AMD Market Share Gains Accelerate in Desktop PCs, Servers and Notebooks
During the company's recent earnings call, AMD CEO Lisa Su alluded to market share gains in the fourth quarter of 2018 but didn't provide specific figures.
Today AMD shared numbers from third-party industry analyst firm Mercury Research that outline those gains. AMD gained share in desktop PC processors, notebooks, and servers, highlighting that its Zen-based processors continue to pressure Intel on all fronts, but more importantly, AMD's rate of growth is also accelerating. These improvements come as the company is on the cusp of releasing 7nm processors for the desktop PC and server markets, marking its first process node lead over Intel.
AMD now holds 15.8% of the desktop processor market, a 2.8% gain on a quarterly basis and a 3.9% year-over-year (YoY) improvement. That represents the company's largest portion of the market since the fourth quarter of 2014. [...] Notebook processors are critical because they comprise two-thirds of the overall processor market, but AMD has been plagued by slow uptake. That tide seems to be turning as the company gained 1.3% share on the quarter and a whopping 5.3% more share YoY. That marks the company's highest percentage of the notebook market since Q3 2013.
[...] During the company's recent earnings call, Lisa Su said that AMD had achieved its goal to claim "mid-single-digit" data center share in 2018. However, Mercury Research's server share projections are lower at 3.2% unit share. AMD shared its take on the disparity:
Mercury Research captures all x86 server class processors in their server unit estimate, regardless of device (server, network or storage), whereas the estimated 1P [single-socket] and 2P [two-socket] TAM [Total Addressable Market] provided by IDC only includes traditional servers. We used IDC's server forecast of the 1P and 2P server TAM of roughly 5M units to compute our server market share estimates. We believe that in Q4 2018 we achieved ~5% unit share of the 1P and 2P server market addressed by our EPYC processors (as defined by IDC).
Previously: AMD Improves Server Market Share by 100%... to 2%
Related Stories
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
Intel's CEO Bob Swan is looking beyond CPU market share:
"We think about having 30% share in a $230 billion [silicon] TAM[*] that we think is going to grow to $300 billion [silicon] TAM over the next 4 years, and frankly, I'm trying to destroy the thinking about having 90% share inside our company because, I think it limits our thinking, I think we miss technology transitions. we miss opportunities because we're, in some ways pre-occupied with protecting 90, instead of seeing a much bigger market with much more innovation going on, both Inside our four walls, and outside our four walls, so we come to work in the morning with a 30% share, with every expectation over the next several years, that we will play a larger and larger role in our customers success, and that doesn't just [mean] CPUs.
It means GPUs, it means Al, it does mean FPGAs, it means bringing these -technologies together so we're solving customers' problems. So, we're looking at a company with roughly 30% share in a $288 billion silicon TAM, not CPU TAM but silicon TAM. We look at the investments we've been making over the last several years in these kind of key technology inflections: 5G At autonomous, acquisitions, including Altera, that we think is more and more relevant both in the cloud but also ai the network and at the edge, and we see a much bigger opportunity, and our expectations are that we're going to gain our fair share at that much larger TAM by Investing in these key technology inflections." - Intel CEO Bob Swan
A 30% TAM in all of silicon would mean that Intel not only has more room to grow but is a lot more diversified as well. With the company working on the Nervana processor as well as its Xe GPU efforts, it seems poised to start clawing market share in new markets. Interestingly, it also means that Intel is not interested in defending its older title of being the CPU champion and will actually cede space to AMD where required. To me, this move is reminiscent of Lisa Su's decision to cede space in the GPU side of things to turn AMD around.
Intel's business strategy is now focused on whatever an "XPU" is as well as GPUs, FPGAs, machine learning accelerators, and next-generation memory/storage:
This means the company intends to continue making its heaviest bets in areas such as Optane storage, hardware Artificial Intelligence acceleration, 5G modems, data center networking, and more. The slide that really drives this commitment home comes from Q2's investor meeting that explicitly shows the company moving from a "protect and defend" strategy to a growth strategy. If this slide were in a sales meeting, it wouldn't say much—but delivered to the company's investors, it gains a bit of gravitas.
