Intel expects to lose some server/data center market share to AMD's Epyc line of chips:
The pitched battle between Intel and AMD has spread to the data center, and while Intel has been forthcoming that it expects to lose some market share in the coming months to AMD, Brian Krzanich's recent comments to Instinet analyst Roman Shah give us some insight into the surprising scope of AMD's threat. Shah recently sat down with Intel CEO Brian Krzanich and Barron's reported on his findings:
Shah relates that Krzanich "was very matter-of-fact in saying that Intel would lose server share to AMD in the second half of the year," which is not news, but he thought it significant that "Mr. Krzanich did not draw a firm line in the sand as it relates to AMD's potential gains in servers; he only indicated that it was Intel's job to not let AMD capture 15-20% market share." (emphasis added).
Furthermore, Intel's problems with the "10nm" node could allow AMD to pick up market share with "7nm" (although it may be similar in performance to Intel's "10nm"):
Nomura Instinet is less bullish on further stock gains for Intel after talking to the chipmaker's CEO, Brian Krzanich. [...] The analyst said Intel's problems in moving to its next-generation chip manufacturing technology may be a factor in its potential market share losses. The chipmaker revealed on its April 26 earnings conference call that it delayed volume production under its 10-nanometer chip manufacturing process to next year. Conversely, AMD said on its call that it plans to start next-generation 7-nanometer chip production in late 2018.
[...] "We see Mr. Krzanich's posture here reflecting the company's inability thus far to sufficiently yield 10nm for volume production while AMD's partner TSMC is currently making good progress on 7nm; thus, setting Intel up for stiff competition again in 2019," the analyst said.
Here are a couple of post-mortem articles on Intel's misleading 28-core CPU demo and more:
Rather than 28 cores, Intel may introduce 20 and 22 core CPUs to compete with AMD's Threadripper 2, along with 8-core Coffee Lake refresh CPUs to compete with Ryzen.
Related Stories
AMD released Threadripper CPUs in 2017, built on the same 14nm Zen architecture as Ryzen, but with up to 16 cores and 32 threads. Threadripper was widely believed to have pushed Intel to respond with the release of enthusiast-class Skylake-X chips with up to 18 cores. AMD also released Epyc-branded server chips with up to 32 cores.
This week at Computex 2018, Intel showed off a 28-core CPU intended for enthusiasts and high end desktop users. While the part was overclocked to 5 GHz, it required a one-horsepower water chiller to do so. The demonstration seemed to be timed to steal the thunder from AMD's own news.
Now, AMD has announced two Threadripper 2 CPUs: one with 24 cores, and another with 32 cores. They use the "12nm LP" GlobalFoundries process instead of "14nm", which could improve performance, but are currently clocked lower than previous Threadripper parts. The TDP has been pushed up to 250 W from the 180 W TDP of Threadripper 1950X. Although these new chips match the core counts of top Epyc CPUs, there are some differences:
At the AMD press event at Computex, it was revealed that these new processors would have up to 32 cores in total, mirroring the 32-core versions of EPYC. On EPYC, those processors have four active dies, with eight active cores on each die (four for each CCX). On EPYC however, there are eight memory channels, and AMD's X399 platform only has support for four channels. For the first generation this meant that each of the two active die would have two memory channels attached – in the second generation Threadripper this is still the case: the two now 'active' parts of the chip do not have direct memory access.
This also means that the number of PCIe lanes remains at 64 for Threadripper 2, rather than the 128 of Epyc.
Threadripper 1 had a "game mode" that disabled one of the two active dies, so it will be interesting to see if users of the new chips will be forced to disable even more cores in some scenarios.
Chinese companies are manufacturing chips nearly identical to AMD's Epyc server CPUs, using two joint ventures with AMD. This move comes after the US blacklisted certain Chinese supercomputing centers in 2015 in an attempt to prevent them from using Intel Xeon chips, and more recently, Chinese telecom equipment maker ZTE was banned from buying components from US companies. China's Sunway TaihuLight supercomputer (formerly #1 on the TOP500 list) also uses domestically designed Sunway SW26010 manycore chips.
