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AMD vs. Intel CPU Market Share: 7nm Makes Landfall as Price War Begins

61 points by ItsTotallyOn 7y ago

lettergram 7y ago
Wait... what? > Intel CFO George Davis implied during an interview with Barron's this week that the company is digging in its heels for the long haul, saying "What we’ve said though, the delay in 10 nanometer means that we’re going to be a little bit disadvantaged on unit cost for a period of time." Davis then noted the company expects to return to revenue growth and margin expansion in 2023 when it overcomes the late ramp to 10nm. As a result, it's rational to expect lower pricing on Intel's upcoming 10th-Gen Comet Lake processors, too. If everything goes right for Intel, they don't expect revenue growth until 2023? By the time Intel hits 10nm in stride, TSMC plans to be rolling out their 3nm... [1] [1] https://fuse.wikichip.org/news/2567/tsmc-talks-7nm-5nm-yield-and-next-gen-5g-and-hpc-packaging/ https://fuse.wikichip.org/news/2567/tsmc-talks-7nm-5nm-yield...
- jcranmer 7y ago
  Intel plans to start shipping 7nm in 2021, and 5nm would be coming online perhaps 2023. See https://www.anandtech.com/show/14312/intel-process-technology-roadmap-refined-nodes-specialized-technologies https://www.anandtech.com/show/14312/intel-process-technolog... as a source.
  - baybal2 7y ago
    The thing is, Intel can't progress to their 7nm node if they can't even spin up 10nm one. Siltronics (Intel's wafer supplier) is said to now to have a field day. Intel haven't opened any new 14nm fabs, and those were maxed out years ago. The only explanation why Intel not only expanded their orders to Siltronics, but even entered new negotiations with other suppliers, is that they are spending a whack a lot of wafer on something other than existing 14nm manufacturing. It is either their GPU's are actually being taped out in extreme secrecy, or the yield on 10nm is so low that they are "bruteforcing" it
    - zaarn 7y ago
      My bet is on the later, considering early 10nm CPUs had the iGPU fused off and fairly abysmal and inconsistent overclock performance.
  - NicoJuicy 7y ago
    This article is from May and it doesn't mention 5 nm, 7nm plan was based on the Intel investor press, that was published on the same day from Intel PR. 10nm CPU Ships in June; 7nm Product in 2021 https://newsroom.intel.com/news/2019-intel-investor-meeting/#gs.d3i14m https://newsroom.intel.com/news/2019-intel-investor-meeting/... And it's probably very optimistic about deadlines, since June is a while ago ;) > Davis then noted the company expects to return to revenue growth and margin expansion in 2023 when it overcomes the late ramp to 10nm. Intel isn't mentioning 7nm anywhere anymore. They are mentioning 10nm for 2021. 5nm was mentioned by Samsung for 2023, TSMC had 3nm planned for then. ----------------- That means AMD still has > 3 years to capture significant market share. That's plenty of momentum. Worst case is at the current 5% they have now without Ryzen 3. Q3 2016 was 9,1% share. Q3 2019 is 18%. And they have free play at least until 2023. As the 4th and 5th generation of Ryzen seems to be on schedule, according to AMD :) . AMD is also not alone, they gain momentum thanks to TSMC and TSMC's clients ( nvidia, Apple, ...) - Previously I thought 2021, but I'm adjusting it to 2023, as Intel doesn't seem to have a real competitor for AMD yet. Just a next iteration chipset.
  - zaarn 7y ago
    10nm has been a trainwreck and is late, 7nm and 5nm have been removed from quite a few timelines they post because they suspect the same issues as with 10 nm (and 10nm isn't ready until 2020, how are they going to ship 7nm in 2021?)
    - Hikikomori 7y ago
      They use different lithography technology and different teams are working on them. So 7nm does not depend on the success of 10nm.
      - zaarn 7y ago
        I would still bet on 7nm being the same trainwreck of a failure.
        Hikikomori 7y ago
        It might be. I don't think we can draw any conclusions based on how 10nm is going though.
        ksec 7y ago
        Similar to the Siltronics (Intel's wafer supplier) comment above, We can certainly gets some hint from ASML, the only supplier of EUV lithography system. There are already backlogs to fill and Samsung and TSMC seems to be holding majority of those orders according to their investor meeting notes. So unless ASML has some EUV system sitting around waiting for Intel to pick up, their 7nm ramp won't be anywhere near TSMC or even Samsung. So 7nm could just be another 10nm, it shipped in July, but it is still no where to be seen in November.
NicoJuicy 7y ago
