11 ms·

AMD is now worth more than Intel

350 points by akvadrako 5y ago

ksec 5y ago
Just want to clear things up. The reason why AMD is suddenly catching up to Intel in valuation is because of the confirmation / success acquisition of Xilinx. Which triggered the conversion of 250M Xilinx shares to new AMD shares. Adding roughly $40B to its market cap.
theandrewbailey 5y ago
I never thought this was possible. Good job, AMD!
Tsarbomb 5y ago
I'm a huge AMD fan but this is bonkers. Yes, Intel has floundered for a number of years, but at the same time they are a foundry themselves, second only to TSMC (for now), have incredible manufacturing capacity, and seem poised to start pushing interesting CPU designs as well as having their foundry half finally start executing correctly. Also their growth potential for their GPU business is huuuuuuge. As someone who enjoys AMD for the competition they bring, I am worried what the next few years might look like for them for the following reasons: 1. AMD GPUs were actually very competitive with their RDNA2 architecture, but at the same time AMD enjoyed a huge silicon advantage as they were on TSMC while NVIDIA was on Samsung (for consumer). The next generation of NVIDIA consumer GPUs will be made by TSMC and if their professional GPUs (see A100 which are made by TSMC) are any indication we can see potentially up to 1.5x to 2x efficiency bump for NVIDIA. 2. Intel seems to be cleaning up shop and their latest generation of CPUs feel like a 1st Gen Ryzen moment. Also, Intel does not have to clearly surpass AMD, they just need to be competitive as they can simply out produce AMD given AMDs relatively small allocation at TSMC. 3. Intel GPUs pose a moderate threat on the horizon for AMD for both low end and portables and at the same time they are eating up available capacity at TSMC.
- Cthulhu_ 5y ago
  You're bringing in a lot of company strategies and achievements and stuff, but... they are meaningless in this case, because this is the stock market. A company's stock value and market cap are not necessarily related to what they do, and the stock market is not rationally linked to a company and its strategy. I mean Gamestop's stock and market cap exploded because of investing hype, not because it changed anything in its strategy.
  - tc313 5y ago
    “In the short run, the market is a voting machine but in the long run it is a weighing machine.”
    - plainnoodles 5y ago
      Unfortunately, the stock market also has no real distinction between what a long or short run is :\. "The market can remain irrational longer than your can remain solvent" is the relevant platitude. I worked in prop trading for half a decade and the number of really catchy, pithy sayings they have NEVER ceased to amuse me. My firm was very much on the "voting machine" time horizon so at that time granularity all the notions of company value mostly end up being 0 effect and everything is totally dominated by statistics, but that never stopped us from all joking about these catch-phrases and nodding sagely (as the computers do all the work of actually trading the stocks).
    - anamax 5y ago
      > “In the short run, the market is a voting machine but in the long run it is a weighing machine.” Today's "short run" is last year's "long run" so either that statement is false or voting and weighing machines are the same thing. It sounds profound though.
  - neogodless 5y ago
    > this is bonkers > Gamestop's stock Any stock is priced on multiple factors, one of which is the fundamentals, or the real value of assets and the company's ability to generate revenue. Another factor includes sentiment or guesses about the company's ability to accumulate assets and continue to generate revenue. And the third would be the general state of the investment market, and how equities are valued against other asset classes. So sure, sentiment can absolutely be bonkers in relation to fundamentals, which is what the parent comment is saying. Company strategy and achievement are very much relevant to assessing the fundamentals, and attempting to identify the underlying value of a stock, while seeing past the bonkers, irrational valuations. While it's only "in theory", over a longer timeline, in general, any individual stock will "revert to the mean", that is to say, end up closer to the fundamentals, rather than remain bonkers indefinitely. Of course you don't have to invest merely on fundamentals. You can use bonkers speculative valuations to your advantage. But to do so, you kind of have to evaluate all the components of an individual stock's pricing.
- CyberRage 5y ago
  Actually, techwise AMD has outperformed Nvidia. Nvidia was only able to keep up because they used Samsung 8nm which is extremely cheap. AMD silicon is doing much better when it comes to perf/area, Nvidia chips are massive, also Nvidia uses high end expensive GDDR6X memory and still can't completely win the throne. Nvidia strength is in their software eco-system, things like CUDA and ML frameworks as well as it's popularity among gamers. Intel is still far behind TSMC when it comes to manufacturing and retook the crown against an old year old architecture from AMD. * to be clear, I'm not saying AMD is completely dominating Intel, I actually think things today are quite tight. close competition. And once you start looking at players like Apple or Qualcomm, things are looking very competitive.
  - brian_herman 5y ago
    Unforunately, the drivers of AMD for their consumer products havent kept up with NVIDIA's consumer drivers. For example, when I goto microcenter all of the AMD consumer GPUS are there and are available to order online. Nvidia GPUs have just recently been in stock.
    - neogodless 5y ago
