AMD Posing Major Challenge to Intel for Server Leadership

This week I was at the AMD Epyc processor launch in San Francisco. I’ve been at a lot of AMD events, and up until this one, the general message was that AMD was almost as good as Intel but not as expensive. This year it is very different; Intel has stumbled badly, and AMD is moving to take the leadership role in the data center, so its message isn’t that it is nearly as good but cheaper anymore; it is that it has better customer focus, better security and better performance. Intel’s slip really was around trust, and as Intel seemed to abandon the processor segment, OEMs and customers lost faith, and AMD is capitalizing on that slip. Lisa Su, AMD’s CEO, did the keynote. She has been in the news of late, because she has been building her team up with well-connected top tier players ironically addressing the very problem that took Intel to its knees: an inadequate succession plan in the face of an unplanned CEO departure.