[HN Gopher] AMD vs. Intel CPU Market Share
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       AMD vs. Intel CPU Market Share
        
       Author : temp8964
       Score  : 133 points
       Date   : 2021-06-18 18:39 UTC (4 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.cpubenchmark.net)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.cpubenchmark.net)
        
       | AmVess wrote:
       | Steam hardware survey is another look. Of course limited to those
       | who use Steam.
       | 
       | https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey
        
         | esturk wrote:
         | Steam is analogous to PC gaming at this point and there's no
         | indication there's any bias towards either group so it's a good
         | estimate.
         | 
         | From the chart, it looks like Intel lost 10% of the PC gaming
         | market share in just 1 year.
        
       | __initbrian__ wrote:
       | What happened in '06?
        
         | terramex wrote:
         | Intel stopped using Pentium 4's _NetBurst_ architecture and
         | switched to _Core_ derived from Pentium III
         | 
         |  _High power consumption and heat intensity, the resulting
         | inability to effectively increase clock rate, and other
         | shortcomings such as an inefficient pipeline were the primary
         | reasons why Intel abandoned the NetBurst microarchitecture and
         | switched to a different architectural design, delivering high
         | efficiency through a small pipeline rather than high clock
         | rates._
         | 
         | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NetBurst_(microarchitecture)
         | 
         | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_Core_(microarchitecture)
        
         | zsmi wrote:
         | Core 2 Duo https://www.businessnewsdaily.com/10817-slideshow-
         | intel-proc...
        
         | mumblemumble wrote:
         | The Intel Core line of CPUs was launched in January 2006.
        
       | maxk42 wrote:
       | Fascinating that AMD is not dominating in the arena of servers:
       | That's where I would've expected the biggest adoption. They're
       | generally more affordable than Intel especially in the arena of
       | performance per watt, and the differences in feature parity for
       | things like media playback have less of an impact there.
       | 
       | Can anyone give me insight into why Intel is so far ahead in this
       | space?
        
         | ekianjo wrote:
         | production capacity. AMD cant ship nearly as much as they would
         | like.
        
         | gnarbarian wrote:
         | long-running existing contracts is my guess
        
         | sascha_sl wrote:
         | It will take a long time, but you can still see the uptick. Zen
         | has the potential to take over Intel at least, considering
         | density and pricing, they are exceptional value.
        
         | karavelov wrote:
         | > PerformanceTest software only runs on Windows OS
         | 
         | I think this excludes huge population of servers as we know
         | Windows is not dominant there.
        
           | mey wrote:
           | How many people outside of a homelab/lab going to run a
           | performance test suite on a fleet of servers? The sample size
           | must be interestingly skewed.
           | 
           | This may be more useful information for the server market,
           | even if old.
           | 
           | https://www.tomshardware.com/news/amd-vs-
           | intel-q3-2020-cpu-m...
        
             | lumost wrote:
             | It's pretty common actually. A server buy can easily be an
             | 8 figure deal, getting servers that turn out to be stupidly
             | configured for your apps that your stuck with for 5 years
             | is exceptionally dumb.
        
               | mey wrote:
               | I should've emphasized lab before of homelab. Agree,
               | doing a full stack hardware validation (managed to even
               | get a full multi-vendor stack deployed into a Dell
               | validation colo to do our internal performance test).
               | Even then, we only ran out _own_ performance tests, as we
               | cared about our workload, not a generic workload suite.
               | 
               | Edit: Additionally, we only did that work on a single set
               | of systems prior to purchase, not the systems post
               | purchase, so 1 of N, instead of rerunning on N. It was
               | presumed that performance would remain the same on same
               | hardware configuration etc.
        
           | qw3rty01 wrote:
           | Are you sure? Statista has windows at a 71% server market
           | share in 2019:
           | https://www.statista.com/statistics/915085/global-server-
           | sha...
           | 
           | Edit: Because people seem to think that the numbers are made
           | up, here's some more sources with not quite as high, but
           | similarly dominant numbers:
           | 
           | Red Hat: https://www.redhat.com/en/blog/red-hat-continues-
           | lead-linux-... - microsoft @ 49% in 2017
           | 
           | t4: https://www.t4.ai/industry/server-operating-system-
           | market-sh... - microsoft @ 47% in 2018
        
             | jakeinspace wrote:
             | I don't have access to the source, but I literally cannot
             | believe that is true.
        
               | qw3rty01 wrote:
               | it says it right in the description, which you don't need
               | a subscription to read
               | 
               | > In 2019, the Windows operating system was used on 72.1
               | percent of servers worldwide, whilst the Linux operating
               | system accounted for 13.6 percent of servers. Compared to
               | 2018, both companies experienced an increase to their
               | overall market share.
        
