AMD, the underdog, is becoming a force to threaten both Intel and Nvidia

AMD is just a tiny guy compared to Intel and Nvidia, but is threatening both these giants.
In the battle with Intel, AMD looked like little David in front of giant Goliath. And the last winner is not necessarily a giant. Recently, AMD announced its Q3 / 2019 business results, which, according to CEO Lisa Wu, made her very satisfied.

AMD’s revenue reached 1.8 billion USD, the highest since 2005. AMD also expects next quarter business results will remain prosperous, growing 48% over the same period last year to reach 2.1 billion USD. The chipmaker’s share price has also increased by 15 times since 2015.

AMD, the underdog, is becoming a force to threaten both Intel and Nvidia – Picture 1.
AMD CEO Lisa Wu at the business results announcement meeting in Q3 / 2019.

Despite its small stature, AMD still clearly shows its importance in the semiconductor industry, compared with Intel and Nvidia at the same time.

AMD CPUs are versatile chips that can be used in data centers, desktops and laptops, and compete with Intel – the $ 78 billion revenue in 2018 and is the 2nd largest chip manufacturer in the world. AMD’s GPU graphics processor supports gaming, computing in data centers, artificial intelligence and machine learning, competing with Nvidia – last year’s revenue of $ 11.7 billion, nearly doubled. double compared to AMD.

In particular, the most intense battlefield is facing Intel. So far, Intel is still almost exclusively CPU market. According to Mercury Research, Intel accounted for 92.4% of the CPU market share for computers and 99.2% of the CPU market share for servers, in 2015. However recently AMD’s market share has increased to 14.7% for CPU for computers, and 3.1% market share for servers.

There are two main reasons for the strong revival of AMD before the overwhelming dominance of Intel. First, there are better quality products. In 2012, AMD hired Jim Keller, an experienced chip designer who worked at Apple.

AMD has long used a price-competitive strategy, AMD’s chips are often much cheaper than Intel’s, but performance is far inferior. But Jim Keller’s recent chips, launched in 2017, are not only cheap, but also performance is not inferior, even surpassing Intel’s chips.

AMD, who has always been the underdog, is becoming a force to threaten both Intel and Nvidia – Photo 2.
AMD chips are getting stronger and better than Intel rivals.

The new Zen chips have helped AMD win a series of contracts with major partners, such as Microsoft and Sony (for new game consoles), Google (data centers) and Cray (supercomputers).

The second reason is from Intel. While AMD chips are constantly improving and increasing performance, Intel is constantly stumbling. Intel’s new chip manufacturing process promised to deliver more impressive performance, but it was constantly delayed. Causing Intel to still have to use the old architectures on its latest processors. AMD has signed a manufacturing contract with TSMC, a chip manufacturer from Taipei (China), with technologies and lines that are more advanced than Intel.

The revival of AMD is also good news for consumers. Because of the competition, Intel has been forced to change, as before Intel products always had high prices. Recently, however, Intel has had to cut prices on new CPUs to compete with AMD. Intel’s latest processor family is expected to launch in November, and it is very affordable.

Intel has been on the throne for too long, forgetting that change and progress are vital conditions in this high-tech industry. Living evidence such as Nokia or BlackBerry can show that every giant can be defeated. So AMD can count on one day to overthrow Intel, if it keeps up the way it is today.