Intel Xeon server CPU sales hit 14-year low as AMD gains ground

[Daniel Sims]

The big picture: The past several years have seen some of the worst figures in Intel's 56-year history. The company faces trouble on all fronts, from foundry to consumer processors and server chips. As Intel reorganizes its foundry operations, new analysis paints a grim picture of its server business's current trajectory.

According to SemiAnalysis, Intel's 2024 server processor volume declined for the third year straight. Following the precipitous drop in 2023, the company's data center business has reached a 14-year low.

Based on data from Intel's 10K reports, analysts have charted Intel's data center CPU volume since 2011. The numbers aren't exact and appear as a percentage of 2011's total, but they reveal a peak in 2021, followed by an ongoing decline. The most dramatic fall occurred in 2023 when server processor volume plummeted by 50 percent of 2011's count. Intel's volume has fallen by over half since 2021.

Intel's server CPU chip volume hit the lowest in last 14 years for the second straight year in 2024. It's <50% of the previous peak of 2020. With Intel admitting the competitive gap even with Granite Rapids and Clearwater Forest pushout, the product chief has once again dropped… pic.twitter.com/0QpWzJFVtg

– Sravan Kundojjala (@SKundojjala) February 3, 2025

Chipzilla is losing ground to AMD in the consumer and server CPU markets. Late last year, the company admitted that it has no plans to answer to the 3D V-Cache that has made Team Red's Ryzen chips the undisputed masters of gaming desktops. Instead, Intel is bringing similar technology to its upcoming Clearwater Forest data center processors because it considers servers a more critical market.

Set for launch sometime this year, Clearwater Forest and Intel's laptop-focused Panther Lake CPUs will also decide the fate of another business the company struggles with: semiconductor manufacturing. Both will prove whether the company's 18A node can compete against TSMC's leading 3nm and 2nm processes.

Also read: Intel's takeover dilemma: A Gordian knot of funding and politics

However, Intel already turned to TSMC for last year's Lunar Lake notebook CPUs and may do so again for future chips in all sectors. The desktop Nova Lake processors, expected to emerge in 2026, will use transistors from Intel and another manufacturer, likely TSMC.

Amid questions over the survival of Intel semiconductors, the company spun its foundry division into a separate entity that it admits will have to "earn" its business just like TSMC or Samsung. Intel claims that other prospective clients have successfully powered on products based on 18A, suggesting that the node's development is progressing smoothly.

Sliding revenue and other problems led to the recent departure of CEO Pat Gelsinger, prompting Bill Gates to say that Intel has "lost its way." The Microsoft co-founder noted that Intel has fallen behind in foundry and chip design over the last decade.

Rumors of a buyout are circulating, but it remains unclear who, if anyone, would want to acquire Intel.

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Intel Xeon server CPU sales hit 14-year low as AMD gains ground

 

[Mr Majestyk]

Huh, Clear Water Forest was officially pushed back to 2026 by Intel, so why the BS?

 

[DukeJukem]

I really don't understand the talks about buying Intel out. Who could possibly buy out Intel while having the capability to make worthwhile chips except for AMD or Nvidia? Broadcom? Not really considering they're also dying. If there were any other people capable of even matching Intel there would've at least been talks on the streets about a new up and comer or something over these past years yet there hasn't been a single word.

We've seen the trash CPUs and GPUs china attempts to manufacturer themselves so that leaves American companies as the only possible option to buy Intel. No American company besides AMD or Nvidia is good enough to buy Intel and simultaneously take over the reigns. Nobody. Watch and see...absolutely nothing happen. Ever.

 

[Axeia]

I really don't understand the talks about buying Intel out. Who could possibly buy out Intel while having the capability to make worthwhile chips except for AMD or Nvidia? Broadcom? Not really considering they're also dying. If there were any other people capable of even matching Intel there would've at least been talks on the streets about a new up and comer or something over these past years yet there hasn't been a single word.

Samsung? They never seem to be able to get Exynos designs right. Intel could definitely help out with that. Samsung is also the only potential buyer that could realistically do something with the fabs, they've got experience with them. The cross pollination of Intel and Samsungs technologies might actually let them compete with TSMC.

