimize AI workloads using AMD’s open software ecosystem. The ecosystem which the MOU projects would be built on permissively licensed open-source projects such as AMD ROCm™ software, aligning closely with BOLD’s commitment to open science. AMD would help BOLD researchers publish research software, benchmarks, evaluation tools and other artifacts while contributing performance improvements and new capabilities upstream to the wider open-source community.
Through this collective work, AMD, the University of Oxford, University College London and Imperial College London aim to expand access to advanced compute, support ambitious open research and help strengthen the U.K. AI research ecosystem. This MOU builds on existing AMD work with leading U.K. institutions, including the University of Cambridge on the Zenith supercomputer and Sovereign AI Innovation Lab, and Imperial College London on advanced AI and high-performance computing research.