               | himinlomax wrote:
               | That's just unbelievable on the face of it.
        
               | dragonwriter wrote:
               | I don't think what is described as unbelievable is that
               | the source claims that, but that the claim is true.
               | 
               | (And since it describes both "Windows" and "Linux" as
               | "companies" that gained marketshare, I'm somewhat
               | suspicious of their information gathering.)
               | 
               | But not being registered with them, I don't have access
               | to what passes for their detailed source information for
               | that claim.
        
               | martinald wrote:
               | There's often dozens of Windows servers installed on site
               | in millions of offices around the world, doing various
               | tasks (email, active directory, file storage, etc).
               | 
               | I'm sure if you looked at "servers installed in a data
               | centre" then it would be closer to what you expect. But
               | there are so many servers doing "boring" jobs in
               | cupboards youll never see it totally skews the figures.
        
               | yakz wrote:
               | But if you looked at "servers installed in a data centre"
               | what you'd discover is that there's millions of servers
               | in just one building.
        
             | himinlomax wrote:
             | I'm pretty sure any one of Amazon, Google or Facebook has
             | more Linux servers than there are Windows server in the
             | world.
        
               | pjmlp wrote:
               | Where are the numbers if you are so sure?
        
             | kristopolous wrote:
             | In the wild at actual data centers I'd gladly bet $10,000
             | it's actually under 1%.
             | 
             | It'd be the easiest $10,000 I'd ever make
        
               | qw3rty01 wrote:
               | You'd be losing that bet. Larger datacenters tend to use
               | windows because of microsoft providing support contracts.
               | 
               | I don't have access to the full numbers, but I'd bet on
               | the linux side being majority red hat for the same
               | reason.
        
               | formerly_proven wrote:
               | Not only does Microsoft offer comprehensive support
               | packages for their products, but in fact the TCO of a
               | Windows Server system is almost always lower than a Linix
               | system while also having the better user productivity.
               | Considering this, any business that is serious about
               | digital transformation would do well to indeed reach for
               | Microsoft's portfolio.
               | 
               | Of course it's easy to make up statistics to show that
               | the OS made by some Sovjet hacker in his mother's
               | basement (probably using lots of stolen MS IP) is
               | supposedly more popular than the products made in the US
               | by a reputable firm such as Microsoft, but who is going
               | to believe _that_?
        
               | Bluecobra wrote:
               | Why do you need paid support for your OS?
        
               | kristopolous wrote:
               | What planet do you live on? Have you ever been to a
               | datacenter?
               | 
               | Look at top500, it's literally 0% windows,
               | https://www.top500.org/statistics/list/
               | 
               | Many of the VPS providers don't even have windows options
               | because the demand is so low it's not even worth offering
               | as a product.
               | 
               | Server farm sysadmins I know habitually lament they are
               | rusty in windows whenever it's in front of them because
               | it's completely vanished from their daily experience
               | 
               | If this was a survey of companies where the weight of
               | say, a liquor store with a 20 year old beater in the back
               | closet that they'll call a server is 1 vote, and say, all
               | of Amazon is also 1 vote, then maybe you can get that
               | number, but that's basically the only way
        
               | qw3rty01 wrote:
               | top500 is a super computer dataset, it's not really
               | relevant to general server market share
               | 
               | you could even look at Red Hat, one of microsoft's
               | competitors, who showed microsoft's market share at 49.6%
               | in 2017: https://www.redhat.com/en/blog/red-hat-
               | continues-lead-linux-...
        
               | [deleted]
        
               | hhw wrote:
               | Not all servers are web facing or live in data centres.
               | There are tons of small businesses that run servers in a
               | backroom. Those are predominantly Windows.
        
             | necheffa wrote:
             | Are these real numbers or are they counting SMB instances
             | running on commodity hardware and doing other weird junk to
             | play with the stats?
             | 
             | Windows isn't even the most used OS on Azure. Certainly
             | large deployments at Google, Facebook, Amazon, etc.
             | accounting for a huge proportion of the population aren't
             | running Windows either.
        
             | sacomo wrote:
             | I wonder if this only considers the OS that a server was
             | shipped with? Which is typically nuked as soon as the
             | customer receives it.
        
               | qw3rty01 wrote:
               | This may be true for small companies, but larger
               | businesses tend to use windows due to support contracts.
        