AMD's Epyc "clone army" may end up hurting Intel's server chip market share even more than it already has:
China isn't eager to embrace another American chipmaker like AMD. In response, AMD established two joint ventures with Chinese holding company THATIC -- one with Chengdu Haiguang Microelectronics Technology (CHMT), and another with Haiguang IC Design, also known as Hygon.
AMD owns a majority stake in CHMT, which ensures that its IP isn't transferred to THATIC. THATIC owns a majority stake in Hygon, which licenses AMD's IP from CHMT. Hygon designs the chips, and CHMT produces the chips through a suitable foundry and then sends them back to Hygon for packaging, marketing, and sales.
This arrangement seemingly placates American and Chinese regulators -- AMD's IP isn't being passed to a Chinese company, and a Chinese chipmaker gains access to superior data center CPU designs. AMD generates less revenues through these JVs than it would through direct sales, but it still gains a foothold in China's massive data center market. But more importantly, this move could wound Intel.
Good luck maintaining control of your "IP". As for the pain?
Many big companies, including Microsoft and Baidu, started installing AMD's cheaper chips in their data centers. In a meeting with Nomura Instinet analyst Romit Shah in June, then-CEO Brian Krzanich admitted that AMD was gaining ground, and Intel was trying to prevent it from gaining a "15% to 20%" share of the data center market. That admission was stunning, since Intel traditionally controlled more than 99% of the data center market with its Xeon chips. Intel's data center group grew its revenues by 11% to $19.1 billion last year, and accounted for 30% of its top line. Epyc was already a thorn in Intel's side, but AMD's sponsorship of Chinese clones could throttle its sales in mainland China, which accounted for 24% of its sales last year. Its total sales in the region only rose 6% in 2017, compared to 20% growth in 2016.
AMD "Rome" EPYC CPUs to Be Fabbed By TSMC
AMD CEO Lisa Su has announced that second-generation "Rome" EPYC CPU that the company is wrapping up work on is being produced out at TSMC. This is a notable departure from how things have gone for AMD with the Zen 1 generation, as GlobalFoundries has produced all of AMD's Zen CPUs, both for consumer Ryzen and professional EPYC parts.
[...] As it stands, AMD seems rather optimistic about how things are currently going. Rome silicon is already back in the labs, and indeed AMD is already sampling the parts to certain partners for early validation. Which means AMD remains on track to launch their second-generation EPYC processors in 2019.
[...] Ultimately however if they are meeting their order quota from GlobalFoundries, then AMD's situation is ultimately much more market driven: which fab can offer the necessary capacity and performance, and at the best prices. Which will be an important consideration as GlobalFoundries has indicated that it may not be able to keep up with 7nm demand, especially with the long manufacturing process their first-generation DUV-based 7nm "7LP" process requires.
See also: No 16-core AMD Ryzen AM4 Until After 7nm EPYC Launch (2019)
Related: TSMC Holds Groundbreaking Ceremony for "5nm" Fab, Production to Begin in 2020
Cray CS500 Supercomputers to Include AMD's Epyc as a Processor Option
AMD Returns to the Datacenter, Set to Launch "7nm" Radeon Instinct GPUs for Machine Learning in 2018
AMD Ratcheting Up the Pressure on Intel
More on AMD's Licensing of Epyc Server Chips to Chinese Companies
AMD's Threadripper 2 TR 2990WX will be available for retail on August 13. The CPU has 32 cores and the suggested retail price is $1,799, compared to $1,999 for Intel's 18-core i9-7980XE. A 24-core TR 2970WX will be available in October for $1,299.
The 16-core TR 2950X ($899, August 31) and 12-core TR 2920X ($649, October) replace their counterparts from the last generation of Threadripper CPUs, but have slightly improved "12nm" Zen+ cores like the other Threadripper 2 CPUs. The 16 and 12-core chips use 2 dies while the 24 and 32-core versions use 4 dies.