Qualcomm? They've got licensing beef with ARM. They could use their own engineers to boost Intel's designs and Intels experts could be used to get Risc-V to a point where it can replace ARM for mobile designs. Qualcomm is an American company on top of that so the US government would be pleased and perhaps even help out in the forms of loans or something.
Think the fabs would still need to go to Samsung. Unless Qualcomm can somehow find enough investors and recruit talent to get Intel back on track.

Mediatek? They'd have to get some massive investors backup because they're not even close to having enough capital on their own. Again fabs would have to go to Samsung imo.

Other than that, yeah I can only see Nvidia or AMD pulling it off with them putting the fabs to work for volume work where power efficiency can be a little bit worse.

We've seen the trash CPUs and GPUs china attempts to manufacturer themselves so that leaves American companies as the only possible option to buy Intel. No American company besides AMD or Nvidia is good enough to buy Intel and simultaneously take over the reigns. Nobody. Watch and see...absolutely nothing happen. Ever.

The only Chinese company I can think of that could perhaps do something with a x86 license is Rockchip but they're too small, it's quite far outside what they're currently doing. I don't think the US government would allow a Chinese company to run off with Intel either. Previously mentioned companies are South Korean, Taiwanese and American which shouldn't pose an issue.

 

[amstech]

Intel has 76% of the server CPU marketshare.
"While Intel still holds the largest share of the CPU server market, it is important to note that AMD has been steadily gaining ground, meaning Intel does not have an absolute majority as it once did; recent data shows Intel with around 76% of the server CPU market share, with AMD holding the remaining portion. "

 

[Kashim]

I really don't understand the talks about buying Intel out. Who could possibly buy out Intel while having the capability to make worthwhile chips except for AMD or Nvidia? Broadcom?

The biggest issue isn't just finding a buyer, but finding a buyer who's willing to invest tens of billions more to get Intel back on track. Investor groups like SoftBank for example could afford to buy Intel, but are not willing to spend all that extra money on top of the buyout price. It would take several years to get Intel back on track and return to profitability. It is a very tall order indeed.

 

[bandit8623]

The problem with amd is dell and a few others lock the cpus to the brand... so ill take intel over that crap anyday.

 

[Puiu]

The problem with amd is dell and a few others lock the cpus to the brand... so ill take intel over that crap anyday.

Vendor locking is indeed very bad. But in their defence, PSB locking is also a very powerful security feature that many companies want in some of their important systems. The CPUs can detect if the firmware was messed with (something we know is used in the wild for attacks now) and will not boot. In general you'll see this with Ryzen Pro and Epyc CPUs.

Vendor locked consumer systems is something I do not want to see in my home. It's why I always bought my phones outside of "contracts" and on the free market

 

[Xelions]

Huawei!

 

[wiyosaya]

I really don't understand the talks about buying Intel out. Who could possibly buy out Intel while having the capability to make worthwhile chips except for AMD or Nvidia? Broadcom? Not really considering they're also dying. If there were any other people capable of even matching Intel there would've at least been talks on the streets about a new up and comer or something over these past years yet there hasn't been a single word.

We've seen the trash CPUs and GPUs china attempts to manufacturer themselves so that leaves American companies as the only possible option to buy Intel. No American company besides AMD or Nvidia is good enough to buy Intel and simultaneously take over the reigns. Nobody. Watch and see...absolutely nothing happen. Ever.

One thing is for sure, the US would never approve China buying Intel. Maybe Trump would approve it, but I bet it would be shot down in the courts.

 

[wiyosaya]

AMD clearly has the better server CPUs at this point, and it was an excellent business decision for AMD to compete in that market.

 

[bandit8623]

One thing is for sure, the US would never approve China buying Intel. Maybe Trump would approve it, but I bet it would be shot down in the courts.

why do you think trump would allow china to buy? every other thing hes done has been the opposite. who owns tiktok? he would allow it to stay is a non china company bouight it.

 

[Johnnyblaze1957]

So pleased to see AMD doing so well in the market these days after Intel tried to bury them with their dirty underhanded antitrust payments to the OEMs, hope they show Intel no mercy. As for me I'm a nobody to these companies but I had an AMD powered PC I bought in 1992-3 a 386dx and I just like an underdog so I cheer for AMD and just hope they can get their GPUs going as good.