               | dragonwriter wrote:
               | Larger companies have no problems finding people to pay
               | to support Linux, or if they are really large (say,
               | Amazon), supporting it themselves and being who people
               | (including big companies) pay to support and host Linux
               | systems.
        
               | Symbiote wrote:
               | Servers aren't generally delivered with an unwanted OS,
               | or an unwanted Windows license.
               | 
               | If it's going to run Linux, you tick that option when
               | ordering. Or you tick "no OS".
        
         | FuriouslyAdrift wrote:
         | AMD sells server chips as quickly as they can make them. They
         | are capacity constrained.
         | https://www.nextplatform.com/2021/04/28/amd-hits-intel-below...
        
           | oblak wrote:
           | Probably why their stock price plummeted
        
         | CyberRage wrote:
         | Actually it makes a lot of sense. Some of the reasons include:
         | 
         | - Stable\known CPUs, most vendors are used to Intel.
         | 
         | - Infrastructure\Support, Intel has a lot more infrastructure
         | to support customers\contracts
         | 
         | - Long cycles, servers are more complex to replace and
         | contracts can span multiple years.
         | 
         | - Compatibility, many rely on Intel specific features or are
         | afraid to try their solution on a different CPU vendor.
         | 
         | - Relationships\Market Share, Intel still is a far bigger brand
         | with more prestige
        
         | shwestrick wrote:
         | There's a lot of caveats on this data. It's only showing the
         | ratio of people submitting reports through their benchmark
         | software, which apparently only runs on Windows. So, that makes
         | it sound like the entire space of Linux servers is excluded.
         | 
         | I'm just speculating here, but it feels to me like they're just
         | not accurately measuring the market share for servers.
        
         | TwoBit wrote:
         | Where I last worked they said it would be hard to switch to AMD
         | quickly because Intel CPUs had a feature set they were
         | dependent on and would take some time/effort to switch.
        
           | Symbiote wrote:
           | Where I work, we looked at the performance and ordered AMD. I
           | haven't thought about it since, until now.
        
         | dijit wrote:
         | The two main reasons AMD is not dominating is servers right now
         | are:
         | 
         | 1) 5 year support contracts
         | 
         | 2) OEM unavailability.
         | 
         | Even now getting an AMD server is a "go out of your way"
         | situation. Add to the chip shortage and you have people holding
         | on to hardware a bit longer or going intel for availability
         | (those are minor reasons).
         | 
         | Anecdotally I just ordered 50 or so AMD servers.
        
         | mark-wagner wrote:
         | Yes, for example in AWS the instance types with "a" appended
         | (AMD EPYC) are lower cost than the corresponding Intel-based
         | instance.
        
         | listic wrote:
         | Must be the inertia. CPUs live long in server space: where I'm
         | looking, server providers offer hardware for rent that is up to
         | 10 years old, and AMD only started to rule CPUs in 2017.
         | 
         | E.g. the CPU on the VPS I'm renting is from 2013, and it makes
         | perfect sense that it is form Intel.
        
       | _dark_matter_ wrote:
       | We also report this among Firefox Profiles:
       | https://data.firefox.com/dashboard/hardware
       | 
       | tl;dr we're not seeing much change over the past 18 months.
        
         | [deleted]
        
         | sounds wrote:
         | It also shows the largest number of users running on a 2-core
         | machine, for context.
        
           | dralley wrote:
           | And only 6% of users having an SSD.
        
             | Strom wrote:
             | That 6% Flash statistic is for Adobe Flash, a now extinct
             | software plugin.
        
       | sandeshd wrote:
       | Apple Silicon have potential to grab the 30% market share in 2-3
       | years.
        
         | NicoJuicy wrote:
         | Among gamers? /s
        
         | ClumsyPilot wrote:
         | if they give their CPU's for free to the raspberi pi
         | foundation?
        
         | tpxl wrote:
         | Apple has a 15% computer market share, of which only a fraction
         | is the new ARM processors. There is a 0% chance of them having
         | a 30% market share in the next 5 years.
        
           | esturk wrote:
           | Every percentage is a fraction so that statement doesn't mean
           | anything. But Tim Cook has said Apple sold more M1 Macs than
           | Intel-based Macs. This is an indication that fraction is over
           | 50% already.
        
       | sys_64738 wrote:
       | Where is the money made? Servers.
        
       | TonyTrapp wrote:
       | I wonder how they determine the server market share. It seems way
       | too low given that over the last year, I see offers for AMD-based
       | servers and vServers pop up everywhere at least in Germany. Many
       | hosters support AMD as an option or as the only choice.
        
