'We've an Unexpected Manufacturing Advantage For the First Time Ever': Intel's Manufacturing Glitch Opens Door For AMD (theinformation.com)

Over at The Information (paywalled), reporter Aaron Tilley has a splendid interview of Forrest Norrod, a senior executive who joined AMD four years ago. Mr. Norrod describes the challenge AMD has faced over the years and how, for the first time ever, it sees a real shot at making a significant dent in the desktop market. From the report: Advanced Micro Devices' battle with chip giant Intel has often seemed like a gnat fighting an elephant, with AMD struggling in recent years to gain even a tenth of the market for the chips that power PCs and data center servers. Forrest Norrod, a senior executive who joined AMD four years ago, says the company suffered from "little brother syndrome" where it tried and failed to compete with Intel on lots of different chips. Now, though, AMD may have a shot at coming out with a faster, more powerful chip than Intel for the first time. Intel in April said it was delaying the release of a more advanced chip manufacturing process until sometime in 2019. AMD has its own new, advanced chip, which it will now be able to release earlier than Intel, potentially giving it an edge in the market for high-performance chips for PCs and data center computers.

It's a market opportunity worth around $50 billion. That's what Intel makes from selling chips for PCs and data center servers, and it dominates both markets. The data center market is particularly important because of the growth of new technologies like artificial intelligence-related applications, much of which is handled in the cloud. Companies that buy chips for data centers or PCs could gravitate to AMD chips as a result of Intel's delay. "I think we have a year lead now," said Mr. Norrod, who oversees AMD's data center business. AMD now has "an unexpected [manufacturing] advantage for the first time ever," he added.

Comments

Pre Intel Core Chips.

[jellomizer]

Back in 2005 time AMD was making significant headway in becoming the Chip for your PC right before Intel released the Core duo chip. The Pentium Line was getting aging and the Pentium-5 wasn't that popular and AMD was the chip for your PC. AMD had about a year or two of popularity.

Then Intel made the Intel Core Duo and the Core 2 Duo chip (64 bit) which put AMD back. But right before then, Intel was seen as the dying giant.

AMD64 anyone?

[Attila Dimedici]

Has everyone forgotten AMD64?

Back when Intel was trying to sell Itanium as the 64 bit successor to the x86 instruction set, AMD came out with what is now known as x86-64. It was worlds better than Itanium and Intel was forced to license it from AMD in order to stay in business (Of course, AMD had no choice but to offer Intel such a license on reasonable terms because it was built on the x86 architecture which AMD licensed from Intel).