The company could use a pricing advantage to take server chip market share from the dominant Intel
The outspoken Forrest Norrod has never shied away from challenges. Previously, as a server chief at Dell, he helped the company’s data-center hardware business flourish, and he loved experimenting with new types of servers.
He has a new challenge as AMD’s server chief: to bring back the glory days of chipmaker’s server business, which is now in tatters. A mega-chip called Naples, which has 32 cores and is based on the Zen architecture, will be the first test of AMD’s return to the server market.
The Naples chip will ship to server makers in the second quarter of this year. The benchmarks of Naples are competitive with Intel’s chips in head-to-head comparisons, said Norrod, senior vice president and general manager of AMD’s Enterprise, Embedded, and Semi-Custom Business Group.
AMD’s return will add much-needed competition to the server chip market, which Intel dominates. Intel has more than a 90 percent market share, and AMD’s goal is to steadily siphon off customers.
Customers may welcome AMD’s server chips because Intel’s chips are priced high, with the most expensive chip selling for $8,898. Lower priced AMD chips could give customers bargaining power.
“If we look at how they price their consumer products, it stands to reason that the versions of Naples will also undercut Intel’s pricing,” said Nathan Brookwood, principal analyst at Insight 64.
An AMD discount is already happening with the company’s new Ryzen desktop chips, which are significantly cheaper than Intel’s gaming chips.
The Naples server chips are based on the x86 architecture, but they don’t have an official name yet.