         | DaiPlusPlus wrote:
         | Those would be new servers - whereas old servers purchased 3+
         | years ago are still humming away probably for another half-
         | decade to come.
         | 
         | Also, VPS/hosting are far from the entirety of the server
         | market: don't forget all the on-prem, enterprise, and SOHO
         | boxes.
        
           | TonyTrapp wrote:
           | The longevity is a good point, but if those numbers are
           | derived from users running PassMark on those servers, I would
           | suspect that they don't keep running the software on their
           | server they purchased some years ago: From my understanding,
           | people would be more likely to run this software on a
           | recently-purchased computer to evaluate its performance.
        
         | qalmakka wrote:
         | Yeah, EPYC CPUs kicks ass while Xeons cost an arm and a leg, so
         | I really don't understand how Intel could be selling more
         | server CPUs than AMD right now, unless it is due to some OEM
         | shenanigans (like on laptops)
        
           | magila wrote:
           | A lot of server customers care about more than just how good
           | the CPU itself is. Having a reliable support ecosystem and
           | platform continuity is an important consideration in the
           | server market. Intel has proven for decades that they can
           | provide these things, while AMD burned a lot of people when
           | the Opteron line was left to rot. It's going to take time for
           | AMD to prove itself a reliable supplier in the server market.
        
       | LotusEnthusiast wrote:
       | Apple is really sticking to what Jobs said:
       | 
       | "People who like software want to build their own hardware"
       | 
       | I am surprised, I thought they'd be moving towards the higher
       | margins of software and marketplace even more
        
       | CrazedGeek wrote:
       | I'm surprised AMD's laptop share increased that much (even in
       | benchmarks) -- when I went looking for an AMD laptop a couple
       | months ago, I could only find a handful that seemed good.
        
         | TonyTrapp wrote:
         | Relatively few people are probably looking for the perfect
         | laptop. The average user might just want something cheap that
         | does the basic tasks for them, and this is exactly where you
         | will find more and more AMD CPUs.
        
           | mhh__ wrote:
           | The _average_ user might not a really know what a CPU is,
           | keep on mind.
        
           | mumblemumble wrote:
           | It's also exactly where you will find absolutely nobody who
           | makes a habit of running PassMark on their computer.
           | 
           | This graph more-or-less only measures the enthusiast Windows
           | user market.
        
           | huntertwo wrote:
           | Funny that you mention that AMD CPUs are the 'cheap and
           | basic' option when it seems like over the past 5 years Intel
           | has become the inferior chip manufacturer.
        
             | TonyTrapp wrote:
             | I didn't mean to imply that the CPUs are inferior, quite
             | the contrary - they give you more bang for the buck, which
             | is why you often find them in _cheap offers_. When the AMD
             | CPUs are cheaper than the Intel CPUs, of course more
             | computer makers will put them into their cheap builds. The
             | fact that they are better CPUs is a nice bonus.
        
             | sjcoles wrote:
             | Until the 4000 series of Ryzen mobile Intel had a pretty
             | clear lead in 15-25w part market. With wider availability
             | of Ryzen 5000 series mobile CPUs I expect to see far more
             | options by Q12022.
        
         | fluidcruft wrote:
         | I would suspect it's a denominator effect of Apple dropping
         | intel chips.
        
           | 867-5309 wrote:
           | and also AMD's new integrated graphics
        
           | trynumber9 wrote:
           | I doubt it. Consider that Apple is the #4 personal computer
           | vendor after Lenovo, Dell, and HP. They have less than 10%
           | market share and many of their products are still shipping in
           | Intel versions.
        
             | esturk wrote:
             | Tim Cook have said Apple sold more M1 Macs than Intel-based
             | Macs. In a recent Gartner report, Apple held 8% of the
             | market share worldwide. This implies Intel has lost over 4%
             | of the market in just one quarter.
        
           | gpm wrote:
           | Intels drop is almost exactly equal to AMDs gain (20% market
           | share between the most recent two laptop datapoints for
           | both). If it was just intel laptops dropping out and
           | converting to apple silicon you wouldn't expect AMD to grow.
           | 
           | I suspect that macs just aren't represented in this graph,
           | probably very few people benchmarks macs when they're
           | identical to all the other macs.
        
             | [deleted]
        
             | zsmi wrote:
             | < I suspect that macs just aren't represented in this graph
             | 
             | It looks like their software doesn't support macOS so it's
             | pretty safe to say there are no Macs in the dataset.
             | 
             | Their software does support Andriod & iOS. It would be
             | interested to see how these changed if they were included.
        