      If you're talking about the software and stability/performance for gaming, anecdotally I've been using Radeon GPUs for the past two years and they've been awesome. I still agree that Nvidia is ahead with their software ecosystem in general, though. And AMD GPUs being in stock while Nvidia's are out of stock does not prove the quality of drivers. I suspect AMD is just doing better with their supply chain the past few months (and Nvidia has retained an edge on brand preference). On pure rasterization performance, the Radeons are currently a better value, but Geforce GPUs have some feature advantages.
    - jonkoops 5y ago
      Hmmmm... I don't share this experience, the AMD drivers have been rock solid for me. And on Linux there is simply no argumentation, AMD drivers are a million times better than NVIDIA there.
- ksec 5y ago
  That is why I keep repeating AMD is still not doing enough on Severs and GPU market, both on Anandtech and HN. But most AMD fans tell me they are fine. And this was before Pat Gelsinger took back Intel. Now judging from Intel's roadmap and their current speed and execution, things aren't looking too good. But I disagree with GPU, Intel ( or more precisely Raja koduri ) still has a lot to prove about their GPU. It is coming close to 5 years since he joined Intel, on a project that started before his arrival, and they still have yet to ship a single thing. And Drivers Quality. I am still waiting for actual reviews. And that is speaking as someone who bought AMD shares at under $3.
- mdasen 5y ago
  I have to agree with this. Intel has floundered, but if a lot of AMD's resurgence has been on the back of TSMC, that's a very tenuous resurgence. We've seen reports that Intel has ordered a lot of 3nm capacity from TSMC (https://optocrypto.com/intel-to-be-tsmcs-1st-customer-for-3nm-cpus-and-gpus/ https://optocrypto.com/intel-to-be-tsmcs-1st-customer-for-3n...). We also saw a report about Qualcomm moving their production from Samsung to TSMC for the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 due to bad yields from Samsung (https://www.techspot.com/news/93520-low-yield-samsung-4nm-process-node-prompts-qualcomm.html https://www.techspot.com/news/93520-low-yield-samsung-4nm-pr..., something like this was on the HN front-page in the past few days). As you note, AMD is supply constrained by what they can get out of TSMC. As I noted, Intel is looking to improve their offering by using TSMC's 3nm process. I'd take this a step further: if Intel can buy up TSMC capacity, they prevent AMD from being able to offer new products on those processes and buy time for Intel to get their fabs in order. Think about it this way: let's say Intel bribed TSMC to refuse orders from AMD for anything better than 7nm for the next 2-3 years. That would given Intel a lot of time to catch up on their fabrication. Of course, regulators would come down extremely hard on such an anti-competitive move. Instead, Intel knows that TSMC has limited capacity and can legitimately buy some of that capacity for some of their volume over the next few years. They'll put out some great 3nm laptop chips (and maybe some others) that will get them good press and AMD will lose some of its luster. If Intel 4 and Intel 3 are delivered on-time and they're able to use TSMC's 3nm capacity in the interim, that kinda takes the wind out of AMD's sails. AMD's $16B in revenue compared to Intel's $79B in revenue seems to indicate that AMD is doing a lot less volume than Intel. AMD has great growth, but given that TSMC's capacity might be a bottleneck to that growth and given that Intel seems to have locked down a lot of TSMC's next-gen supply, Intel may have thrown up a huge roadblock to AMD's continued advancement. If Intel 4 is supposed to have 17-46% more transistor density than TSMC 5nm, that will put Intel in a good place in 2023. Intel 3 is supposed to improve efficiency by 18% over Intel 4 and be available in late 2023. So it seems like Intel should catch up by mid/late 2023 on the fab side of things - or at least be close enough. As you noted, Intel doesn't need to clearly surpass AMD, they just need to be competitive since they can out-produce on volume. AMD has been doing great things. A lot of that is coming from AMD and some is a result of TSMC's fabs (and Intel's fabs languishing by comparison). Intel is looking to close that gap and cut AMD off from their supply in the interim. That's not to say that AMD is doomed or anything. Samsung's foundry exists, TSMC might be able to increase their capacity, and likely other things I haven't thought of. AMD has done great work and I hope they continue to provide strong competition for Intel. It just seems premature to value AMD higher than Intel given some of their limitations - and some of Intel's plans.
- AtlasBarfed 5y ago
  I agree, this is a bit bonkers. Tells me the Street thinks the new CEO is all hot air. I will say for point #3: Intel has mystifyingly dropped the ball on GPUs for going on a decade (and really, why not four decades given how long they've been in PCs and you needed graphics acceleration for displays). The manufacturing capacity is only as good as the current process, so this may mean the Street thinks they still are several generations behind the current process leaders. Intel's process technology would normally be what is used for mobo chipsets, not frontline CPUs. Intel's manufacturing assets are only useful if they get a modern process going. The CEO change may have come too late, if the corporation has already chased off all the talent, or all the remaining talent is old and just waiting for retirement. I distinctly get the impression the noxious management has kept anyone good from joining and staying at Intel for a while.
- mgh2 5y ago
  Although Lisa denies it, there is a correlation between AMD's surge and the rise of crypto mining with ASICs. Watch the stock tumble when the crypto ponzi scheme crumbles.
  - porknubbins 5y ago
