AMD's Desktop PC Market Share Skyrockets Amid Intel's Raptor Lake CPU Crashing Scandal (tomshardware.com) 17
An anonymous reader shares a report: AMD has gained a substantial 5.7 percentage points of share of the desktop x86 CPU market in the third quarter compared to Q2, the largest quarterly share gain since we began tracking the market share reports in 2016. It also represents an incredible ten percentage point improvement over the prior year. AMD also raked in a strong increase in revenue share, jumping 8.5 percentage points over the prior quarter, indicating that it is selling a strong mix of higher-end CPU models.
During the quarter, AMD launched its new Ryzen 9000-series family of processors amid a scandal related to stability issues with Intel's Raptor Lake chips, which generated a flood of negative press for the company over the course of several months, and inventory adjustments for one of Intel's customers. AMD now commands 28.7% of the desktop processor market. AMD also continued to gain share in the laptop and server markets, though its gains on the desktop side of the business were the most impressive, according to Mercury Research.
During the quarter, AMD launched its new Ryzen 9000-series family of processors amid a scandal related to stability issues with Intel's Raptor Lake chips, which generated a flood of negative press for the company over the course of several months, and inventory adjustments for one of Intel's customers. AMD now commands 28.7% of the desktop processor market. AMD also continued to gain share in the laptop and server markets, though its gains on the desktop side of the business were the most impressive, according to Mercury Research.
Boeing & Intel should merge (Score:5, Funny)
it would simplify the bankruptcy paperwork.
Bucking Feancounters!
Re: (Score:2)
The bankruptcy vultures would get very fat.
Are we sure that Intel has solved their issues? (Score:3)
It's still a bit unclear if the latest patches have actually solved the issues that Intel have had with their processors.
Re: Are we sure that Intel has solved their issues (Score:5, Informative)
Let's say for a second that they have, they finally figured out they were the problem and solved it with a microcode update that stopped the chip from using too much power and cooking itself.
They still aren't replacing affected models except if they fail during warranty, so they have destroyed their used value. And you can't count on the existing chips not to have degraded sufficiently that they will fail shortly out of warranty, so now people who bought two generations of Intel CPU not only can't trust their own PC, but they also can't feel smug about it so they won't be going free advertising for Intel at least until they replace it.
When you add to that the fact that AMD now has the fastest CPU in every class... Investors have to be wondering whether they need to pull out now before it gets worse.
Re: (Score:2)
They're not pushing their newest CPUs anywhere near as hard so it shouldn't be an issue going forward.
Explanation (Score:2)
Their full explanation on what was happening sounds legitimate. Basically an algorithm was dumping too much voltage to idled CPU cores in very specific scenarios. The explanation in latest microcode fix sounds plausible that it would prevent this from happening in the future. Any chips fried from this happening already aren't repairable, though, Intel will replace them under warranty that they just extended for another year.
Re:Explanation (Score:4, Interesting)
Modern processors are highly complex beasts. So complex, you cannot boot them alone. You may have heard of Intel Management Engine, and AMD has an equivalent. This is a management CPU, a lightwieght processor. This processor boots up and manages the main processor - particularly in things like power management and frequency scaling.
There are parameters burned into every processor that identify it - what each core's max speed is, various power modes and even the "golden core" - the one processor core that performs the best, so for single threaded loads, that core can be boosted beyond normal.
Some of those details are made available to the OS, but often the management CPU is responsible for the moment-by-moment operations - setting the requested voltages and currents as needed and configuring the CPU clock speeds to match the workloads. This is done by a separate processor because of the difficulty in having the main processor request voltage and frequency changes (it needs to execute code in order to do this, and whilst doing so, it's having its clock speed and voltages change which means if something goes wrong, it can hang if the power glitches at the wrong moment). The management CPU can easily make sure these transitions happen during safe moments in each core.
Microcode generally refers to a ROM coded section of the instruction decoder, however in a modern processor, that's just a minor bit - there's also the very low level firmware the management CPU runs to manage the processor complex. Basically another layer of firmware.
It's turtles all the way down, and even your processor is controlled by software. By the time the processor gets around to executing code at FFFF:0000, tons of other code has already been running.
This operating code is lower level than the IME firmware that runs things like vPro and such - which are applications running on the IME under an operating system. The "NSA" special CPUs simply have an IME that does nothing other than CPU management.
stay out of the Raptor pit and don't over power th (Score:2)
stay out of the Raptor pit and don't over power the fence.
That big pump breaker takes an lot of work to reset.
AMD and power consumtion (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re:AMD and power consumtion (Score:5, Informative)
AMD seems to be fine on energy efficiency too: https://www.cpubenchmark.net/p... [cpubenchmark.net]
Re:AMD and power consumtion (Score:5, Interesting)
Basically, the truth is that the recent era of Intel chips that were known for being so much more efficient than the corresponding AMD offerings only managed to accomplish that by fudging benchmarks and sabotaging the their official compiler used for all Windows software - a fact they were sued for in court and lost, twice. Despite this, Intel fanboys have been loyally astroturfing over those facts for decades, so it hasn't been common knowledge amongst consumers. For Linux users, who by and large never used Intel's compiler in the first place, this truth has been apparent all along though. As Linux gained ground in the gaming arena, Intel was pressured to show real results, and the outcome is this; they can't compete with AMD on fair terms without a bunch of illegal monopoly-supporting misinformation and criminal activity backing it up, and when they tried they just fry their own chips. Make no mistake about it, something running that fast is gonna generate heat and guzzle electricity. Those are the laws of physics.
Re: (Score:2)
AMD CPUs are currently more energy efficient than Intel CPUs. Intel has been slipping badly across the board - efficiency has dropped for the last few generations.
Maybe (Score:3)
Now hire the Jim Keller of GPUs... (Score:1)
Good news. I guess having Jim Keller design your architecture really helps. Yes, the same guy who helped Apple with their ARM designs, and then Tesla with theirs. Now if only there was a GPU "Jim Keller" that could hop from company to company and ignite such developments to challenge Nvidia, that would be just great for everybody.
Ahhh, the laws of the current economic reality (Score:4, Insightful)
Investors demand endless growth.
Once great companies always degrade when they get too big.
Once great independent companies degrade when they are acquired.
The degradation continues until failure.
New companies rise to take their place, but they are bound by the same insane logic.
Start small, get good, get great, keep trying to grow beyond what's reasonable, rot, decay, bankruptcy, rinse, repeat
The system is broken
Re: (Score:2)
It's true that nothing lasts forever. Not plants, animals, or businesses. A young and hungry upstart simply cannot maintain that mentality forever once it is stable and successful. Even the people who join a startup are not the people who seek employment at big, stable companies where you can just turn the crank and get a steady paycheck.