AMD was able to beat Intel to 7-nanometer chips because of a difference in the two companies’ business models.
Chipmaker AMD rose over 15% on Friday, bucking a mostly down day for tech stocks. Its primary rival, Intel, fell over 15%.
The large stock moves come a day after Intel reported earnings. Although earnings beat expectations, Intel’s stock fell after it offered disappointing Q3 earnings guidance, and said its latest-generation chips would be delayed, preventing 7-nanometer chips from appearing in computers until 2022 and servers until 2023.
Meanwhile, AMD’s 7-nanometer chips are currently shipping inside laptops.
These next-generation chips should offer significantly higher performance, which is critical in computer processors. 7-nanometer refers to the size of a single transistor and, in general, the closer a chipmaker can pack its transistors together, the more efficient a processor can be.
