AMD has reportedly gained 10.4 percentage points of CPU market share in the second quarter of 2017. This makes it the largest x86 CPU market share gain in the history of the Sunnyvale, California based chip maker against its much larger rival Intel.
The data is courtesy of PassMark’s quarterly market share report, which is based on the thousands of submissions that go through the database in any given quarter. It’s important to note that because PassMark’s market share data is based on benchmark submissions it counts actual systems in use, rather than systems sold. It also does not include consoles or any computer systems running operating systems other than Windows.
With AMD’s Ryzen processors being the new hotness right now, I’d indeed expect benchmarking sites to get more Ryzen submissions, even if it’s not a 10% market share swing in favour of AMD. That being said, it’s clear that AMD is having an impact right now, and as consumers, we should welcome this.
I do dislike the fact that the chart only has two lines to show. We’d be better off with more than just two x86 chip makers, but alas.
…it wouldn’t be just x86 and Winux. Hopefully also not the anarchy of heterogeneous platforms we had in the 90s (pc, mac, next, be, atari, amiga, sun, dec, …).
Now that software is somewhat standardized, it would be welcome to have a greater choice of cpu and systems, even though more choices makes thinks harder to chose from.
Suffice to look at CPU fragmentation to understand that too much choice is not always a good thing. But a better Via CPU would have been great too (the Nanos were good).
I just hope what Apple and nVidia made of the ARM architecture would also benefit AMD in the server market. I’m sure they can also target mobile CPUs.
I’d like to see desktop (open)risc and arm cpu’s too
even for games, the OS / CPU / GPU etc should be completely irrelevant in this day and age…
What about RISC-V?
…it’s just not on that graph.
VIA still exists, still makes x86-64 CPUs, and is even developing new ones.
The performance, though, is nothing that would excite enthusiasts, and their latest design is not competitive against even Atom-based Celerons on performance/watt. (10 watt Intel versus 18 watt VIA… and you also need another 15 watts of chipset on the VIA CPU to get anywhere close.)
There is another vendor, RDC, making x86 CPUs based on a RISC core with a translation layer, but they’re massively outdated cores, and very slow. But, then, they’re also very cheap, so… (The current Vortex86 cores are rebranded RDC.)
Edited 2017-07-02 13:36 UTC
Bring back Cyrix, Yayyy!
Joking aside, they was pretty decent CPU’s, I still have a few Socket 7 Cyrix CPU’s sitting around.
It would be interesting to see a modern one in a performance comparison.
Cyrix was great for office applications… just don’t try to play anything more complicated than midtown madness on them.
I also remember rise, IDT, and IBM had a clone chip as well. There were a ton of them around with some really interesting architectures.
There is also SiS that makes the Vortex86DX3 8 way multicore CPU’s. However those are aimed at the industrial and low power segments and places where fans are unpractical.
Hi,
Clarification: The Vortex86DX3 chips are dual core (with 8-way associative L1 caches).
– Brendan
Shanghai Zhaoxin Semiconductor… you mean, as far as I know they are only selling thsese in the non US market… as if they dared to sell here Intel would stomp on them… AMD might as well but would be less likely to.
Now Microsoft and Qualcomm are popularizing the idea of having x86 compatibility without a x86 CPU.
Yet, what’s the point of having x86 without x86 ? Why not native not-x86 ?
Why not both ?
> Yet, what’s the point of having x86 without x86 ? Why not native not-x86 ?
Windows. Every single time Microsoft has tried Windows that couldn’t run x86 Win32 binaries, it’s been a colossal failure. Backwards compatibility is by far their #1 business asset at this point.
is also Microsoft’s biggest millstone around their necks as well as their greatest asset.
They already have the software technology to move entirely away from Intel if they so choose but unlike companies such as Apple and now Google they don’t have people in-house who can work magic with ARM cores.
Even if you loathe Apple with a vengance, go speak to a CPU or chip designer and ask them about how they make their ARM CPU’s work so much better than the competition. There is an awful lot of innovation there that goes unseen but really does the job. That will only get better once they integrate their own GPU into the SOC. IMHO, that work has spurred Google to want to do the same which is goodness indeed.
That’s what the ARM Licensing Model allows.
MS risk getting left behind as the Moores Law cycles come to an end. That will allow them to soldier on for a few more years (5 and 10 at the most) but then? Unless they make the break they are probably doomed.
Blocker for windows on ARM is the fact that people don’t want them, because existing software doesn’t work on them. MS already got the OS itself working quite well there, so it’s not about engineering problems or MS lacking some skills. ARM themselves have helped Microsoft there.
Another reason to prefer x86 is that x86 CPUs are just faster, even if they require more watts (and thus emit more heat).
I don’t see much changing here. Even Apple uses x86 on their laptops.
Depend on what you want to do. I don’t need power, I don’t play demanding games, I can live having the compilation to last minutes. However I want to have a CPU being low on energy requirement.
ARM do already perform well on both counts, but you know, that x86 legacy… Even though it is crippled with flaws, it performs well enough for the purpose, enough not to change.
