While Intel Corp. says data-center customers are “digesting,” they appear to nonetheless be bellying as much as a longtime rival’s buffet.
Advanced Micro Devices Inc.’s server-chip gross sales aren’t having any of the problems that its large rival mentioned final week (when Intel said data-center sales dropped by 20%) leaving traders with the apparent conclusion: AMD
AMD,
should be taking some market share away from Intel
INTC,
within the coveted data-center enterprise. AMD reported record quarterly sales Tuesday afternoon, and Chief Executive Lisa Su revealed that data-center gross sales had doubled from the identical time final 12 months.
AMD executives and traders have long dreamed of again becoming a legitimate competitor to Intel in the server and data-center market, and Su seems to have made that dream come true. Its Epyc line of server chips skilled large gross sales progress within the first quarter that Intel’s Xeon didn’t. Unfortunately, AMD once more prevented offering uncooked gross sales figures to guage, but at the least Su gave a qualitative measure separate from the also-booming semi-custom enterprise, which supplies chips for each of the brand new gaming consoles available on the market.
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“Based on both AMD and Intel’s earnings reports, I do believe that AMD took a bit of server share from Intel,” mentioned Patrick Moorhead, principal analyst at Moor Insights and Strategy. “AMD unfortunately does not report Epyc revenue and blends with semi-custom, but I do believe Epyc grew revenue while Xeon revenue declined.”
AMD additionally believes that momentum in knowledge heart will proceed. Executives added greater than $1 billion to their annual income steering, and mentioned gross sales within the present quarter would develop by greater than 85%. One analyst, Vivek Arya with BankofAmerica Securities, requested the place AMD will get that confidence, opening Su up for a dig at Intel.
“Could you give us some sense of what has changed in the last three months, because your competitor was recently talking about cloud digestion, and you’re raising guidance by $1.3 billion,” Arya requested.
“I think we saw actually strong signals in the first quarter that it would be a strong data-center year for us,” Su mentioned. “The supply chain has been tight overall for the semiconductor industry, and we’ve been working very closely with our supply-chain partners and so we also have good visibility to additional supply as we go throughout the year.”
While declining to name out the bigger rival that for years has foiled her predecessors’ makes an attempt to compete with it, Su nonetheless mentioned what she wanted to — whereas Intel may face a requirement drawback for its server chips, AMD is solely involved about provide because it enters what she known as a “high performance computing mega cycle.” That reality alone ought to be sufficient to provide executives at Intel indigestion.