It's nuts how Intel is using it's monopoly. I don't have any other explanation why more OEM's changed to AMD for desktop and only recently Intel dropped prices. For laptops, we'll see in the next iteration as battery is the most important aspect there and the next awaited version is coming soon. Interesting times ^^
- integricho 7y ago
  You mean new types of batteries?
  - NicoJuicy 7y ago
    Improved Ryzen for laptops so battery life would be better ;) Current iteration is "not good enough" on that aspect ( = battery life).
ChuckMcM 7y ago
This illustrates one of the truism's in semi-conductors which is that you need to hold an advantage for 18 months before you have enough momentum to actually move the needle. If I were AMD's marketing team I would start hammering on ECC memory in the desktop and on laptops. Anything with 16GB or more of main memory. Intel has held that as a Xeon differentiator for a long time and it adds something like 20% margin to the part. That AMD can push PCIe 4.0 and ECC at 'desktop' prices is pretty neat.
- lorenzhs 7y ago
  Outside of our bubble, people don't care about ECC memory on their laptop or desktop. It also adds ~12% (iirc) more memory cells, meaning higher memory cost, which is going to be a hard sell given that it's a solution to a problem that most customers don't even know about, nor would most care much if it was explained to them. From a user perspective, memory is fine as it is, and if memory corruption does occur, it's probably blamed on buggy software. That would make any such push look like a desperate "we need a differentiator to tell people why they should buy our CPUs and upsell them in the process" move. Competing on price, speed, and (for laptops) power consumption would appear much more promising.
  - vardump 7y ago
    It needs to be marketed as a reliability improvement it is. Lots of people simply don't know about it at all, but would love better stability.
    - kube-system 7y ago
      This is mass market retail we’re talking about. Unless it’s easily demonstrable, people are going to buy the prettier box on the shelf or the one that’s cheaper. I’d bet money that when company X adds ECC and calls it “super stable memory”, company Y adds a button in the settings menu that calls fsck and calls that “hyper stable memory” and undercuts company X by 12%.
  - baybal2 7y ago
    Actually, you can have ECC without an extra chip, and 4 gen DDRs actually have quote low single bit error rates because they have error correcting PHYs
unlinked_dll 7y ago
I have two questions for people at intel and the peanut gallery - If I want a high performance CPU that's not "workstation" class: why should I buy an i7 over a 3700x or 3800x? - How meaningful is the "intel inside" brand when IT/GIS departments buy machines in bulk for their enterprise users?
- core-questions 7y ago
  Intel Inside is not that important anymore unless you have a big Intel AMT architecture for handling deployments / etc. What is more important for IT depts is pricing, shipping timelines, available configurations, enterprise deployment options, etc. There's no reason these can't all be at-par with AMD-based machines, but because of Intel's deep relationships with the vendors, sometimes you simply can't get their AMD machines at a price point that makes sense. Consider the fact that desktop processing performance was good enough 8+ years ago for anything most office workers need to do now; what IT wants in many industries is cost-effective machines that are easy to manage. The component brands inside don't matter that much.
- NicoJuicy 7y ago
  I think why you want to buy a Intel now is: - Laptop ( battery life is better on Intel CPU's), but AMD has this covered next Q. - Intel NUC ( it's very practical ) - For Single core optimized applications ( eg. Some games) when you don't care about the total price at all. Intel's one core performance was better and support in games is lacking for a lot of cores. I think next Ryzen will handle this. - When AMD is sold out completely and you need a CPU now :p Other than that, i think it's all AMD (eg. ECC memory, price, performance and buying the "underdog" ). Except if someone just wants to pay the highest price just for show, then you could still buy an Intel. Intel inside is an OEM partnership, that i hope AMD will break :) .
  - lazylizard 7y ago
    Avx512
  - haberman 7y ago
    When I was building a PC last December, I considered AMD until I saw that https://github.com/mozilla/rr https://github.com/mozilla/rr requires an Intel processor. > rr currently requires an Intel CPU with Nehalem (2010) or later microarchitecture. I don't even use rr at the moment, but I hate the idea of building a monster machine only to find that I'm left out of some cutting-edge technology because I went off-brand.