    AMD, as far as I know is a GPU/CPU maker so how is mining crypto with ASICs even relevant? Ethereum is mined with GPUs but I think that market doesn’t have a lot of slack with or without crypto.
    - mgh2 5y ago
      Related: [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30550028 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30550028 [2] https://www.pcgamer.com/amd-cryptocurrency-mining-limiter-ethereum/ https://www.pcgamer.com/amd-cryptocurrency-mining-limiter-et...
- rurban 5y ago
  You forgot security. Intel has a terrible track record, nobody trusts them to fix their flaws. And they did have enough time, and still didn't. And having a prominent CIA backdoor (ME) on their chips doesn't help neither.
AitchEmArsey 5y ago
I remember meeting a senior AMD engineer a few years ago who deflatedly said people there were happy as long as the stock was above $12. Bet he's a bit cheerier today!
flyingfences 5y ago
Not because AMD has risen higher, but because Intel has fallen further. AMD is still down 25% YTD.
- Qem 5y ago
  I think Intel is posed to sink further. Instead of mending their ways and making a effort to please their customers, they apparently are doubling down on consumer-abusive practices, given the whole SDS (software disabled silicon, aka "software defined silicon") bullshit. Now, instead of selling expensive lame hardware, their big idea is to keep selling lame hardware, but then charging extra to unlame it. That's awful. I hope RISC-V take off, so we finally have a viable, competitive open alternative to the x86 duopoly. We were lucky AMD survived and avoided us a total monopoly, but that's not a ideal situation either.
  - thunkshift1 5y ago
    I think its a trope to criticize anything Intel announces .. software defined silicon is not even a big thing (as of now) that affects every customer. And lets not get started with ‘consumer-abusive’ practices where a lot of tech companies are miles ahead as compared to Intel. After all has been said and done, The fact remains that it has solid growth potential and fundamentals
- tedunangst 5y ago
  INTC is down 15% YTD.
PaywallBuster 5y ago
Time to buy $INTC Even if Intel stagnates, and AMD grows with the market, Intel keeps printing money. Intel is a value stock: solid fundamentals, under priced by the market and a track record spanning decades of making dollars.
- vsareto 5y ago
  I think Intel is underpriced only if we're factoring in a "China-conquers-Taiwan" scenario where Intel gets to spin up a bunch of US fabs with government funds for natsec reasons.
  - PaywallBuster 5y ago
    Value investors usually look at PE ratio (among others). For most companies it would be between 10-20. In which 10 or under would be an indicator to buy and 20 to sell. Intel is at 9.xx now So basically Intel just needs to retain this level of performance, and the market price could get closer to 20 at some point - as it's within "market price" ( Startups have higher ratio due to high expectations of growth )
thereddaikon 5y ago
No they aren't. Checking google finance right now and AMD is $177B while Intel is $181B. Maybe they were for a short time the other day but that just illustrates why its dumb to track values so closely. You are within the noise of daily fluctuations. I do however think its newsworthy that AMD has gotten to the point where it and Intel are trading spaces based on those fluctuations. But that isn't a clickbaity.
- heleninboodler 5y ago
  > I do however think its newsworthy that AMD has gotten to the point where it and Intel are trading spaces based on those fluctuations. This is the point.
ozaiworld 5y ago
Intel needs to follow up on their roadmap. AMD is supply limited, but their server CPUs are way ahead of Intel's Ice Lake and older generations. AMD has been constantly executing while Intel has been delaying,
- thunkshift1 5y ago
  Thats true and kudos to amd… but I wonder how much of that was because of tsmc process leadership and how much because of amd design. I am curious to see some product comparisons after intel steps up its manufacturing game to go toe-to-toe with tsmc
999900000999 5y ago
Very very cool! I've constantly found AMD to be a better value in the consumer market than Intel, 10 years ago. I was very concerned AMD was on its way out. Smaller chip manufacturers like Via ( I was so broke as a teenager I had a laptop with a Via CPU, it was the cheapest laptop you could find) stopped making consumer cpus. I might be wrong here, but you can't buy a laptop with a VIA CPU now. More competition is always great!
- FullyFunctional 5y ago
  FYI, VIA (or whatever it was renamed to) just got acquired by Intel a few months back. I'm long AMD, but I also agree with the analysis that hold INTC a strong buy right now.
  - timw4mail 5y ago
    Centaur, who designed VIA's CPUs (and was owned by VIA) was bought, not VIA.
    - FullyFunctional 5y ago
      sorry you are right, that’s what I meant
  - humanwhosits 5y ago
    I'm surprised that was allowed, there aren't exactly many x86 manufacturers in the market
- alborzb 5y ago
  Just a heads up, there's a pretty good documentary about the early start period of that company called "Rise of the Centaur" if you ever get bored and want to reminisce on those days of Via/Centaur/alternative CPUs
ibatindev 5y ago
Awesome leadership by Dr. Lisa Su! A wonderful role model for absolutely everyone.
- coolso 5y ago
  I really hope her next step is starting a fab right here in the USA.
  - mkl 5y ago
    Entering the fab market as a new player seems very unlikely. To have any hope of competitiveness it would be incredibly expensive (much more than all their cash on hand, which is 1/8 of Intel's), and even then it wouldn't have much chance of success any time soon. AMD spun off GlobalFoundries for good reason.
phlipski 5y ago