Just like gasoline that is cheap and convenient enough, even crippled with flaws, to care changing the car to switch for another source of energy.
It also depends which OS one is most comfortable with.
Windows? – This means X86-AMD64.
OS X? – This means Apple customized ARM.
Linux – Can be anything under the hood as long as there are drivers for the peripherals one wishes to use.
Mobile (Android and IOS)? – Definitively and only ARM in base and customized versions.
Chrome OS ? – Can be either ARM or X86-AMD64 depending on where ones desires to be on the performance-power balance.
Because Windows.
On a Linux/*nix environment, you would simply recompile the software to the target environment, which is possible because the source code is distributed.
On a Windows platform, it’s customary to only supply a binary. Therefore, the software vendor has to actively take action when Windows is going to run on another architecture. Which they might not be willing or able to do.
It depends what the software is written in. If it is .NET I am willing it will run on ARM fine.
But the problem here is legacy software.
I was rather excited by this report, but then I tried to find another source to show a positive AMD trend. I looked at the valve “steam hardware & software survey. It shows a decline in AMD market share.
http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/
It’s possible that more people are using laptops with steam over time as their quad core numbers look crazy too. There are very few six and eight care CPUs in their list.
It would be nice to find another source that shows growth.
Intel still has the sweet spot for performance / price. Very few games take advantage of anything better than Dual Core.
Most games are GPU bound not CPU bound.
Thanks 2016. Could you get 2017 back in the room?
For gaming Intel is still better. Just about though.
Intel has slightly better IPC and slightly higher clocks. But for gaming a 4 core is the minimum. Not for every game but at least 50% of the new games. You want 4 real cores.
It ultimately depends what sort of game it is. The minimum requirements on Steam are more suggestions these days than anything else.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AGRf3WHhoto
Edited 2017-07-04 21:31 UTC
Do we have more than two ARM chip makers for smartphones, despite ARM being supposedly open? It’s Qualcomm and Mediatek basically, and only Qualcomm in the high-end, everybody else (Nvidia, Texas Instruments etc) is a specialized played like VIA and SiS. Maybe that’s as much as the market can support: two.
Edited 2017-07-02 22:21 UTC
Apple and Samsung design their own CPUs for mobile, unless I’ve been mislead.
Do you mean for general purpose ARM CPUs, that aren’t part of a tied down pre-made device?
Samsung, Huawei, Xiaomi, Rockchip, Allwiner, Spreadtrum, etc
Most of those are generic SoC vendors, they just use off-the-shelf CPU and GPU cores from ARM.
Qualcomm, Samsung, Apple, and ARM are currently the only ones making custom ARM-compatible CPU and/or GPU cores for use in SoCs.
At least one of the Chinese SoC makers, though (can’t remember which), is also working on a custom CPU core.
Allwinner, A80, octo-cores.
No, that’s using standard ARM Cortex-A15 and A7 cores in a big.LITTLE setup.
So what is so bad about using ARMs soft or hard macros. There is plenty of room to optimize a SoC. And doing better than ARM’s engineers is tough. Let alone that an architecture license is likely more expensive.
Edited 2017-07-03 06:40 UTC
There’s nothing won’t with that. It’s one of the great strengths of the ARM ecosystem. It’s just not what the original question was about.
Edited 2017-07-03 17:40 UTC
Huawei has their own microarchitecture as well, AFAIK.
Add Google to the list of companies designing their own ARM cores/SOC’s.
Most of those are generic SoC vendors, they just use off-the-shelf CPU and GPU cores from ARM.
Qualcomm is using off-the-shelf ARM cores (customised for them by ARM itself) anywhere now. But they have custom server core – Centriq 2400.
Custom cores are only accessible if you have 100s millions budget to burn AND highly skilled CPU designers at the same time.
OR you have exotic architecture and exceptional people, as in the case with Parallella.
Edited 2017-07-04 16:09 UTC
Or the Parallax Propeller…
A post on OSNews on a sunday??
When did Hell freeze over? AMD isn’t the market leader yet…
Intel will not grant new licenses and licenses expire if the company is bought. It looked like Samsung wanted AMD for a while, but it was clear that the moment AMD was bought their licenses to make x86 chips would expire.
As far as I’m aware nobody is buying AMD and AMD isn’t even for sale.
I think if things were to come to that though, Intel would be under a lot of pressure and maybe even forced to issue a x86 license. Competition laws and monopolies being what they are these days, and rightly so!
Intel’s in a bit of a tight spot, too, as they license the 64-bit extensions to x86 from AMD and they’d probably lose that if they cut off AMD’s license.
Good call, I never thought of that one.
In reality AMD64 (not x86) is the de facto standard. So it could be argued that AMD has the upper hand.
too bad AMD is the only one Intel is willing to give a licence to
Yeah and that’s probably not willingly.
It isn’t, but AMD has the x64 patents Intel needs. Intel gives up the multicore patents in exchange.