A benchmark leak shows the 32-core TR 2990WX outperforming Intel's 18-core i9-7980XE by 53% in the multithreaded Cinebench R15 (this is an early result, may not represent the final performance, and may be overly favorable to AMD).
Also at Tom's Hardware and Engadget.
Related: First Two AMD Threadripper Chips Out on Aug. 10, New 8-Core Version on Aug. 31
Intel Teases 28 Core Chip, AMD Announces Threadripper 2 With Up to 32 Cores
AMD Ratcheting Up the Pressure on Intel
GlobalFoundries has halted development of its "7nm" low power node, will fire 5% of its staff, and will also halt most development of smaller nodes (such as "5nm" and "3nm"):
GlobalFoundries on Monday announced an important strategy shift. The contract maker of semiconductors decided to cease development of bleeding edge manufacturing technologies and stop all work on its 7LP (7 nm) fabrication processes, which will not be used for any client. Instead, the company will focus on specialized process technologies for clients in emerging high-growth markets. These technologies will initially be based on the company's 14LPP/12LP platform and will include RF, embedded memory, and low power features. Because of the strategy shift, GF will cut 5% of its staff as well as renegotiate its WSA and IP-related deals with AMD and IBM. In a bid to understand more what is going on, we sat down with Gary Patton, CTO of GlobalFoundries.
[...] Along with the cancellation of the 7LP, GlobalFoundries essentially canned all pathfinding and research operations for 5 nm and 3 nm nodes. The company will continue to work with the IBM Research Alliance (in Albany, NY) until the end of this year, but GlobalFoundries is not sure it makes sense to invest in R&D for 'bleeding edge' nodes given that it does not plan to use them any time soon. The manufacturer will continue to cooperate with IMEC, which works on a broader set of technologies that will be useful for GF's upcoming specialized fabrication processes, but obviously it will refocus its priorities there as well (more on GF's future process technologies later in this article).
So, the key takeaway here is that while the 7LP platform was a bit behind TSMC's CLN7FF when it comes to HVM – and GlobalFoundries has never been first to market with leading edge bulk manufacturing technologies anyway – there were no issues with the fabrication process itself. Rather there were deeper economic reasons behind the decision.
GlobalFoundries would have needed to use deep ultraviolet (DUV) instead of extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography for its initial "7nm" chips. It would have also required billions of dollars of investment to succeed on the "7nm" node, only to make less "7nm" chips than its competitors. The change in plans will require further renegotiation of GlobalFoundries' and AMD's Wafer Supply Agreement (WSA).
Meanwhile, AMD will move most of its business over to TSMC, although it may consider using Samsung:
AMD's EPYC CPUs have already snatched server market share away from Intel
Intel has enjoyed a virtual monopoly in the server CPU arena for some time. However, AMD's EPYC series of processors, based on the latest iteration of Zen architecture, may change that. The first generation of these chipsets, Naples, managed to reduce Intel's market share to 99% shortly after its launch. This may sound less than impressive, but in a billion-dollar industry, it was possibly quite valuable to AMD.
The latest report on the server market by DRAMeXchange indicates that Intel's share is down to 98% by now. This represents a 100% improvement for AMD. Furthermore, the analysts estimate that the release of EPYC Rome-based silicon will result in further gains. They will ultimately result in a total market share of 5% for these CPUs by the end of 2019.
Intel is keeping AMD under 15%. For now:
Now it's easy to tell that Intel will still remain the dominant player in the market, retaining a 90-95% market share lead over AMD but Intel's Ex-CEO, Brian Krzanich, stated that his company wouldn't want AMD capturing 15-20% server market share. In fact, at the pace at which AMD is gaining their server market share, 15% doesn't really feel like a far cry from now.
