AMD To Face Off Against Intel With A More Powerful Server Chip

AMD - long thought to be the underdog - is proving why it is a fearsome competitor for Intel when it continuously streams out processors capable of going against Intel neck-to-neck in the last few years. Better yet, also downright defeating the more popular company in some areas.

AMD has upped its promotional tempo to market a new server processor that it claims to not only be more powerful and efficient but also cheaper than Intel's offering. What's more, it's the new product that AMD has won out Google and is set to be its new supplier of server hardware.

Epyc: A Breakthrough?

This new processor, called Epyc, contains 64 individual processing cores to withstand the massive load of computations needed to run a stable server. The new chip reportedly uses the new, highly advanced 7-nanometer Fin Field-Effect Transistor (FinFET) tech that promises higher power efficiency and better processing power and speed. According to the company’s CEO, Lisa Su, the better power efficiency and better performance of the chip can drastically reduce costs in data centers of the company’s enterprise partners.

According to Su, the company is just “getting started” in the server market. She promised consistency in the company’s future. The new Epyc chip is not just a one-off release, instead, it would be a multi-generational evolution with a road map stretched out several years into the future. 

Great Reception

Several companies are already on-board with the new chip, like Alphabet Inc. - the parent company of Google. The company is expecting to have the new Epyc chips running its vast network of data centers worldwide. And AMD’s new chip would also make an appearance in future data farms that are crucial to the company’s cloud computing services. The announcement by Google means that all American cloud computing companies have already taken upon AMD’s offering as well as some Chinese businesses. 

Giving feedback about the new hardware, Bart Sano, the Vice President of Engineering at Google said that the company is already seeing great improvements in term of performance out of several types of workload it had put Epyc through. This new chip, citing a lower cost and power consumption, can help to reduce the costs passed down to customers using Google Cloud, according to him. 

AMD's Dramatic Resurgence

If we were to look back at the past image of AMD, the company once held about 20% of the market share roughly a decade ago. But it tarnished its own image after not only releasing products late, but they also didn’t even meet performance standards that they themselves promised customers. Seizing the opportunity, Intel made a breakthrough and broke down the share of AMD down to about 1%. In a lucrative market where a single chip can sell for $10,000, this is a painful strike. 

Performance vs. Optimisation

To drive its point home even further, AMD released a side by side comparison between its offering and Intel’s popular Xeon processor. If the calculations are correct, then the new Epyc chip which costs $7,000 greatly outperforms the Xeon 8280M. The thing is that AMD’s chip undercuts the Intel’s chip by about $6,000. For clarification, Intel’s Xeon 8280M is sold for $13,012.

Investors are rallying around AMD. Believing that the revamps by Su, and basing on the market’s extremely positive responses, could mean consistent profitability in the long run. AMD’s stock has risen over 58% this year.

Of course, to keep the flame burning, executives are saying that they’re completely confident in the ability of their products. And they all have good reasons to believe so.