61 points by ItsTotallyOn 7y ago

Wait... what? > Intel CFO George Davis implied during an interview with Barron's this week that the company is digging in its heels for the long haul, saying "What we’ve said though, the delay in 10 nanometer means that we’re going to be a little bit disadvantaged on unit cost for a period of time." Davis then noted the company expects to return to revenue growth and margin expansion in 2023 when it overcomes the late ramp to 10nm. As a result, it's rational to expect lower pricing on Intel's upcoming 10th-Gen Comet Lake processors, too. If everything goes right for Intel, they don't expect revenue growth until 2023? By the time Intel hits 10nm in stride, TSMC plans to be rolling out their 3nm... [1] [1] https://fuse.wikichip.org/news/2567/tsmc-talks-7nm-5nm-yield-and-next-gen-5g-and-hpc-packaging/ https://fuse.wikichip.org/news/2567/tsmc-talks-7nm-5nm-yield...

jcranmer 7y ago
Intel plans to start shipping 7nm in 2021, and 5nm would be coming online perhaps 2023. See https://www.anandtech.com/show/14312/intel-process-technology-roadmap-refined-nodes-specialized-technologies https://www.anandtech.com/show/14312/intel-process-technolog... as a source.
- baybal2 7y ago
  The thing is, Intel can't progress to their 7nm node if they can't even spin up 10nm one. Siltronics (Intel's wafer supplier) is said to now to have a field day. Intel haven't opened any new 14nm fabs, and those were maxed out years ago. The only explanation why Intel not only expanded their orders to Siltronics, but even entered new negotiations with other suppliers, is that they are spending a whack a lot of wafer on something other than existing 14nm manufacturing. It is either their GPU's are actually being taped out in extreme secrecy, or the yield on 10nm is so low that they are "bruteforcing" it
  - zaarn 7y ago
    My bet is on the later, considering early 10nm CPUs had the iGPU fused off and fairly abysmal and inconsistent overclock performance.
- NicoJuicy 7y ago
  This article is from May and it doesn't mention 5 nm, 7nm plan was based on the Intel investor press, that was published on the same day from Intel PR. 10nm CPU Ships in June; 7nm Product in 2021 https://newsroom.intel.com/news/2019-intel-investor-meeting/#gs.d3i14m https://newsroom.intel.com/news/2019-intel-investor-meeting/... And it's probably very optimistic about deadlines, since June is a while ago ;) > Davis then noted the company expects to return to revenue growth and margin expansion in 2023 when it overcomes the late ramp to 10nm. Intel isn't mentioning 7nm anywhere anymore. They are mentioning 10nm for 2021. 5nm was mentioned by Samsung for 2023, TSMC had 3nm planned for then. ----------------- That means AMD still has > 3 years to capture significant market share. That's plenty of momentum. Worst case is at the current 5% they have now without Ryzen 3. Q3 2016 was 9,1% share. Q3 2019 is 18%. And they have free play at least until 2023. As the 4th and 5th generation of Ryzen seems to be on schedule, according to AMD :) . AMD is also not alone, they gain momentum thanks to TSMC and TSMC's clients ( nvidia, Apple, ...) - Previously I thought 2021, but I'm adjusting it to 2023, as Intel doesn't seem to have a real competitor for AMD yet. Just a next iteration chipset.
- zaarn 7y ago
  10nm has been a trainwreck and is late, 7nm and 5nm have been removed from quite a few timelines they post because they suspect the same issues as with 10 nm (and 10nm isn't ready until 2020, how are they going to ship 7nm in 2021?)
  - Hikikomori 7y ago
    They use different lithography technology and different teams are working on them. So 7nm does not depend on the success of 10nm.
    - zaarn 7y ago
      I would still bet on 7nm being the same trainwreck of a failure.
      - Hikikomori 7y ago
        It might be. I don't think we can draw any conclusions based on how 10nm is going though.
        ksec 7y ago
        Similar to the Siltronics (Intel's wafer supplier) comment above, We can certainly gets some hint from ASML, the only supplier of EUV lithography system. There are already backlogs to fill and Samsung and TSMC seems to be holding majority of those orders according to their investor meeting notes. So unless ASML has some EUV system sitting around waiting for Intel to pick up, their 7nm ramp won't be anywhere near TSMC or even Samsung. So 7nm could just be another 10nm, it shipped in July, but it is still no where to be seen in November.

