Essay Example - The Rivalry Between AMD and Intel

AMD and Intel technology companies are competitors in the field of central processing units (CPU), and therefore such competition leads to rivalry. The CPU has a significant effect on the overall performance of the computer, whether it is for personal use or business purposes. More importantly, it becomes more confusing for customers to select the company that makes the best computer based on its CPU that suits the situation. More significantly, the CPU can be compared to the human brain because it can direct different instructions to other parts of the system, and the same way the brain can coordinate information to other parts of the body. The computer uses its CPU for calculations, which determines the importance of other parts of the computer. However, other parts of the computer, such as the hard disk and RAM may be upgraded; the CPU is fixed for the life of the system. Therefore, it is important to choose the best computer in the best company. The paper seeks to compare AMD and Intel based on their history, current state, and the importance of rivalry, as well as the effects on progress.

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The two companies have existed for decades now, even though AMD is slightly younger than Intel. Notably, Intel was founded in 1968 by Gordon Moore, and Bob Noyce, and the company made its first 8080 processor in 1974, which was developed into the X86 processors and later formed the foundation for desktop personal computers. It is worth acknowledging that Intel used a strategy to rename its X86 processor as Pentium, which made the company dominate the market, making it more popular up to now. And the company perpetually made tremendous progress by making a long battery life, which also made it more competitive in the market.

On the other side, AMD Technology Company was started in 1969, and Jerry Sanders became the CEO and the first president with their headquarters in California. But it is imperative to note that Intel is bigger than AMD, and Intel manufactures its chips while AMD designs its chips and manufacture from other companies. Additionally, Intel has numerous plants located around the world, including China, the USA, Israel, and Ireland.

Understandably, there has been a long rivalry between the two companies that show AMD being the underdog for a longer time as compared to the Lion Intel, especially comparing their market shares in recent years. For instance, a study by Mercury has shown that AMD recorded high market shares of 22 percent, and suddenly went down again up to 17 percent. Essentially, the rivalry increased in 2006 when AMD acquired Graphic Processing Units and ATI; at the same time, Intel was able to perform such things with its chips, thereby escalating more rivalry. Today, AMD has shown significant improvement in the VR market, especially by powering Xbox One, Nintendo, and the GPU Radeon pro duo.

More importantly, Intel has also indicated better market performance, including the type of software with Photoshop, complex calculations, and other important services. Notably, Intel products have a more reduced Thermal Design Point rating, as well as drawing less heat, and the use of hyper-threading gives the company more credit because it effectively uses the processor while allowing more threads to run on every core, as well as enhancing the general performance of the software. Similarly, hyper-threading helps in making sure that the core is always in their active mode, and appropriate with efficient utilization of the already existing cores, and not adding more cores to the system. Consequentially, it enables the system to run applications while ensuring the responsiveness of the system simultaneously. Such a unique feature has also made Intel more viable in the market while prompting more rivalry.

Unlike Intel, AMD does not concentrate on hyper-threading, but they only focus on more number of cores, which may lead to more heat and high-temperature chips. Fortunately, AMD may use overclocking to increase their power. Such overclocking has significant benefits to the customers as it is more reliable, and customers can accurately manipulate their devices based on their preferences. It also allows customers to have different settings to discover more system performance, thereby increasing processor performance.

Based on price, AMD CPUs are often seen to have a bargain value because the prices of an AMD system are lower compared to the prices of the CPUs from Intel. Additionally, AMD is also considered to be offering many cores at reduced prices, but the hyper-threading offered by Intel can as well be considered more competitive. Similarly, another comparison can be on the cache memory that enhances the efficacy of the processor. So, Intel consists of more cache memory for every core, and AMD has doubled the number of cores for Intel. Therefore, there is a higher concentration of cores in the Intel memory, which increases efficiency.

In conclusion, Intel products may be the best in terms of performance, and that cannot be the only factor to consider in terms of consumer choice. Still, it can as well depend on the impact of such performance on the user experience. More imperatively, it is considered that AMD offers its CPUs at reduced prices, which many consumers would prefer since their product has a bargain value. Despite the rivalry between the two, personal choice will take over. As Intel presents quality and performance, AMD presents bargain value.

Bibliography

Adams, Keith, and Ole Agesen. "A comparison of software and hardware techniques for x86 virtualization." ACM SIGOPS Operating Systems Review 40, no. 5 (2006): 2-13.

Molka, Daniel, Daniel Hackenberg, and Robert Schone. "Main memory and cache performance of intel sandy bridge and amd bulldozer." In Proceedings of the workshop on Memory Systems Performance and Correctness, p. 4. ACM, 2014.

Stegailov, Vladimir, and Vyacheslav Voucher. "Efficiency analysis of Intel and AMD x86_64 architectures for Ab initio calculations: a case study of VASP." In Russian Supercomputing Days, pp. 430-441. Springer, Cham, 2017.