[...] Looking at the market penetration rate, Intel's Purley platform has been adopted by 60% users in the server space and is expected to reach 65% in the coming year. On the other hand, AMD's EPYC Naples platform has been adopted by 70% and considering that AMD is keeping socket longevity intact with Rome, we can see the adoption rate further expanding after 7nm chips launch.
Previously: AMD Misses Q1 Earnings Target; Withdraws from High-Density Server Market
AMD Ratcheting Up the Pressure on Intel
More on AMD's Licensing of Epyc Server Chips to Chinese Companies
AMD's server marketshare hits 1% for the first time in 4 years
Related: TSMC Will Make AMD's "7nm" Epyc Server CPUs
Intel Announces 48-core Xeons Using Multiple Dies, Ahead of AMD Announcement
(Score: 2) by Snotnose on Friday June 15 2018, @04:48AM (9 children)
For a while AMD kicked Intel's ass, forcing Intel to get it's act together. Somehow AMD lost that battle. Now AMD has superior chips for less money. Not to mention Intel has all these hardware issues, where AMD only suffers from half of them.
With luck we'll be seeing some low power ARM chips that can drive 90% of the laptops sold for 50% of the price. With the Evil Empire post Gates porting Windows to ARM, and Linux already supporting it, things might get interesting again.
When the dust settled America realized it was saved by a porn star.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 15 2018, @04:53AM (2 children)
It's a highly proprietary, fragmented sector that's only as useful as the binary blobs required to run anything.
ARM is tripe.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Friday June 15 2018, @09:46AM
Acquired taste, I know, but I like potato and tripe stew.
I wonder, though, if it tastes the same when one replaces potatoes with microchips.
(grin)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 15 2018, @05:09PM
Nope. An ARM is an ARM is an ARM. The CPU is the same (providing it's the same model number). The peripherals built into some of the ARM chips, on the other hand, can be wildly different. No need to be a cookie-cutter clone as in the x86 world. Getting the manufacturers of the ARM chips to see the light and release sources for the proprietary parts...not so easy.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Friday June 15 2018, @04:54AM (1 child)
https://www.theverge.com/2018/6/4/17426766/qualcomm-snapdragon-850-always-connected-pc-features-computex-2018 [theverge.com]
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 16 2018, @04:46AM
Sadly, most of the ARM laptops will likely ship with windows now (the rest will be chromebooks which tend to be very low spec). And, MS forbids computer makers from allowing "secure boot" to be disabled. So, that new (decent spec) ARM hardware will be no more useful than a doorstop.
MS rules:
x86: secure boot must be able to be disabled (probably afraid of anti-trust)
ARM: secure boot must NOT be able to be disabled (maybe they feel safe since nearly all ARM phones and tablets come with locked bootloaders)
(Score: 3, Interesting) by schad on Friday June 15 2018, @01:31PM (2 children)
It's an open secret that Intel wants AMD to remain viable. I've worked at Intel. They view AMD as their hedge against trust-busting. They aren't Microsoft; they don't want to own 100% of the market. They are completely happy owning a highly-profitable 80% with AMD taking up the rest. This is why BK is so matter-of-fact about ceding market share to AMD. He's not trying to stop it. On some level, he may actually be relieved.
It's like a dad "racing" with his 10-year old son. The dad wants to win, because he's sort of an asshole, so he's running hard. But he doesn't want his son to get so discouraged that he just gives up, either. So if the dad gets too far ahead, he suddenly "gets a cramp" and stops, letting his son pass him. Then the dad starts running again just in time to win by a foot or two. That's what Intel vs. AMD looks like.
And, as you sort of imply, Intel would much rather be competing with AMD than with ARM. Intel knows how to beat AMD. They've done it plenty of times before. But they haven't managed to beat ARM yet, and they've tried.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 15 2018, @03:41PM (1 child)
So you are saying intel could release faster, higher core count, cheaper, lower power consumption cpus whenever they want but they don't want to right now?