Hard to believe that it was less than 10 years ago when AMD sold their Austin campus and leased it back! They were literally circling the drain.... https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/03/amd-sells-its-austin-hq-for-164-million-to-raise-some-quick-cash/ https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/03/amd-s...
atlgator 5y ago
I switched over fully to AMD with Ryzen 3 and haven't looked back. However, AMD uses TSMC to fabricate all their chips (as does Apple, Broadcom, others). I am very concerned about TSMC given the geopolitical risk with China and the catastrophic effects it will have on AMD.
kd913 5y ago
I feel people have underestimated how potentially impactful the AMD/XLNX merger can be. AMD now has a complete stack to compete in the DCG. They have bespoke accelerators, storage, FPGA, CPU (x86, ARM), (lowest latency) smartNICs and GPU. They now are a player in the 5g communications market. Automotive they are already competing with multiple deals with Tesla. They can now compete stronger on the ML front with their integration with Xilinx. You name your niche, AMD can build it for you. The accelerators are a future bet to eventual physical limitations with Moore's law.
- TomVDB 5y ago
  How did Intel leverage the acquisition of Altera? And why would it be different for AMD?
  - kd913 5y ago
    The market and tech is in a completely different position to what it was back then. Xilinx is well ahead of Altera. Xilinx already is extremely profitable in it's current markets already. Xilinx and AMD provide extreme supply overlap, and greater bargaining position with TSMC. AMD can leverage the IP much better within it's own products and vice versa. The times of easy performance wins are gone. Accelerators are the future now. Market is much better suited, software toolkits are better.
    - pclmulqdq 5y ago
      Xilinx got ahead because of the intel-altera merger. Stratix V was better than the Xilinx 7 series. Now they are giving Intel the opportunity to catch up. My guess is that AMD bought Xilinx either for fab capacity or for some underlying tech expertise that they needed.
  - JonChesterfield 5y ago
    Intel appears to have squandered it. Strangled in bureaucracy at a guess. Not much sign of the fabled FPGA/x64 hybrid from Intel. AMD + ATI didn't look totally smooth from the outside but the graphics cards are still with us and I'm using an APU as my desktop.
throwaway81523 5y ago
I had an impression that Intel was like Boeing some decades after the McDonnell takeover. Still cranking out product, but a messed up bureaucracy, badly managed at every level. Gelsinger may be a sharp cookie but I cringed every time I heard him say that Intel's roadmap was to take back the fab tech championship. That's like saying you're going to become the world chess champion. Maybe you really do have it in you, but it's not something you can simply buy, especially now that you're funding your competition. Can Intel pull that off without first having to be deeply remade? It's not a battle of the bankrolls and Intel doesn't necessarily have the bigger bankroll anyway.
- 1123581321 5y ago
  I don’t know about the analogy since it’s like the former chess champion promising to return, which has at least happened in women’s. There is a catalyst, which is a top engineer returning to restore a focused engineering culture and remove those unhelpful management layers thats slowed them down. They are also pursuing new fab business they have a chance to win and learning from fab partners where they have conceded they need external help. They also are to an extent playing a financial game and appear to be extracting strategic investment from the US and EU. I’m not saying Intel’s going to succeed, but it’s not quite more of the same.
  - throwaway81523 5y ago
    Eh, Botvinnik returned as world champion, twice even (there were two 1-year gaps in his reign, due to losses against Tal and Smyslov). This is more like the washed-up Bobby Fischer's 1992 return match against the even more washed up Spassky, two generations behind his glory days, while Karpov and Kasparov watched bemusedly in their rear-view mirrors. We'll see how it goes, but why would EU fund Intel instead of a European fab? Don't forget that semiconductor tech is strategic for everyone. Taiwan, Korean, and China aren't sitting still either. Good luck, Intel. You're going to need it.
    - 1123581321 5y ago
      Presumably lack of choice of qualified vendors. You can read more about the EU's willingness to invest, to the point of introducing legislation, here: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-01-20/eu-to-unveil-chips-plan-early-next-month-to-fund-more-production?sref=dl4Ey0es https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-01-20/eu-to-unv...
justin66 5y ago
Something that has gone unmentioned in these comments: Intel has a lot more debt than AMD (38B vs 661M on 12/31). That does affect their comparative market cap by, you know, roughly 37 billion dollars. (give or take some amount related to their credit rating and the very low cost of money right now, I would think, and if you want something to argue about there's always the fact that Intel has an even better credit rating than AMD...) Intel has much, much more income than AMD and they're valued similarly by the market and... that is not a mystery. https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/INTC/financials?p=INTC https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/INTC/financials?p=INTC https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/AMD/financials?p=AMD https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/AMD/financials?p=AMD
01100011 5y ago
If China attacks Taiwan we're going to see companies which are dependent on TSMC drop into the toilet. IMHO, invest in Intel to hedge your bets. The old man is down but he is not out. Intel is 'too big to fail' because it is the only somewhat modern fab in the US with scale.

