With AMD’s next-generation EPYC “Venice” processors set to launch this year, the company is optimistic that the server chips will extend its performance lead over Intel’s Xeon CPUs and allow it to continue taking market share from the rival.
This is according to Madhu Rangarajan, corporate vice president of compute and enterprise AI products at AMD, who told CRN in an interview last month that the chip designer is especially bullish about its server CPUs prospects this year because Intel’s upcoming Xeon “Diamond Rapids” chips are expected to lack multithreading, a common feature in x86 CPUs.
AMD’s current generation of EPYC CPUs, code-named “Turin,” has a “pretty big gap” over Intel’s latest Xeon 6 “Granite Rapids” processors, Rangarajan (pictured above) said. The gap in question refers to AMD’s goal to deliver leadership in performance, performance-per-watt and performance-per-dollar, according to the executive.
“And then Venice is coming soon, and you can expect the gap to be opened up even further,” he said. “And we understand that our competitor has made some interesting choices on multithreading and so on.”
In the fourth quarter of last year, AMD’s share of x86-based server CPU shipments grew 3.1 points year over year and 1.1 points sequentially to 28.8 percent against Intel’s 71.2 percent, marketing a record high for the company, according to Mercury Research. This, in turn, resulted in AMD’s revenue share hitting 41.3 percent in servers, the company previously said.
Multithreading Helps With Software License Costs
Multithreading also helps enterprise customers get the most out of their software licenses, particularly when it comes to those licensed on a per-core basis, the executive said.
“Especially when you have workloads that are relatively idle, if you have two threads, the second thread can make progress while the first thread is idle and vice versa, so your software license goes a lot further,” Rangarajan said.
“So if you now look at it from a [total cost of ownership] perspective that includes software, there’s a significant advantage to just having that second thread available,” he added. “So that’s why we think there is a really strong value prop to SMT, and we will continue to have that and continue to improve that and continue to sell that.”
AMD Faces Growing Arm Competition In The Cloud And Elsewhere
While AMD sees opportunity to take more server CPU share away from Intel, both companies must contend with growing competition from those who are developing Arm-based processors, which includes hyperscale customers like Amazon Web Services; their biggest AI chip rival, Nvidia; and, starting later this year, Arm itself.
Rangarajan and Berg spoke to CRN before Nvidia revealed its ambitions to build a multibillion-dollar CPU business starting with its custom Vera processor and before Arm announced the AGI CPU, the rival’s first silicon product. Both were unveiled earlier this month with the aim of targeting agentic AI workloads in data centers.