The article misses that months before the ARM announcement, AWS announced AMD based instances being available in m5 and r5 classes, and are cheaper than the default Intel offerings. If anything Intel might be afraid is that because the workloads that can be achieved are comparable.
AMD are in a great place. TSMC's 7nm is in great shape (unlike Intel's 10nm), and AMD's multi-chip architecture allows them to get vastly better effective yields for high-core-count “chips”. They will be selling superior CPU to Intel's and they will be making them at significantly lower cost, while Intel is struggling to compete, stuck with monolithic chips on 14nm.
I have not met anyone who deployed the new AMD stuff at scale and is happy with the outcome. The new architecture shines on small codes like SPEC and then falls apart in large, branchy, pointer-chasing codes that everyone runs in production. I would not say AMD is “in a great place” with their current product. They are putting slight pressure on Intel on the very low end and filling some very specialized niches but that’s about it.
Is there no benchmark that measures the EPYC and Xeon chips on "large, branchy, pointer-chasing codes that everyone runs in production"? From everything I've seen, the Zen architecture is a win across the board.
That's an interesting perspective, thanks. I'd be curious to see how AMD's Zen 2 next year will play though. They should have a big power/performance to price advantage over Intel unless they're forced to cut prices.
I don't think anyone has an incentive to release findings because that will just sour their future work with AMD and counteract any pricing concessions they are getting for waving the AMD platform around under Intel's noses. Same for POWER, for what that's worth.
That said, Intel’s 14nm is very mature though. The yields are likely very good at this point given how long they have been using it. Knowing it inside out also likely allows them to squeeze a little more performance out of it.
A pity about their 10nm. Won’t be surprised if they have given up on it by now and have shifted all resources to 7nm. Hopefully 7nm comes online before 14nm completely gives out.