350 points by akvadrako 5y ago

ksec 5y ago

Just want to clear things up. The reason why AMD is suddenly catching up to Intel in valuation is because of the confirmation / success acquisition of Xilinx. Which triggered the conversion of 250M Xilinx shares to new AMD shares. Adding roughly $40B to its market cap.

theandrewbailey 5y ago

I never thought this was possible. Good job, AMD!

Tsarbomb 5y ago

I'm a huge AMD fan but this is bonkers. Yes, Intel has floundered for a number of years, but at the same time they are a foundry themselves, second only to TSMC (for now), have incredible manufacturing capacity, and seem poised to start pushing interesting CPU designs as well as having their foundry half finally start executing correctly. Also their growth potential for their GPU business is huuuuuuge. As someone who enjoys AMD for the competition they bring, I am worried what the next few years might look like for them for the following reasons: 1. AMD GPUs were actually very competitive with their RDNA2 architecture, but at the same time AMD enjoyed a huge silicon advantage as they were on TSMC while NVIDIA was on Samsung (for consumer). The next generation of NVIDIA consumer GPUs will be made by TSMC and if their professional GPUs (see A100 which are made by TSMC) are any indication we can see potentially up to 1.5x to 2x efficiency bump for NVIDIA. 2. Intel seems to be cleaning up shop and their latest generation of CPUs feel like a 1st Gen Ryzen moment. Also, Intel does not have to clearly surpass AMD, they just need to be competitive as they can simply out produce AMD given AMDs relatively small allocation at TSMC. 3. Intel GPUs pose a moderate threat on the horizon for AMD for both low end and portables and at the same time they are eating up available capacity at TSMC.

