Intel Expects Manageable Disruption from AMD’s Zen

In less than a week, AMD will finally be revealing more details about their upcoming Zen processors. A  just over month from now, both Intel and AMD will likely have launched their new Kaby Lake and Zen processors into the market. From the leaks we’ve received, AMD looks to have a real winner on their hands. Zen is reportedly set to bring a 40% IPC increase and have 8 core 16 thread variants at $350.  However, the chip giant is reportedly not too worried about the new competition they will be facing.

According to a recent interview, Intel’s head of client computing Murthy Renduchintala expects the threat from Zen to be fairly manageable. The chip giant is banking on their process node lead to get to 10nm early. There will also be an increased focus on IPC and single threaded performance, especially for the desktop segment. As such, the company expects the disruption to their dominance in the processor market to only last for 2017.

One reason for this confidence is that Intel will still continue to hold a process lead. Kaby Lake will be on their tried and tested 14nm+ while AMD will be building their first processors on Global Foundries 14nm process. Another major secret to Intel’s success is their massive margins. Right now, Intel is earning quite a lot of profit on each chip sold. This means even if AMD offers unprecedented value with Zen, the company can afford to drop their prices to at least mitigate if not curtail any loss in marketshare.

After the disappointment that was Bulldozer, the performance CPU market has largely been locked up by Intel. With Zen, AMD is finally bringing back competition after a half decade of Intel dominance. It will be interesting to see what the new CPU landscape will look like in January. Let’s hope AMD doesn’t disappoint with Zen.