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Advanced Micro Devices is on a roll with chip releases, the likes of which it hasn’t achieved in more than a decade.
On the back of solid and consistent execution, the Ryzen 2000-series of PC processors launches this week and addresses several critical consumer markets.
Previously called the Pinnacle Ridge platform, this new family of processors is aimed at the DIY (do-it-yourself) and personal-computer (PC) gaming markets, in addition to computer manufacturers such as Dell and HP The chips offer a better value and performance alternative to Intel Core-series, which has a dominant market share.
Rising market share
But the company is making strides. AMD claimed as much as a 50% share at component-specific retailers in 2017 and a resulting rise in market share to 12% in the fourth quarter from 9.9% a year earlier.
Early reviews of the new chips indicate performance and feature improvements are solid over the previous generation and outperform the latest offerings from Intel in specific multi-tasking workloads. This is considered a “minor revision” of the previous chips, to tweak and perfect the current architecture rather than completely revising it. That is a task assigned to the “Zen 2” products coming in 2019.
CEO’s mandate
The launch shows that CEO Lisa Su’s mandate of continued execution is working, creating a steady pipeline of products that address critical segments. She’s focusing on share growth in premium markets where the company is most likely to achieve it.
Over the past year, AMD has launched dozens of new products in the processor and graphics chip markets. Those include the first-generation Ryzen processor, the business-targeted Ryzen PRO family and the enthusiast-class Ryzen Threadripper, which pushed performance ahead of what Intel offered in the same category. In the server space, EPYC brought AMD back in the discussion for data center processor sales, an area it had dropped to nearly 0% share. HPE, Dell, Cray, Microsoft and others have announced EPYC-based deployments. Ryzen Mobile created a product for thin and light notebooks with several technology advantages that can challenge Intel’s dominance in that part of the market.
Competitive in graphics
In graphics, AMD launched several consumer and professional products based on its Vega architecture, bringing the company back into the competitive world of high-end gaming. Nvidia maintains market share leadership, but AMD is back in the game. Its Radeon brand gained more than 10% revenue share in discrete graphics chips last year, though how much of that is a result of cryptocurrency trading is up in the air.
AMD vs Intel
This most recent second-generation Ryzen processor launch is interesting on its own, but if you look at the bigger picture, it proves that AMD can compete in markets and drive innovation despite having significantly lower R&D and marketing budgets than Intel. Intel realizes it is competing against a different AMD than existed prior to 2017.
There is no reason or roadblock to prevent AMD from continuing to execute on its processor roadmaps and providing new high-performance products for these market segments. I still have a bit of concern about AMD’s graphics division roadmap and execution, but the company has made internal moves to redirect some of the talent that helped put the processor division on track to lead the graphics group down the same route.
Ryan Shrout is the founder and lead analyst at Shrout Research, and the owner of PC Perspective. Follow him on Twitter @ryanshrout.