Cthulhu_ 5y ago
You're bringing in a lot of company strategies and achievements and stuff, but... they are meaningless in this case, because this is the stock market. A company's stock value and market cap are not necessarily related to what they do, and the stock market is not rationally linked to a company and its strategy. I mean Gamestop's stock and market cap exploded because of investing hype, not because it changed anything in its strategy.
- tc313 5y ago
  “In the short run, the market is a voting machine but in the long run it is a weighing machine.”
  - plainnoodles 5y ago
    Unfortunately, the stock market also has no real distinction between what a long or short run is :\. "The market can remain irrational longer than your can remain solvent" is the relevant platitude. I worked in prop trading for half a decade and the number of really catchy, pithy sayings they have NEVER ceased to amuse me. My firm was very much on the "voting machine" time horizon so at that time granularity all the notions of company value mostly end up being 0 effect and everything is totally dominated by statistics, but that never stopped us from all joking about these catch-phrases and nodding sagely (as the computers do all the work of actually trading the stocks).
  - anamax 5y ago
    > “In the short run, the market is a voting machine but in the long run it is a weighing machine.” Today's "short run" is last year's "long run" so either that statement is false or voting and weighing machines are the same thing. It sounds profound though.
- neogodless 5y ago
  > this is bonkers > Gamestop's stock Any stock is priced on multiple factors, one of which is the fundamentals, or the real value of assets and the company's ability to generate revenue. Another factor includes sentiment or guesses about the company's ability to accumulate assets and continue to generate revenue. And the third would be the general state of the investment market, and how equities are valued against other asset classes. So sure, sentiment can absolutely be bonkers in relation to fundamentals, which is what the parent comment is saying. Company strategy and achievement are very much relevant to assessing the fundamentals, and attempting to identify the underlying value of a stock, while seeing past the bonkers, irrational valuations. While it's only "in theory", over a longer timeline, in general, any individual stock will "revert to the mean", that is to say, end up closer to the fundamentals, rather than remain bonkers indefinitely. Of course you don't have to invest merely on fundamentals. You can use bonkers speculative valuations to your advantage. But to do so, you kind of have to evaluate all the components of an individual stock's pricing.
CyberRage 5y ago
Actually, techwise AMD has outperformed Nvidia. Nvidia was only able to keep up because they used Samsung 8nm which is extremely cheap. AMD silicon is doing much better when it comes to perf/area, Nvidia chips are massive, also Nvidia uses high end expensive GDDR6X memory and still can't completely win the throne. Nvidia strength is in their software eco-system, things like CUDA and ML frameworks as well as it's popularity among gamers. Intel is still far behind TSMC when it comes to manufacturing and retook the crown against an old year old architecture from AMD. * to be clear, I'm not saying AMD is completely dominating Intel, I actually think things today are quite tight. close competition. And once you start looking at players like Apple or Qualcomm, things are looking very competitive.
- brian_herman 5y ago
  Unforunately, the drivers of AMD for their consumer products havent kept up with NVIDIA's consumer drivers. For example, when I goto microcenter all of the AMD consumer GPUS are there and are available to order online. Nvidia GPUs have just recently been in stock.
  - neogodless 5y ago
    If you're talking about the software and stability/performance for gaming, anecdotally I've been using Radeon GPUs for the past two years and they've been awesome. I still agree that Nvidia is ahead with their software ecosystem in general, though. And AMD GPUs being in stock while Nvidia's are out of stock does not prove the quality of drivers. I suspect AMD is just doing better with their supply chain the past few months (and Nvidia has retained an edge on brand preference). On pure rasterization performance, the Radeons are currently a better value, but Geforce GPUs have some feature advantages.
  - jonkoops 5y ago
    Hmmmm... I don't share this experience, the AMD drivers have been rock solid for me. And on Linux there is simply no argumentation, AMD drivers are a million times better than NVIDIA there.
ksec 5y ago
That is why I keep repeating AMD is still not doing enough on Severs and GPU market, both on Anandtech and HN. But most AMD fans tell me they are fine. And this was before Pat Gelsinger took back Intel. Now judging from Intel's roadmap and their current speed and execution, things aren't looking too good. But I disagree with GPU, Intel ( or more precisely Raja koduri ) still has a lot to prove about their GPU. It is coming close to 5 years since he joined Intel, on a project that started before his arrival, and they still have yet to ship a single thing. And Drivers Quality. I am still waiting for actual reviews. And that is speaking as someone who bought AMD shares at under $3.
mdasen 5y ago
I have to agree with this. Intel has floundered, but if a lot of AMD's resurgence has been on the back of TSMC, that's a very tenuous resurgence. We've seen reports that Intel has ordered a lot of 3nm capacity from TSMC (https://optocrypto.com/intel-to-be-tsmcs-1st-customer-for-3nm-cpus-and-gpus/ https://optocrypto.com/intel-to-be-tsmcs-1st-customer-for-3n...). We also saw a report about Qualcomm moving their production from Samsung to TSMC for the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 due to bad yields from Samsung (https://www.techspot.com/news/93520-low-yield-samsung-4nm-process-node-prompts-qualcomm.html https://www.techspot.com/news/93520-low-yield-samsung-4nm-pr..., something like this was on the HN front-page in the past few days). As you note, AMD is supply constrained by what they can get out of TSMC. As I noted, Intel is looking to improve their offering by using TSMC's 3nm process. I'd take this a step further: if Intel can buy up TSMC capacity, they prevent AMD from being able to offer new products on those processes and buy time for Intel to get their fabs in order. Think about it this way: let's say Intel bribed TSMC to refuse orders from AMD for anything better than 7nm for the next 2-3 years. That would given Intel a lot of time to catch up on their fabrication. Of course, regulators would come down extremely hard on such an anti-competitive move. Instead, Intel knows that TSMC has limited capacity and can legitimately buy some of that capacity for some of their volume over the next few years. They'll put out some great 3nm laptop chips (and maybe some others) that will get them good press and AMD will lose some of its luster. If Intel 4 and Intel 3 are delivered on-time and they're able to use TSMC's 3nm capacity in the interim, that kinda takes the wind out of AMD's sails. AMD's $16B in revenue compared to Intel's $79B in revenue seems to indicate that AMD is doing a lot less volume than Intel. AMD has great growth, but given that TSMC's capacity might be a bottleneck to that growth and given that Intel seems to have locked down a lot of TSMC's next-gen supply, Intel may have thrown up a huge roadblock to AMD's continued advancement. If Intel 4 is supposed to have 17-46% more transistor density than TSMC 5nm, that will put Intel in a good place in 2023. Intel 3 is supposed to improve efficiency by 18% over Intel 4 and be available in late 2023. So it seems like Intel should catch up by mid/late 2023 on the fab side of things - or at least be close enough. As you noted, Intel doesn't need to clearly surpass AMD, they just need to be competitive since they can out-produce on volume. AMD has been doing great things. A lot of that is coming from AMD and some is a result of TSMC's fabs (and Intel's fabs languishing by comparison). Intel is looking to close that gap and cut AMD off from their supply in the interim. That's not to say that AMD is doomed or anything. Samsung's foundry exists, TSMC might be able to increase their capacity, and likely other things I haven't thought of. AMD has done great work and I hope they continue to provide strong competition for Intel. It just seems premature to value AMD higher than Intel given some of their limitations - and some of Intel's plans.
AtlasBarfed 5y ago
I agree, this is a bit bonkers. Tells me the Street thinks the new CEO is all hot air. I will say for point #3: Intel has mystifyingly dropped the ball on GPUs for going on a decade (and really, why not four decades given how long they've been in PCs and you needed graphics acceleration for displays). The manufacturing capacity is only as good as the current process, so this may mean the Street thinks they still are several generations behind the current process leaders. Intel's process technology would normally be what is used for mobo chipsets, not frontline CPUs. Intel's manufacturing assets are only useful if they get a modern process going. The CEO change may have come too late, if the corporation has already chased off all the talent, or all the remaining talent is old and just waiting for retirement. I distinctly get the impression the noxious management has kept anyone good from joining and staying at Intel for a while.
mgh2 5y ago
Although Lisa denies it, there is a correlation between AMD's surge and the rise of crypto mining with ASICs. Watch the stock tumble when the crypto ponzi scheme crumbles.
- porknubbins 5y ago
  AMD, as far as I know is a GPU/CPU maker so how is mining crypto with ASICs even relevant? Ethereum is mined with GPUs but I think that market doesn’t have a lot of slack with or without crypto.
  - mgh2 5y ago
    Related: [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30550028 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30550028 [2] https://www.pcgamer.com/amd-cryptocurrency-mining-limiter-ethereum/ https://www.pcgamer.com/amd-cryptocurrency-mining-limiter-et...
rurban 5y ago
You forgot security. Intel has a terrible track record, nobody trusts them to fix their flaws. And they did have enough time, and still didn't. And having a prominent CIA backdoor (ME) on their chips doesn't help neither.