Most of this was revealed nearly six months ago at the company's May 2019 investor's meeting, but the Q3 investor's meeting last week continues with and strengthens this story for Intel's future growth, with slides more focused on Optane, network, and IoT/Edge market growth than with the traditional PC and server market.
[*] TAM = Total Addressable Market.
Related: Intel Promises "10nm" Chips by the End of 2019, and More
Intel's Interim CEO Robert Swan Becomes Full-Time CEO
AMD Gains Market Share in Desktops, Laptops, and Servers as of Q4 2018
PC Market Decline Blamed on Intel, AMD to See Gains
Intel Chip Shortages - at Least Another Quarter or Two to Go, Say PC Execs
Intel announces $20 billion increase in stock buybacks (from $4.5 billion)
Intel Xe High Performance Computing GPUs will use Chiplets
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Freeman on Thursday February 07 2019, @05:34PM (7 children)
In a world without competition, the one supplier essentially gets to choose whatever price they want. I've been quite happy with all of my AMD builds over the years. I hope they continue to do better and eat away at Intel's massive share of the market. Sure, there's ARM, but I don't want to take several giant leaps backwards in performance. ARM is useful in certain scenarios, but it lacks the raw power that AMD/Intel have in their processors.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Thursday February 07 2019, @08:10PM (4 children)
ARMs are now "good enough" for over 90% of people's needs. That's pretty good, given that all but a few ARMs on the market are optimized for battery operation.
Google Docs is teaching people that they can live outside of the x86 world. The more programs get ported either to ARM, or to a browser, the most Intel/AMD will feel the pinch.
They can keep milking the high-end users. But like Intel graphics, mid-range smartphones, or Korean cars, when customers realize they are just good enough to make the pricier ones a questionable premium, the market shifts.
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Thursday February 07 2019, @09:25PM (3 children)
Google Docs is teaching people to hand 100% of their data to Google. Not just their usage habits. When I can get a perfectly good $200 x86/x86-64 machine, why should I trap myself in the current ARM ecosystems? Most notably, Android with the various flavors such as Barnes and Noble / Kindle / Samsung / ..., or some other Silo. Yes, Microsoft is coming out with / has come out with an ARM version of windows, but I may as well switch to Apple/Linux considering the lack of support for x86 programs. It's like hailing Chromebooks as the next great thing to liberate the users from the mundane useful computer. Instead, all you're doing is buying into a proprietary ecosystem. Yes, Microsoft is a proprietary ecosystem, but it's remained as large as it has through ubiquity/convenience. The average user doesn't want to bother learning something new and is quite ticked off, if they can't have a hard copy of my pictures or whatever. I really do like how far ARM has come, but it's still hampered by program incompatibility. That said, I do have a Raspberry Pi, a Raspberry Pi 2, Raspberry Pi Zero, a Raspberry Pi 3, a Nook Color, a Nook Touch, and a Samsung tablet. I've most definitely put the most hours use time on my Nook Touch e-ink reader, probably followed by the Samsung Tablet.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 08 2019, @12:41PM (2 children)
The value of Google docs is that it is breaking the world's addiction to Microsoft Office. People ignored Open Office and even ignore Libre Office, but Google docs convenience, auto-save, and collaborative editing are killer features.
But yes with all the data harvesting the cure is worse than the disease. I use all open source: etherpad and ethercalc hosted on sandstorm.io, with mailinabox.email for email. But I am not having much luck getting other people to follow suit.
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Friday February 08 2019, @03:58PM (1 child)
The addiction to Microsoft Office is mandated by the bosses of the masses. When your workplace will only buy Intel, Windows, and Microsoft Office. There's not a whole lot the average worker can do. The average worker doesn't need a full Office Suite at home, either.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 3, Insightful) by bobthecimmerian on Saturday February 09 2019, @02:25AM
The bosses are part of the problem, but not all of it. In the early and mid 2000s I worked with a lot of people that wouldn't even consider Open Office for personal use, because they were comfortable with Microsoft Office.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 07 2019, @08:20PM
I wouldn't want the ARM processor in a Samsung Galaxy S4 struggling to power my desktop. But I bet an Nvidia Tegra .latest (or whatever the codename is now) paired with adequate amounts of RAM would do fine.
