Gadgetory

when AMD launched their Zen architecture CPUs we did an episode about what we could expect from their new lineup and whether team red could finally be a serious competitor to Intel again if you missed that one you can check it out up here but come on back afterwards because it's been over two years now and it's time to have a look at how Intel has started to struggle against a resurgent AMD in fact from late 2017 to late 2018 AMD's market share increased by three point eight percent on desktop three point four percent in servers and 5.2 percent in notebooks and seeing as Intel is the player in all of these markets anything that AMD games reflects a loss for Intel but why exactly is this happening well for a long time AMD was forced into a strategy of competing on Raw price to performance as for a long time that they simply couldn't make any chips that could come close to the performance of Intel's offerings forcing them to cut prices Intel by contrast could to a point anyway charge whatever they wanted as they didn't have any real competition at the higher end this allowed them to make much more margin all of this changed however with AMD's news and architecture and although rise in legs a bit behind Intel in some performance metrics notably gaming AMD having spent so many years operating on lower margins took a fundamentally different approach to their CPU design that worked really well to save R&D they opted for a modular design that could be scaled up and down more easily and then for their higher end many core products they even used multiple smaller chip lengths to decrease manufacturing waste this along with aggressively low pricing started to eat into Intel's dominance as it turns out users are happy to give up a small amount of performance for a significant cost savings but AMD just making a decent processor for a change and pricing it competitively is only part of the story here intel has all had their own very public issues transitioning to their ten nanometer manufacturing process now according to their original roadmap they should have been finished years ago but they still only have a few ten nanometer skews on the market but why does that matter well here's the thing whenever you hear CPU aficionados talk about a certain number of nanometers they're referring to the transistor sizes on the CPU die smaller transistors mean that more of them can be packed onto a given area increasing performance as well as power efficiency that means that it's very helpful to make your CPUs on a smaller note and while AMD hasn't had much issue getting their transistors down to size intel has struggled unlike AMD who contracts its fabrication work to facilities that specialize in manufacturing different kinds of processors for a variety of clients Intel who owns their own fabs is more or less trying to figure everything out on their own it also helps to remember that for some time now Intel's transistor density has often been higher than that of AMD as numbers like 14 nanometer and 10 nanometer are actually just estimations so a 10 nanometer Intel chip might actually have a distance of closer to 8 or so nanometers between transistors which makes further shrinkages even more challenging so this means that Intel has spent about the last four years trying to squeeze more blood from the stone of their poor 14 nanometer or plus or plus plus process with only small incremental performance improvements to show for it it's been a period of clear stagnation for Team Blue compared to their impressive track record for the prior 35 or so years adding insult to injury Intel struggles with ten nanometer have also been a contributing factor to the ongoing shortage of Intel CPUs particularly at the lower end because the company has been devoting resources to figuring out the 10 nanometer problem it hasn't been able to crank out enough 14 nanometer chips to meet the ever higher demand for entry-level devices like Chromebooks and low-power laptops combine this with the that intel places a higher priority on high-end chips due to their larger profit margins and AMD has stepped in and sold tons of its own lower end CPUs to fill the gap on the subject of Chromebooks Intel has additional threats on the horizon to Qualcomm best known for their Snapdragon mobile processors is trying to push a line right now of laptop CPUs optimized for power savings but while Intel is facing a number of issues at the moment it's important to remember that they are still the market leader in CPUs by a very wide margin with plenty of cash in the bank so they've got time to turn it around Intel is exploring GPU technology quite aggressively and they're also looking at new manufacturing techniques for both 10 and 7 nanometer chips it's just not clear when we'll see them in large numbers in the meantime though we will be carefully watching to see if Intel eventually loses all of its market share to its competitors but my money's on them figuring it 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