News CPU Market Q1 2021: AMD's Fastest Growth in Servers Against Intel in 15 Years

waltc3

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Aug 4, 2019
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Intel is so "smart" it is publicly talking about Apple and Arm as it's competitors, while remaining mum as AMD continues to stomp all over them...;) Same-old Intel--the company brass doesn't like talking in public about being raped by AMD, again...;) If these guys don't smarten up AMD is going to walk off with everything. It's just like it was when AMD walked off with the desktop with the k7/A64/Opteron when Intel was trying to peddle Itanium/RDRAM (both of which went over like a lead balloon--in the end Itanium was so poorly received Intel couldn't even bundle free RDRAM with it to sell it!) Intel better learn that products, not hyperbolic advertising and dumb propaganda, will always win the day. AMD has always defeated Intel with it products--simply better products. There's a huge blind spot at the top of Intel management, imo. And digging Gelsinger up out of retirement (because nobody else in Intel in all of these years still knows what to do about AMD aside from emulating them) doesn't seem to bring the competitive, innovative push that Intel desperately needs.
 

thGe17

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Did I miss something? The server share is below 9 %, meaning that Intel still provides almost all x86 servers and AMDs mobile share has dropped and their desktop share hasn't changed at all but is also lower, than it already was two quaters before.
Right now only the server market shows a solid grow (but absolute shares are still low) and desktop and mobile shares are stagnating.
 
Intel is so "smart" it is publicly talking about Apple and Arm as it's competitors, while remaining mum as AMD continues to stomp all over them...;) Same-old Intel--the company brass doesn't like talking in public about being raped by AMD, again...;) If these guys don't smarten up AMD is going to walk off with everything. It's just like it was when AMD walked off with the desktop with the k7/A64/Opteron when Intel was trying to peddle Itanium/RDRAM (both of which went over like a lead balloon--in the end Itanium was so poorly received Intel couldn't even bundle free RDRAM with it to sell it!) Intel better learn that products, not hyperbolic advertising and dumb propaganda, will always win the day. AMD has always defeated Intel with it products--simply better products. There's a huge blind spot at the top of Intel management, imo. And digging Gelsinger up out of retirement (because nobody else in Intel in all of these years still knows what to do about AMD aside from emulating them) doesn't seem to bring the competitive, innovative push that Intel desperately needs.

Sales and profits win the day. Intel and AMD are businesses. Their goal is to make a product and sell it. Both companies are doing that right now, with no end in sight. Say what you want about Intel, but the fact is that they are selling every product that comes out of their fabs, just like AMD is doing with their products. Intel still has a huge majority in market share in almost every category, even with the fiasco that has been the last 5 years, so I can not see where you say that AMD is killing them, in any category.

The bigger picture is that TSMC can not manufacture enough processors, even with the next upgrades to their fabs, to help AMD match Intel in production. They are FAR from that capability. TSMC has other customers, other products they make, and has already contracted out all their manufacturing for the near, and middle future., and that means that AMD can not gain a large amount of fab production and produce more products. AMD does not have much room to grow, but, they are where they need to be....growing, and earning more profit.

On the flip side, the accusations against Intel about being a monopoly are now dispelled, much to Intel's delight, and quite possibly to AMD's chagrin.

Here is a conspiracy theory for you. What if Intel saw that AMD was flagging and did things to help them become stronger over the years, such as a money injection, somehow? How about some accidental releases of important research, that could help AMD? Research that.

In the future, if AMD were to gain a bigger foothold in the server and workstation market, they will need to invest massive amounts of money in their software support. AMD's support is just downright horrible compared to Intel's, and that is very important to businesses. No matter how powerful your processor is, if it doesn't work, people won't buy it.
 

JayNor

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Intel CFO during q1 cc "... we're going to see growth in all three of the major areas in data center, but the standout grower in Q2 is going to be cloud."

They don't seem concerned about the strength of their Ice Lake Server program.
 

watzupken

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Did I miss something? The server share is below 9 %, meaning that Intel still provides almost all x86 servers and AMDs mobile share has dropped and their desktop share hasn't changed at all but is also lower, than it already was two quaters before.
Right now only the server market shows a solid grow (but absolute shares are still low) and desktop and mobile shares are stagnating.
While it doesn't sound like much, but an increasing market share and consequently increasing data center profit from AMD don't bold well for Intel, especially when their DC sales plunged. It also means that AMD is gaining acceptance by more companies which also means Intel's stranglehold in this segment is weakening and we should expect to see more loss in market share and sales over time, unless AMD messed things up.

