Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger posted a video he made for the end of 2021, providing some of his thoughts on many topics -- but the biggest one was about Intel's new Alder Lake CPUs -- and how AMD is now finished.
Well, kinda -- Gelsinger joined Intel as its freshly-minted CEO in January 2021 in a very tumulous time for the company. In his video, Gelsinger said: "Alder Lake. All of a sudden...Boom! We are back in the game. AMD in the rearview mirror in clients [consumer market], and never again will they be in the windshield; we are just leading the market".
AMD was fighting the good fight with its new Zen 3-powered Ryzen 5000 series desktop CPUs, but Intel really did deliver in strides with its new Alder Lake-powered 12th Gen Core CPUs. Not only are the CPUs the very best you can buy right now, but they also have both DDR5 memory and PCIe 5.0 support. AMD is in the rearview mirror with performance, DDR4 only, and PCIe 4.0 only -- that is, until Zen 4 is here with the Ryzen 7000 series desktop CPUs later this year.
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But, there are some issues here I have with what Gelsinger has to say here. First, AMD made some incredible industry-first achievements with its chiplet-based CPU design. Secondly, they had monster CPU cores and threads while Intel whimpered away market share for months and months (and eventually years and years).
AMD delivered PCIe 4.0 connectivity to the masses YEARS ahead of Intel, while Intel had its tail between its legs and telling everyone it's new 14nm++++++++ tech (clusterf*ck) was still great. AMD destroyed Intel by using TSMC's 7nm process node -- making Zen CPUs, RDNA GPUs, next-gen Microsoft Xbox Series X/S, and Sony PlayStation 5 consoles.
Intel has only just caught up... not only has AMD been destroying Intel, but Apple has been cutting into their business as well. Intel has been asleep at the wheel for a very long time, and while Gelsinger is enthusiastic here -- so would any CEO when it's their job to be all upbeat and shit -- I've heard some horrible things from within Intel from my own industry sources... some that say they churn through staff and treat them like crap (to say the least).
So while he's correct in lots of what he said (Intel being ahead for years to come) we'll have to see how that plays out later this year when it comes to Intel's launch of its 13th Gen Core CPUs and AMD's next-gen Ryzen 7000 series CPUs.