NicoJuicy 7y ago

It's nuts how Intel is using it's monopoly. I don't have any other explanation why more OEM's changed to AMD for desktop and only recently Intel dropped prices. For laptops, we'll see in the next iteration as battery is the most important aspect there and the next awaited version is coming soon. Interesting times ^^

integricho 7y ago
You mean new types of batteries?
- NicoJuicy 7y ago
  Improved Ryzen for laptops so battery life would be better ;) Current iteration is "not good enough" on that aspect ( = battery life).

ChuckMcM 7y ago

This illustrates one of the truism's in semi-conductors which is that you need to hold an advantage for 18 months before you have enough momentum to actually move the needle. If I were AMD's marketing team I would start hammering on ECC memory in the desktop and on laptops. Anything with 16GB or more of main memory. Intel has held that as a Xeon differentiator for a long time and it adds something like 20% margin to the part. That AMD can push PCIe 4.0 and ECC at 'desktop' prices is pretty neat.

lorenzhs 7y ago
Outside of our bubble, people don't care about ECC memory on their laptop or desktop. It also adds ~12% (iirc) more memory cells, meaning higher memory cost, which is going to be a hard sell given that it's a solution to a problem that most customers don't even know about, nor would most care much if it was explained to them. From a user perspective, memory is fine as it is, and if memory corruption does occur, it's probably blamed on buggy software. That would make any such push look like a desperate "we need a differentiator to tell people why they should buy our CPUs and upsell them in the process" move. Competing on price, speed, and (for laptops) power consumption would appear much more promising.
- vardump 7y ago
  It needs to be marketed as a reliability improvement it is. Lots of people simply don't know about it at all, but would love better stability.
  - kube-system 7y ago
    This is mass market retail we’re talking about. Unless it’s easily demonstrable, people are going to buy the prettier box on the shelf or the one that’s cheaper. I’d bet money that when company X adds ECC and calls it “super stable memory”, company Y adds a button in the settings menu that calls fsck and calls that “hyper stable memory” and undercuts company X by 12%.
- baybal2 7y ago
  Actually, you can have ECC without an extra chip, and 4 gen DDRs actually have quote low single bit error rates because they have error correcting PHYs

unlinked_dll 7y ago

I have two questions for people at intel and the peanut gallery - If I want a high performance CPU that's not "workstation" class: why should I buy an i7 over a 3700x or 3800x? - How meaningful is the "intel inside" brand when IT/GIS departments buy machines in bulk for their enterprise users?

core-questions 7y ago
Intel Inside is not that important anymore unless you have a big Intel AMT architecture for handling deployments / etc. What is more important for IT depts is pricing, shipping timelines, available configurations, enterprise deployment options, etc. There's no reason these can't all be at-par with AMD-based machines, but because of Intel's deep relationships with the vendors, sometimes you simply can't get their AMD machines at a price point that makes sense. Consider the fact that desktop processing performance was good enough 8+ years ago for anything most office workers need to do now; what IT wants in many industries is cost-effective machines that are easy to manage. The component brands inside don't matter that much.
NicoJuicy 7y ago
I think why you want to buy a Intel now is: - Laptop ( battery life is better on Intel CPU's), but AMD has this covered next Q. - Intel NUC ( it's very practical ) - For Single core optimized applications ( eg. Some games) when you don't care about the total price at all. Intel's one core performance was better and support in games is lacking for a lot of cores. I think next Ryzen will handle this. - When AMD is sold out completely and you need a CPU now :p Other than that, i think it's all AMD (eg. ECC memory, price, performance and buying the "underdog" ). Except if someone just wants to pay the highest price just for show, then you could still buy an Intel. Intel inside is an OEM partnership, that i hope AMD will break :) .
- lazylizard 7y ago
  Avx512
- haberman 7y ago
  When I was building a PC last December, I considered AMD until I saw that https://github.com/mozilla/rr https://github.com/mozilla/rr requires an Intel processor. > rr currently requires an Intel CPU with Nehalem (2010) or later microarchitecture. I don't even use rr at the moment, but I hate the idea of building a monster machine only to find that I'm left out of some cutting-edge technology because I went off-brand.