AitchEmArsey 5y ago

I remember meeting a senior AMD engineer a few years ago who deflatedly said people there were happy as long as the stock was above $12. Bet he's a bit cheerier today!

flyingfences 5y ago

Not because AMD has risen higher, but because Intel has fallen further. AMD is still down 25% YTD.

Qem 5y ago
I think Intel is posed to sink further. Instead of mending their ways and making a effort to please their customers, they apparently are doubling down on consumer-abusive practices, given the whole SDS (software disabled silicon, aka "software defined silicon") bullshit. Now, instead of selling expensive lame hardware, their big idea is to keep selling lame hardware, but then charging extra to unlame it. That's awful. I hope RISC-V take off, so we finally have a viable, competitive open alternative to the x86 duopoly. We were lucky AMD survived and avoided us a total monopoly, but that's not a ideal situation either.
- thunkshift1 5y ago
  I think its a trope to criticize anything Intel announces .. software defined silicon is not even a big thing (as of now) that affects every customer. And lets not get started with ‘consumer-abusive’ practices where a lot of tech companies are miles ahead as compared to Intel. After all has been said and done, The fact remains that it has solid growth potential and fundamentals
tedunangst 5y ago
INTC is down 15% YTD.

PaywallBuster 5y ago

Time to buy $INTC Even if Intel stagnates, and AMD grows with the market, Intel keeps printing money. Intel is a value stock: solid fundamentals, under priced by the market and a track record spanning decades of making dollars.

vsareto 5y ago
I think Intel is underpriced only if we're factoring in a "China-conquers-Taiwan" scenario where Intel gets to spin up a bunch of US fabs with government funds for natsec reasons.
- PaywallBuster 5y ago
  Value investors usually look at PE ratio (among others). For most companies it would be between 10-20. In which 10 or under would be an indicator to buy and 20 to sell. Intel is at 9.xx now So basically Intel just needs to retain this level of performance, and the market price could get closer to 20 at some point - as it's within "market price" ( Startups have higher ratio due to high expectations of growth )

thereddaikon 5y ago

No they aren't. Checking google finance right now and AMD is $177B while Intel is $181B. Maybe they were for a short time the other day but that just illustrates why its dumb to track values so closely. You are within the noise of daily fluctuations. I do however think its newsworthy that AMD has gotten to the point where it and Intel are trading spaces based on those fluctuations. But that isn't a clickbaity.

heleninboodler 5y ago
> I do however think its newsworthy that AMD has gotten to the point where it and Intel are trading spaces based on those fluctuations. This is the point.

ozaiworld 5y ago

Intel needs to follow up on their roadmap. AMD is supply limited, but their server CPUs are way ahead of Intel's Ice Lake and older generations. AMD has been constantly executing while Intel has been delaying,

thunkshift1 5y ago
Thats true and kudos to amd… but I wonder how much of that was because of tsmc process leadership and how much because of amd design. I am curious to see some product comparisons after intel steps up its manufacturing game to go toe-to-toe with tsmc

999900000999 5y ago

Very very cool! I've constantly found AMD to be a better value in the consumer market than Intel, 10 years ago. I was very concerned AMD was on its way out. Smaller chip manufacturers like Via ( I was so broke as a teenager I had a laptop with a Via CPU, it was the cheapest laptop you could find) stopped making consumer cpus. I might be wrong here, but you can't buy a laptop with a VIA CPU now. More competition is always great!

FullyFunctional 5y ago
FYI, VIA (or whatever it was renamed to) just got acquired by Intel a few months back. I'm long AMD, but I also agree with the analysis that hold INTC a strong buy right now.
- timw4mail 5y ago
  Centaur, who designed VIA's CPUs (and was owned by VIA) was bought, not VIA.
  - FullyFunctional 5y ago
    sorry you are right, that’s what I meant
- humanwhosits 5y ago
  I'm surprised that was allowed, there aren't exactly many x86 manufacturers in the market
alborzb 5y ago
Just a heads up, there's a pretty good documentary about the early start period of that company called "Rise of the Centaur" if you ever get bored and want to reminisce on those days of Via/Centaur/alternative CPUs

ibatindev 5y ago

Awesome leadership by Dr. Lisa Su! A wonderful role model for absolutely everyone.

coolso 5y ago
I really hope her next step is starting a fab right here in the USA.
- mkl 5y ago
  Entering the fab market as a new player seems very unlikely. To have any hope of competitiveness it would be incredibly expensive (much more than all their cash on hand, which is 1/8 of Intel's), and even then it wouldn't have much chance of success any time soon. AMD spun off GlobalFoundries for good reason.

