Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger Declares 'AMD's Lead Is Over' After Alder Lake, Sapphire Rapids

[Lightwreather]

Summary

Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger declared that his company is back in an interview with CRN.

Quotes

Quote

In his own words:

"So this period of time when people could say, 'Hey, [AMD] is leading,' that's over. We are back with a very defined view of what it requires to be leadership in every dimension: leadership product, leadership [chip] packaging, leadership process, leadership software, unquestioned leadership on critical new workloads like AI, graphics, media, power-performance, enabling again the ecosystem. This is what we will be doing with aggressive actions and programs over the next couple of years."

Aggressive might be an understatement. Intel hasn't just talked up the performance of upcoming processors—it's also committed to building custom x86 CPUs via IDM 2.0, pursued leading RISC-V chip designer SiFive, and revealed plans to build massive fabs in Europe and the U.S. as the regions look to improve their supply chains.

"We're not 80-ish percent share because we don't satisfy the customers and satisfy the market and enable the partners as well," Gelsinger said. "And yeah, AMD has done a solid job over the last couple of years. We won't dismiss them of the good work that they've done, but that's over with Alder Lake and Sapphire Rapids."

"Intel is back," Gelsinger told CRN. "These are the best products in their category. We have the best supply situation. We have the best quality software assets. The most respected, venerable technology brand in the industry. Yeah, that's what your channel readers need to be delivering to their customers."

 

My thoughts

The whole interview is linked below incase you're interested (second source), but based on this I'm starting to like Pat a lot more. For one, He mentioned "The competition" by their name (in this case AMD). But apart from that, It does take a lot of confidence to declare that "Intel is back" (but then again, it is sort of part of his job as the CEO). But well, we'll have to wait to see if his claims hold up or not (and for their sakes and for the sake of competition, I hope He's right)

Sources

Tom's Hardware

CRN

[givingtnt]

[da na]

So I guess this is the time when Intel takes back over and we'll have to wait another 8 years for a new or leading CPU from AMD again!

[Lightwreather]

1 minute ago, Mel0nMan said:

So I guess this is the time when Intel takes back over and we'll have to wait another 8 years for a new or leading CPU from AMD again!

I hope not

(I look down upon you for even thinking so.... /s)

[tankyx]

2 minutes ago, Mel0nMan said:

So I guess this is the time when Intel takes back over and we'll have to wait another 8 years for a new or leading CPU from AMD again!

Lets see if Lisa Su tries to bulldoze Intel ...

[da na]

Just now, tankyx said:

Lets see if Lisa Su tries to bulldoze Intel ...

Epyc joke

[BobVonBob]

If Alder Lake can back up his claims I'd be down for a few years of Intel and AMD leapfrogging each other for the performance crown. Intel 3rd-7th gen showed what happens when one of them gets too dominant.

[WhitetailAni]

12 minutes ago, Mel0nMan said:

Epyc joke

Real ripper of a pun

 

AMD's Ryzen high on its success, perhaps Intel will flood them though

[GreatnessRD]

Gelsinger wants the smoke! Let's see what type time he really on come Nov 4th.

[Moonzy]

Hope the 12th gen is successful and without small bugs that plagues the AMD platform

 

I'm sick of instability of my x570 platform

[VanayadGaming]

Alder Lake in leaks shows that it is equal or higher than Ryzen 5000, but that is also a pretty old (1yr+) arch. 

[Inkz]

I think the biggest news is Intel admitting to being behind AMD

[NinJake]

We won't know if anything he says is true until it actually launches. I'm looking forward to see the new chips from both Intel and AMD.

[Dracarris]

When is AMD expected to release their next gen? And do we have any clue which improvements over 5000 to expect?

[poochyena]

I could see this being true if AMD has trouble producing chips due to shortages and competition for fab space.

[jagdtigger]

Just because they can make more it wont make it any better....

