For well more than two decades, Intel has been the undisputed leader in the market for datacenter CPUs. Intel's Xeon processors powered the vast majority of servers, whereas AMD's processors commanded a single-digit market share just some seven or eight years ago. However, the situation has changed drastically. While Intel's Xeon CPUs still power the majority of servers, the most expensive machines now use AMD's EPYC processors. This is why AMD's datacenter business unit now outsells Intel's datacenter and AI business group, as observed by SemiAnalysis.

Indeed, AMD's datacenter segment revenue reached $3.549 billion in the third quarter, whereas Intel's datacenter and AI group's earnings were $3.3 billion in Q3 2024. Just two years ago, Intel's DCAI group earned $5 billion - $6 billion per quarter. But as AMD's EPYC processors have gained competitive advantages over Intel's Xeon CPUs, Intel has had to sell its server chips at significant discounts, which has reduced the company's revenue and profit margins.

It is noteworthy that Intel's flagship 128-core Xeon 6980P 'Granite Rapids' processor costs $17,800, making it the company's most expensive standard CPU ever. By contrast, AMD's most expensive 96-core EPYC 6979P processor costs $11,805. If demand for Intel's Xeon 6900-series processors remains high and the company can supply these CPUs in decent volumes, then Intel's datacenter revenue will likely get back on track and surpass AMD's datacenter sales. However, Intel still has to ramp up production of its Granite Rapids products.

While both Intel and AMD now earn around $3-3.5 billion per quarter selling datacenter CPUs, Nvidia earns much more from its datacenter GPUs and networking chips, which are required to make AI processors work in concert in datacenters. In fact, sales of Nvidia's networking products totaled $3.668 billion in the company's second quarter of fiscal 2025. Meanwhile, compute GPU sales reached $22.604 billion in Q2 FY2025, which far surpasses the combined sales of Intel and AMD datacenter hardware. Altogether, Nvidia sold nearly $42 billion worth of AI and HPC GPUs in the first half of this year, and it is likely that the company will sell even more datacenter processors in the second half.

By: DocMemory
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