To me, the biggest Intel competitor in the DC space is more ARM than AMD, with more big companies moving to custom ARM chips to power their data center.
 

watzupken

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Mar 16, 2020
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Sales and profits win the day. Intel and AMD are businesses. Their goal is to make a product and sell it. Both companies are doing that right now, with no end in sight. Say what you want about Intel, but the fact is that they are selling every product that comes out of their fabs, just like AMD is doing with their products. Intel still has a huge majority in market share in almost every category, even with the fiasco that has been the last 5 years, so I can not see where you say that AMD is killing them, in any category.

The bigger picture is that TSMC can not manufacture enough processors, even with the next upgrades to their fabs, to help AMD match Intel in production. They are FAR from that capability. TSMC has other customers, other products they make, and has already contracted out all their manufacturing for the near, and middle future., and that means that AMD can not gain a large amount of fab production and produce more products. AMD does not have much room to grow, but, they are where they need to be....growing, and earning more profit.

On the flip side, the accusations against Intel about being a monopoly are now dispelled, much to Intel's delight, and quite possibly to AMD's chagrin.

Here is a conspiracy theory for you. What if Intel saw that AMD was flagging and did things to help them become stronger over the years, such as a money injection, somehow? How about some accidental releases of important research, that could help AMD? Research that.

In the future, if AMD were to gain a bigger foothold in the server and workstation market, they will need to invest massive amounts of money in their software support. AMD's support is just downright horrible compared to Intel's, and that is very important to businesses. No matter how powerful your processor is, if it doesn't work, people won't buy it.
Companies will not migrate their entire DC from Intel to AMD or ARM at one go. Any move is going to be in baby steps to make sure things improve and not get worst. Even when the dust settles, Intel will still be pretty much in the game, but they will have to live with the new norm of reduced revenue and profit, on top of very tight competition from both ARM and AMD. In my opinion, ARM is a stronger competitor in the DC space assuming Nvidia don't come in and mess things up. Companies are investing money to develop custom ARM chips that suit their needs, as oppose to a CPU that they buy from AMD and Intel that tries to be jack of all trades. But ultimately, Intel is losing out the most due to security issues over the years and also high prices.

https://www.anandtech.com/show/16640/arm-announces-neoverse-v1-n2-platforms-cpus-cmn700-mesh
 
Did I miss something? The server share is below 9 %, meaning that Intel still provides almost all x86 servers and AMDs mobile share has dropped and their desktop share hasn't changed at all but is also lower, than it already was two quaters before.
Right now only the server market shows a solid grow (but absolute shares are still low) and desktop and mobile shares are stagnating.

That's because there's long lead qualifying times (where companies test out small batches)

But most servers are only swapped out after 6+ years. So you really won't see a dramatic shift. The % market share in sales however tells the momentum is gaining however. Corporate server share move at a glaciers pace, but any gain is still massive.
 
Intel CFO during q1 cc "... we're going to see growth in all three of the major areas in data center, but the standout grower in Q2 is going to be cloud."

They don't seem concerned about the strength of their Ice Lake Server program.

The key factorsof getting into cloud space is
1: TCO. This includes maintenance, initial outlay, and performance/watt (you have to pay the electricity bill and cool it off. And trust me the cooling bill ain't cheap)
2: Reliability
3: (In rare cases: speed for extreme number crunching: ie AI, data mining)

Intel is aiming at #1 by reducing the electricity bill during lower peak demand.
 

ceomrman2

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Apr 26, 2009
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It's interesting that Intel's "nerd mind share" is so much lower than its overall market share. AMD is indeed slaughtering Intel in the "DIY/Enthusiast" CPU market. AMD is deservedly crushing it at retail. They have almost matched Intel's profitability. AMD's growth rate has exceeded Intel's lately, expanding 10% per year since 2014. That's all great news for us nerds. The fact is, though, that Intel is still eight times larger than AMD. With 8% revenue growth since 2014, Intel is expanding nearly as fast as AMD, despite starting with a much larger footprint. They are even more profitable than AMD, percentage-wise. Intel spent seven times more on R&D last year, so they're not standing still. That performance has all come despite Intel's embarrassing 10nm challenges. At 41% of Intel, I think AMD's market valuation is optimistic. AMD's pace of progress must slow at least somewhat in the coming years. One must assume Intel will eventually stop tripping over their own feet. If both those happen, Intel will again be able to squeeze AMD on those high-profit CPUs. It should be good for us, though. Bring on $10/core!
 
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