RYZEN AGAIN THE RESURRECTION OF AMD

Five years ago, AMD nearly went to the wall. Now, it has the edge on Intel and Nvidia, and billions in the bank. Jeremy Laird investigates its dramatic resurgence

- Jeremy Laird

MAKE A NOTE of the date, 22nd February 2022. That was the day AMD’s market capitalization— essentially, its overall value as a company—surpassed Intel’s for the first time. It was nothing less than a spectacular reversal in fortunes for a company that had been on the very brink just a few years earlier. Forget wondering whether AMD can even survive, it is now an entirely legitimate question to ask whether AMD can overturn Intel’s dominance of the PC. Truly, AMD has become the pretender to Intel’s throne.

Of course, stock prices don’t tell you everything about a company’s real-world proportions. Intel still has a 75 percent market share for PC processors and generates massively more revenue and profit than AMD. But the notion of AMD as the usurper of Intel’s position as the predominant purveyor of PC processors and platform technology is now more plausible than ever.

How, exactly, did AMD turn it around? Now that’s a question. As we’ll see, a little bit of luck didn’t hurt. But as the saying goes, you make your own luck and there’s absolutely no denying the heightened competence and consistency with which AMD has been led since Lisa Su took over the company in 2014.

All told, AMD’s recovery from near oblivion makes for a fascinating story of corporate and technological rejuvenation.