It's looking grim at Intel.
It really doesn't. They're fine in mobile and servers with new arch and 10nm arriving soon.
Mainstream desktops (4-6 cores) can remain on 14nm.
High-end desktop is a weird market. With current margins it isn't very attractive anymore and Intel would love to dump it. If AMD is fine with those margins - let them have it.
But that would only work in an ideal world where people do conscious decisions based on full information. And the world it's not like that.
In reality, high-end desktop is doing most of the PR. These CPUs are covered in reviews and that's what people read and talk about.
Also, everyone knows a PC geek and he will likely have a powerful desktop - and that's the person we turn to for PC advice.
So Intel will try to stay relevant in this game by all means possible - most likely pushing HEDT down to make it more popular. And lowering prices.
Because $1 lost on desktops may mean $3 earned somewhere else.
Their 10nm node is still crap, and if they can't make desktop parts with it, that means either they can only crank out low power, low performance (mobile) parts with it, and/or the yields are terrible.
Even if their 10nm can't do high frequencies, it's not a big deal for their product profile. Mobile and servers will work fine.
It was a bit different with AMD and Zen/Zen+. AMD focuses on gamers. They were very dependent on TSMC providing chips with higher clocks.
Laptops might be a bigger market then desktops, but plenty of desktops are still being sold, yeah? It would be a mistake to shrug off the desktop market like it's nothing.
But most desktops are OEM home/business machines. Intel can cover that with 14nm.
You're really thinking about high-end gaming desktops (the stuff forums like this one focus on). And that market is relatively small for Intel.
Of course, we know next to nothing about Intel's 7nm node at this time... who's to say they won't have the same problems with their 7nm node?
Because they started very early with 10nm. They were alone and they had some ideas that didn't work well. But it's a big investment, so they kept working on it...
With Intel there's always the issue of scale. They don't need a 10nm node that just works in some products. They need a 10nm node that will work for 400 mln - very diversified - chips yearly.
In the meantime TSMC and Samsung caught up and went straight past.
Intel's 7nm is expected to be launched with competing 5nm for Samsung and TSMC. No rushing this time. Let's hope it works.
I bought 2000 shares of AMD when the price was 1.98 a piece back when they anounced Polaris, when the stock reached a price of 27 dollars i sold them. EZ money, the only tech company that raised 400% in the last decade.
I'm pretty sure there are other tech companies in the world that moved from dog shit level to actually making some money.
The fact that a huge, mainstream company like AMD moved from $2 in 2015 to $30 in 2019 is not something to be proud of.