phlipski 5y ago

Hard to believe that it was less than 10 years ago when AMD sold their Austin campus and leased it back! They were literally circling the drain.... https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/03/amd-sells-its-austin-hq-for-164-million-to-raise-some-quick-cash/ https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/03/amd-s...

atlgator 5y ago

I switched over fully to AMD with Ryzen 3 and haven't looked back. However, AMD uses TSMC to fabricate all their chips (as does Apple, Broadcom, others). I am very concerned about TSMC given the geopolitical risk with China and the catastrophic effects it will have on AMD.

kd913 5y ago

I feel people have underestimated how potentially impactful the AMD/XLNX merger can be. AMD now has a complete stack to compete in the DCG. They have bespoke accelerators, storage, FPGA, CPU (x86, ARM), (lowest latency) smartNICs and GPU. They now are a player in the 5g communications market. Automotive they are already competing with multiple deals with Tesla. They can now compete stronger on the ML front with their integration with Xilinx. You name your niche, AMD can build it for you. The accelerators are a future bet to eventual physical limitations with Moore's law.

TomVDB 5y ago
How did Intel leverage the acquisition of Altera? And why would it be different for AMD?
- kd913 5y ago
  The market and tech is in a completely different position to what it was back then. Xilinx is well ahead of Altera. Xilinx already is extremely profitable in it's current markets already. Xilinx and AMD provide extreme supply overlap, and greater bargaining position with TSMC. AMD can leverage the IP much better within it's own products and vice versa. The times of easy performance wins are gone. Accelerators are the future now. Market is much better suited, software toolkits are better.
  - pclmulqdq 5y ago
    Xilinx got ahead because of the intel-altera merger. Stratix V was better than the Xilinx 7 series. Now they are giving Intel the opportunity to catch up. My guess is that AMD bought Xilinx either for fab capacity or for some underlying tech expertise that they needed.
- JonChesterfield 5y ago
  Intel appears to have squandered it. Strangled in bureaucracy at a guess. Not much sign of the fabled FPGA/x64 hybrid from Intel. AMD + ATI didn't look totally smooth from the outside but the graphics cards are still with us and I'm using an APU as my desktop.

throwaway81523 5y ago

I had an impression that Intel was like Boeing some decades after the McDonnell takeover. Still cranking out product, but a messed up bureaucracy, badly managed at every level. Gelsinger may be a sharp cookie but I cringed every time I heard him say that Intel's roadmap was to take back the fab tech championship. That's like saying you're going to become the world chess champion. Maybe you really do have it in you, but it's not something you can simply buy, especially now that you're funding your competition. Can Intel pull that off without first having to be deeply remade? It's not a battle of the bankrolls and Intel doesn't necessarily have the bigger bankroll anyway.

1123581321 5y ago
I don’t know about the analogy since it’s like the former chess champion promising to return, which has at least happened in women’s. There is a catalyst, which is a top engineer returning to restore a focused engineering culture and remove those unhelpful management layers thats slowed them down. They are also pursuing new fab business they have a chance to win and learning from fab partners where they have conceded they need external help. They also are to an extent playing a financial game and appear to be extracting strategic investment from the US and EU. I’m not saying Intel’s going to succeed, but it’s not quite more of the same.
- throwaway81523 5y ago
  Eh, Botvinnik returned as world champion, twice even (there were two 1-year gaps in his reign, due to losses against Tal and Smyslov). This is more like the washed-up Bobby Fischer's 1992 return match against the even more washed up Spassky, two generations behind his glory days, while Karpov and Kasparov watched bemusedly in their rear-view mirrors. We'll see how it goes, but why would EU fund Intel instead of a European fab? Don't forget that semiconductor tech is strategic for everyone. Taiwan, Korean, and China aren't sitting still either. Good luck, Intel. You're going to need it.
  - 1123581321 5y ago
    Presumably lack of choice of qualified vendors. You can read more about the EU's willingness to invest, to the point of introducing legislation, here: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-01-20/eu-to-unveil-chips-plan-early-next-month-to-fund-more-production?sref=dl4Ey0es https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-01-20/eu-to-unv...

justin66 5y ago

Something that has gone unmentioned in these comments: Intel has a lot more debt than AMD (38B vs 661M on 12/31). That does affect their comparative market cap by, you know, roughly 37 billion dollars. (give or take some amount related to their credit rating and the very low cost of money right now, I would think, and if you want something to argue about there's always the fact that Intel has an even better credit rating than AMD...) Intel has much, much more income than AMD and they're valued similarly by the market and... that is not a mystery. https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/INTC/financials?p=INTC https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/INTC/financials?p=INTC https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/AMD/financials?p=AMD https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/AMD/financials?p=AMD

01100011 5y ago

If China attacks Taiwan we're going to see companies which are dependent on TSMC drop into the toilet. IMHO, invest in Intel to hedge your bets. The old man is down but he is not out. Intel is 'too big to fail' because it is the only somewhat modern fab in the US with scale.