Intel battles AMD with new data center chips | U.S. & World [Video]

By Max A. Cherney and Stephen Nellis

TAIPEI/SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – Intel launched its next generation Xeon server processors on Tuesday in a bid to regain data center market share, and revealed that its Gaudi 3 artificial intelligence accelerator chips would be priced much lower than its rivals’ products.

The sixth generation Xeon chips are crucial for Intel, which has been steadily losing data center market share to Advanced Micro Devices (AMD).

Intel’s share of the data center market for x86 chips has declined 5.6 percentage points over the past year to 76.4%, with AMD now holding 23.6%, according to data from Mercury Research.

Stumbles in Intel’s manufacturing process have allowed AMD to take business, as the latter uses Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC) to fabricate its chips.

The Xeon 6 server processors come in two main flavors, a larger, more powerful version, and an “efficiency” model that Intel pitched as a replacement for older-generation chips.

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