(Score: 2) by Aiwendil on Friday June 15 2018, @09:03PM
Yes, they could. Pick any two ;)
But a bit more serious - yes, they actually can push truly mindboggling stuff out within three to six months at any given time, they scrap more tech per year than some competitors develop during their entire existance.
The reason why they don't do it - in part to keep profit margins, in part to keep a good grip on the market (lots of the scrapped stuff isn't compatible with their legacy stuff), and in part due to quality issues (making a prototype line is a heck of a lot easier than to make a production line).
A very visible example of the "almost there but scrapped" is the Larrabee.
Quite frankly this holds true for most advanced tech areas where the major leaders invest heavily in R&D - if they just decide to skip of safety&quality they could probably advance their field at a rate that would seem the wartime development of tech to seem sluggish.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 15 2018, @07:13PM
screw arm. i want risc-v!
(Score: 0, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 15 2018, @04:51AM (4 children)
AMD market cap: 15.30 billion
Intel market cap: 257.83 billion
'Nuf said.
Eat a dick, faggots.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Friday June 15 2018, @04:56AM
STFU, second-class anon scum.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 15 2018, @07:28AM (1 child)
Posting this sort of error messages is stupid. It's possible it's an IP and time/date signature in hex format for the dev to look up the logs and see what went wrong. Well, it might be signed with a public key that only soylent can decrypt... And in soylent's case you can just look up their code... But I wager you haven't.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 15 2018, @07:16PM
everyone except you knows what the op meant and what the error refers to. you won't see it on your proprietary chrome browser with the rodger-me addon enabled, though.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Friday June 15 2018, @09:49AM
I'd much prefer to hold stock in a company with lower capitalisation which delivers better quality stuff than a huge behemoth, thank you.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by ilPapa on Friday June 15 2018, @06:51AM (6 children)
Why can't AMD produce a processor that will run games better than Intel? I'd like to try AMD in my new build, but I've been burned before. You know what they say, fool me once and I'm a fool but fool me twice and what kind of fool am I? Or something like that. Either way, I don't want to have to wait for Intel's Icky Lake to make a new machine.
You are still welcome on my lawn.
(Score: 2) by drussell on Friday June 15 2018, @07:01AM (4 children)
What kind of games are you running where you're actually CPU-bound?
(Score: 3, Informative) by Aiwendil on Friday June 15 2018, @07:17AM (1 child)
No idea about grand parent, but in my archive Dwarf Fortress comes to mind
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 15 2018, @07:30AM
Company of Heroes and Civilization make the CPU bleed its worth.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 15 2018, @10:31PM
Not all of us are stuck at 60Hz. Hitting 120/144 Hz requires very fast single threaded performance.
(Score: 2) by ilPapa on Friday June 15 2018, @11:45PM
Witcher 3, Just Cause 3, Watchdogs 2, Assassins Creed Origins. Far Cry 5.
You are still welcome on my lawn.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by takyon on Friday June 15 2018, @04:06PM
Like Drussell said, most games are GPU-bound. AMD typically leads when core/thread count is important, and has produced CPUs with better price/performance.
https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/intel-coffee-lake-ryzen-2,5615.html [tomshardware.com]
Intel is trying to erase AMD's advantage with mainstream-priced 6 and soon 8-core Coffee Lake. We'll see what AMD pulls out of its hat for 7nm Ryzen 2 [wccftech.com]. 12-16 cores are rumored for next-gen Ryzen, which could make sense if Threadripper has been bumped from 16 to 32 and given the 12/14nm to 7nm die shrink. IPC should also be going up.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by terrab0t on Friday June 15 2018, @11:09AM (1 child)
If the CPU makers are competing to make servers with more processor cores, that should make CPU cores cheaper / more available compared to RAM. Sounds like this is a good time to switch to a multi‐threaded language [golang.org] on the web server.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 15 2018, @07:24PM
i've been wanting to try Swoole [swoole.co.uk] out.