(Score: 2) by bobthecimmerian on Saturday February 09 2019, @08:33PM
This article is apropos. Obviously this is a $1,300 Nvidia dev board, but these performance numbers are not far behind a mobile core i5: https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=nvidia-xavier-carmel&num=1 [phoronix.com]
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 07 2019, @07:39PM (2 children)
how about you give us some trustable, psp free, libre/coreboot compat processors and motherboards. maybe have some foresight and integrity?
(Score: 2) by takyon on Thursday February 07 2019, @07:53PM (1 child)
Check back in, uh, 2025.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Freeman on Thursday February 07 2019, @09:27PM
More like, have your grandchildren check in 2100.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 07 2019, @09:57PM (1 child)
A Lenovo ThinkPad with an AMD graphics card... A Lenovo ThinkPad with an AMD graphics card! My kingdom for a Lenovo ThinkPad with an AMD graphics card!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 08 2019, @07:34AM
ThinkPad A485 comes with a Ryzen/Vega combo.
(Score: 2) by Subsentient on Friday February 08 2019, @02:45AM (4 children)
Ryzen's a hit. It's an incredibly enormous leap over previous offerings by AMD. The pricing is great, too. As long as AMD keeps their prices well below Intel's with processors with comparable performance, they're going to keep growing.
Myself, my dream build is a Ryzen Threadripper 2990wx with 256GB of RAM, a 4TB NVMe drive for the OS, and like a bunch of 16TB Seagate SATA 3 drives in RAID 6. For a GPU, I also look towards AMD, though I'm not sure what their current top of the line is. Vega? Idk. A GPU isn't that important to me, as I don't game a lot. I want the 32 cores and 64 threads of the threadripper so I can use 24 of them to compile code while I fuck around on SN or imgur for hours.
"It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society." -Jiddu Krishnamurti
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 08 2019, @03:31AM
I seem to have "the anti-luck"... get into a Canon 5Dii just before they announced the 5Diii, bought a new 'gaming' laptop with an i7 only to read a few weeks later about Ryzen and then months later got to see machines with the chips listed for about the same. Ah well. I do like AMD and would get one when I'm in the market again.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Friday February 08 2019, @08:46AM
https://wccftech.com/amd-ryzen-threadripper-roadmap-confirms-4th-next-gen-hedt-cpus/ [wccftech.com]
According to this leaked roadmap, AMD is releasing a new Threadripper every year, with Threadripper 3 scheduled for this year, and Threadripper 4 in 2020 on the "7nm+" TSMC node that makes some use of EUV.
Given the move to chiplets and the "7nm" node, Threadripper 3 could boost the top core count to 48 or match Epyc's 64 cores (or it might just stay at 32), and will benefit from IPC and clock speed gains.
The (Vega 20) Radeon VII is a lackluster $700 part that almost matches the Nvidia RTX 2080 and has a lot of VRAM. It's better to wait for the next gen, Navi, which will include cheaper cards. The first Navi cards should come out this year.
Given your dream build specs, I doubt you are going to build that system this year. RAM prices will hopefully come down by the time you build. There are no consumer-priced 16 TB drives yet, just an enterprise one announced by Toshiba. 4 TB NVMe should become more common and decline in price. Threadripper 3, 4, and maybe even 5 (on "5nm"?) could be out by the time you build. TSMC says that the "5nm" node includes 45% area reduction, so we could see AMD double core counts again on that node, topping out at 128 cores, 256 threads.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 08 2019, @12:31PM
I upgraded from and AMD FX-8320 to a Ryzen 5 2600X. On browserbench.org and Wine/ Starcraft 2 I got about an 80% boost. (Unlike most games, SC2 is largely CPU-bound).
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Monday February 11 2019, @04:42PM
Vega is AMD's current top of the line. Considering the obscene amounts you'd be spending on the RAM, a couple of Vegas would be a drop in the bucket.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"