Mercury Research has published the results of a study confirming that AMD continues to gain market share in the x86 CPU sector, and that as expected the big loser is being Intel. The data is very clear and easy to interpret, so let’s look at it directly.
During the first quarter of 2022, the Sunnyvale company recorded a market share of 27.7%and in the first quarter of 2023 its market share has risen to a 34.6%. These numbers confirm that, in just one year, AMD’s market share in the x86 CPU sector has risen 6.9%.
In contrast, Intel’s market share in this same market went from 72.3% during the first quarter of 2022 to 65.4% in the first quarter of 2023. This leaves us with a drop of 6.9% year over year, the same figure that AMD has earned in that period. I think it is quite clear that the 6.9% that AMD has grown has taken directly from Intel, a reality that matches what the CEO of Intel already advanced at the time.
It is important to note that this report includes sales data for all types of CPUs sold by both Intel and AMD, and also IoT (Internet of Things) solutions and SoCs. With this in mind, the APUs that the Sunnyvale firm markets for the PS5, Xbox Series X-Series S and Steam Deck consoles should also be included, at least in theory.
There is no doubt that AMD has been racking up great success since the launch of the Zen architecture in 2017, and it is indisputable that this was a totally wise move on the part of the company led by Lisa Su, since it allowed it to return to compete with Intel at a level that few of us had dared to imagine, and in the end it brought the giant from Sunnyvale to a position where it was able to outperform Intel on every level.
That turning point came with the arrival of Zen 3., which was the first architecture released by AMD in the last ten years to outperform Intel in both IPC and single- and multi-thread performance, as well as thermal efficiency and power consumption. Remember that when AMD released the Ryzen 9 5950X, equipped with 16 cores and 32 threads, the most powerful thing Intel launched was the Core i9-11900K, a chip with 8 cores and 16 threads that also had a lower IPC.
Today both companies are quite even, and it is that Intel has made a remarkable comeback with Alder Lake-S, and has managed to strengthen its position with Raptor Lake-S. We will see what happens with the next generations of both giants, but the important thing is that the competition between the two is fierce again, and this is good for consumers.