[IkeaGnome]

I wonder if this has to do with them getting away from traditional benchmarks, and wanting us to not use benchmarks to compare them to AMD...

[porina]

Just read the source article, since short quotes can put things out of context. My read of it is that he's not saying leadership in the sense of product X will beat product Y in a specific measure. He's looking at leadership from a higher viewpoint. Platform level delivery. Driving the industry forwards. Of course, that does imply good products also, but isn't the sole focus.

 

If we take what is currently known about Alder Lake, architecturally they should have a good shot at overtaking Zen 3, give or take the inevitably arguments on what should be compared to what. Focusing on P-cores alone, based on the often loved if irrelevant to most people Cinebench, Rocket Lake's IPC is about 6% down on Zen 3. I forget the exact number claimed, but Alder Lake's IPC further increase is claimed to be 18 or 19% on average. That should put it clear past Zen 3, and peak clock should also easily exceed Zen 3, at the cost of efficiency. The balance between performance and efficiency is a choice for the system builder. Yes, Zen 3 has been out for around a year. Yes, Intel is late to reach parity with TSMC 7nm, but that is coming together now. Big cache Zen 3 might help counter in come cases but it isn't likely to make any significant difference to Cinebench like workloads. Zen 4 may or may not recapture the lead, but that is probably quite a way after Alder Lake and we may see some leapfrogging.

[Master Disaster]

Who really cares anyway? They all know X86 is heading the way of southbridges, IDE and ISA which is why they're all scrambling to jump on the ARM/RISC train as fast as possible.

[porina]

3 minutes ago, valdyrgramr said:

I dunno.  I mean he, or Intel at least, has been making this sorta claim for the past few iterations and yet they haven't been able to compete.  I'd prefer if they competed, don't get me wrong, but it does feel like marketing bs.

How do you define compete? In logically comparable cases, they may be a bit behind but not so much so to make the product worthless. Put it another way, performance wise IMO Intel are less behind AMD in the CPU space, than AMD are behind nvidia in the GPU space. Are AMD not competing in GPUs?

 

On the desktop, which seems to be most important for this forum's audience, Intel has both an updated process that should be competitive against TSMC 7nm on both performance and power, and a significant architecture update. 

[RejZoR]

I'll believe it when I see it. I'm genuinely excited about Intel ARC. Not so much about their CPU's.

[Blademaster91]

Intel needs to back up their claims, this is just PR talk to hype up shareholders. But I think the more important news of this is Intel possibly admitting Alder Lake won't be competitive with AMD.

[porina]

3 minutes ago, valdyrgramr said:

but that's kind of up to interpretation.

Looking forward to the "interpretation" on this forum when it releases then?  It will be interesting to see how it performs, if we ever get past the endless argument of what to compare and how. 

[Falkentyne]

15 minutes ago, Blademaster91 said:

Intel needs to back up their claims, this is just PR talk to hype up shareholders. But I think the more important news of this is Intel possibly admitting Alder Lake won't be competitive with AMD.

It will be very competitive.  Haven't you seen the leaks?

Or are you talking about power consumption?

Gaming performance seems to be under as much NDA as USA's nuclear codes.

It's obvious the techtubers already know but can't say anything until the embargo lifts.

[Blademaster91]

1 hour ago, Falkentyne said:

It will be very competitive.  Haven't you seen the leaks?

Or are you talking about power consumption?

Gaming performance seems to be under as much NDA as USA's nuclear codes.

It's obvious the techtubers already know but can't say anything until the embargo lifts.

Some of the leaks could be true, but its probably more of assumptions based on rumored performance gains. I take leaks with a lot of salt until a product is actually released.

I've seen power consumption "leaks" that still look high compared to AMD, but modern GPU's still consume much more power.

Gaming performance I would be interested in, but games would have to be optimized for Alder Lake. Price is another factor, leaked prices so far of CPU's and boards seems like Alder Lake is going to be a more expensive platform.