               | fluidcruft wrote:
               | I know plenty of people who run Windows on intel Macs
               | (particularly the laptops) in various ways and they
               | actually do play with benchmarks to see how well it
               | works.
        
               | rdsnsca wrote:
               | Apple says only between 2 and 4 % of its users use
               | Bootcamp to run Windows.
        
               | mgolawala wrote:
               | They wouldn't be running windows on the Apple Silicon
               | macs though, just the intel ones.
        
               | fluidcruft wrote:
               | Yeah, that's what I'm saying. Apple Silicon doesn't show
               | up anywhere in the benchmark. If we were seeing a chart
               | of totals rather than percentages, I'd expect to see a
               | void where Apple Silicon entered.
        
             | mumblemumble wrote:
             | From the notes at the bottom:
             | 
             | > As the PerformanceTest software only runs on Windows OS
             | and counts on user submitting their benchmarks. This chart
             | may be non reflective of non Windows user base.
        
             | fluidcruft wrote:
             | Yes, but consider if you have three laptops:
             | 
             | 1. intel running Windows OS
             | 
             | 2. AMD running Windows OS
             | 
             | 3. intel Mac running Windows (various ways)
             | 
             | Then the intel percentage is (1+2)/(1+2+3) and the AMD
             | percentage is 2/(1+2+3). But if Apple hardware is a
             | significant portion of the benchmarks, then when intel Macs
             | disappear, the fraction of systems that can submit the
             | benchmark decreases. So the intel percentage decreases and
             | the AMD percentage increases.
             | 
             | The denominator changes identically for intel and AMD.
        
               | rdsnsca wrote:
               | Apple says only between 2 and 4 % of its users use
               | Bootcamp to run Windows.
        
       | blackcat201 wrote:
       | Kinda surprised on the server chart, consider most of my Linode
       | and Vultr instance are running on AMD epyc CPUs for a years for
       | now (at least since I last checked). I believe the market shares
       | for AMD is much higher than the chart shows consider how low the
       | cost per core is for a CPU slot.
        
       | axlee wrote:
       | *among people using benchmark software.
       | 
       | There is definitely a selection bias at play here: your run-of-
       | the-mill personal computer owner does not even know what a
       | benchmark is. Interesting (but not surprising) trend among
       | enthusiasts though.
        
         | tovej wrote:
         | Early adopter usage is definitely a valuable indicator though.
        
           | axlee wrote:
           | Is it though? There is historical data for that, and even
           | when AMD was crushing Intel for years on all benchmarks
           | including price/performance and early adopter usage, Intel
           | ultimately ended up with a larger market share. Prescott was
           | a (litteral) hot mess and the Athlon 64 3xxx series was
           | amazing, but it did not take long until things came back to
           | normal with the introduction of the Core series. I expect the
           | same to happen here. AMD is great at slipping through the
           | cracks between Intel's CPU generations, but it cannot seem to
           | be able to become a market leader.
        
             | tovej wrote:
             | This is not performance data, this is market share data.
        
               | axlee wrote:
               | This is precisely my point: there were numerous moments
               | in the past when AMD was trailing closely Intel among
               | enthusiasts because of a superior product, but ultimately
               | it never led to AMD overtaking Intel in the overall
               | consumer market: Intel has always been able to catch up
               | within a generation. I see no reason why this time would
               | be different. And thus, the enthusiast market has little
               | to no bearing on the overall market share.
        
               | pmontra wrote:
               | The overall consumer market is decided by what OEMs ship
               | in their laptops and desktops. Normal people cares about
               | Intel and AMD as much as they care about the brand of the
               | gasoline in their car, possibly less. Convince Dell & Co
               | to buy from AMD and AMD is going to have the upper hand
               | in consumer market.
        
         | charwalker wrote:
         | UserBenchmark, at least in recent years, has skewed any
         | subjective content toward Nvidia/Intel ex core count
         | comparisons. This site is solid.
        
       | 867-5309 wrote:
       | another enthusiast one: top 10 AMD 60% / Intel 40%, top 50 AMD
       | 34% / Intel 66%
       | 
       | https://cpu.userbenchmark.com/
        
       | enoughistough wrote:
       | Microsoft Now Brings Next-Gen Games to Xbox One Through Cloud
       | 
       | https://corexbox.com/3353/microsoft-now-brings-next-gen-game...
        
       | sxp wrote:
       | Another pair of data points:
       | https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey
       | 
       | AMD has gone from 20% to 30% in the past 18 months among PC
       | gamers.
        
       | shmerl wrote:
       | Another one:
       | https://www.gamingonlinux.com/index.php?module=statistics&vi...
        
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