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'Changing of the Guard'? AMD, Intel, and Micron Soar While Nvidia Lags

The Hot Take: AMD seems to be out performing Intel & Nvidia on the market, while Nvidia is still the preferred Ai holy-grail? Just seems odd.

While Nvidia has dominated the "infrastructure boom" since 2022's launch of ChatGPT and "the generative AI craze," CNBC writes that "This week offered the starkest illustration yet of what MIzuho analyst Jordan Klein said could be a 'changing of the guard in AI.'" Chipmakers Advanced Micro Devices and Intel notched gains of about 25%, while memory maker Micron jumped more than 37% and fiber-optic cable maker Corning climbed about 18%. All four of those companies have more than doubled in value this year, with Intel leading the way, up well over 200%. Nvidia, meanwhile, is only slightly ahead of the Nasdaq in 2026, gaining 15% for the year, aided by an 8% rally this week. In spreading the wealth to a wider swath of hardware companies, investors are clearly betting that the bull market in AI has long legs and that data centers are going to need a wider array of advanced components for years to come. Memory has been the biggest theme of late due to a global shortage that's driven up prices and turned Micron, a 47-year-old company tucked in a sleepy corner of the semiconductor market, into one of the hottest trades over the past 12 months. Micron blew past an $800 billion market capitalization for the first time this week, and the stock is now up over 750% in the past year. CEO Sanjay Mehrotra told CNBC in March that key customers are only getting "50% to two-thirds of their requirements" because of supply issues. The memory market is largely dominated by Micron, along with Korea-based Samsung and SK Hynix, which are also both in the midst of historic rallies... Bank of America estimates the data center CPU market could more than double from $27 billion in 2025 to $60 billion in 2030. AMD's quarterly results this week underscored the emerging trend, as earnings, revenue and guidance sailed past estimates on strong data center growth. The company has long led the CPU charge, and CEO Lisa Su said on the earnings call that AMD now expects 35% growth over the next three to five years in the server CPU market, up from a forecast of 18% growth that the company provided in November. The article cites two other big movers: Intel "is in the midst of a revival sparked by a major investment from the U.S. government last year. Intel's stock had its best month on record in April, more than doubling, and has continued notching massive gains, rising 33% in the early days of May." Nvidia still remains the world's most valuable company "and is expected to show revenue growth of 70% this fiscal year," the article points out — adding that companies like Corning are also benefiting from Nvidia partnerships. "Glass maker Corning, which celebrated its 175th anniversary this week, signed a massive deal with Nvidia on Wednesday that involves the development of three new U.S. factories dedicated entirely to optical technologies... likely a major step in Nvidia's move away from copper cables and towards fiber-optic cables as it builds out its rack-scale systems." Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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AMD Finally Cracks HDMI 2.1 On Linux After Years Of Forum Lockout, Thanks To Valve’s Quiet Push

The Hot Take: Closed source finally making it onto OSS OS, nice!

AMD has taken a major step toward enabling native open-source HDMI 2.1 support on Linux by submitting new patches for its AMDGPU driver. AMD Moves Closer to Open-Source HDMI 2.1 Support on Linux With New AMDGPU FRL Patches It appears that the HDMI 2.1 support is finally arriving to Linux as AMD has submitted the new Fixed Rate Link (FRL) patches for its AMDGPU driver. This has been one of the longest-standing limitations that affected Radeon GPUs on the platform. There have been years of restrictions tied to the HDMI Forum (Org behind the HDMI standard) policies that prevented upstream […]Read full article at https://wccftech.com/amd-finally-cracks-hdmi-2-1-on-linux-after-years-of-forum-lockout/

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Intel & AMD Work On APX, The Next Major Step In The Evolution of x86 Architectures, Adds More Performance Without Requiring More Die Area & Power

The Hot Take: Just what we need Ai specific instructions for them to gobble up all the CPU's now.

APX or Advanced Performance Extensions are the next evolution of x86 as Intel & AMD co-develop new standards for the architecture. APX Expands the x86 Instruction Set, Bringing Faster Performance & New Features That Will Benefit Both Intel and AMD's Next-Gen Chips Two days ago, we talked about ACE (AI Compute Extensions), which is a unified instruction set that aims to increase matrix-multiply performance for next-gen x86 chips. ACE is just one part of the grander scheme in which both Intel and AMD are working together to evolve the x86 architecture under a single unified framework through the recently established […]Read full article at https://wccftech.com/intel-amd-work-on-apx-the-next-major-step-in-the-evolution-of-x86-architectures/

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AMD EXPO 1.2: AM5 gets new DDR5 profiles, but the big CUDIMM upgrade will likely come later

The Hot Take: We need the market to get a flood of these CUDIMMs as it seems they're capping classic DDR5 to 6400mt/s from the looks of it. New intel chips support this standard and it seems the only way to break that 6400mt/s barrier now.

Memory profiles rarely sound exciting—until a system starts acting up, fails to boot, or turns into a test of patience with manually adjusted timings. AMD’s EXPO 1.2 isn’t exactly the kind of thing you’d see on a big stage with a smoke machine, but it’s a thoroughly important update for AM5. It’s about DDR5 compatibility, […] Source

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AMD Taps GlobalFoundries for MI500’s Co-Packaged Optics as the Silicon Photonics Race With NVIDIA Heats Up

The Hot Take: Getting cozier with your previous manufacturing division in a previous life.

AMD will be leveraging GlobalFoundries for the development of its MRM Co-packaged Optic solution for the next-gen Instinct MI500 AI accelerators. GlobalFoundries & AMD Working Together on Co-Packaged Optics Hardware For Instinct MI500 Accelerators CPO or Co-Packaged Optics (Silicon Photonics) is the next-generation solution that reduces reliance on copper and harnesses light to transfer signals. These CPOs are packaged alongside hardware accelerators such as GPUs and will be a key solution for next-gen AI factories, offering improved interconnect latency and creating high-bandwidth connections between CPU and GPU. Both AMD and NVIDIA will be leveraging these technologies for their next-gen AI […]Read full article at https://wccftech.com/amd-taps-globalfoundries-for-mi500-co-packaged-optics/

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AMD 3D V-Cache Turns Ryzen Into a Surprise RAG AI Weapon, With An 88% Boost Over Non-X3D CPUs

The Hot Take: Seems it was only time with these chips.

AMD's 3D V-Cache CPUs deliver a huge boost versus the Non-X3D part in AI benchmarks, showcasing why they are best suited for RAG pipelines. AMD 3D V-Cache Vs Non 3D V-Cache CPU Benchmarks in AI Showcase a Massive Uplift For RAG Pipelines We know that there are two ways to do AI: the first is LLM, which is currently the most popular model. LLMs are AI models that have been pre-trained on a large set of data and feature various parameter sizes. But LLMs' limitations can be seen when it needs to generate responses on data it wasn't trained on. […]Read full article at https://wccftech.com/amd-3d-v-cache-turns-ryzen-into-surprise-rag-ai-weapon-88-percent-boost-vs-non-x3d/

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AMD confirms $899 price tag for Ryzen 9 9950X3D2

The Hot Take: They did state prices were going up. Now is it inflation or greed?

Following earlier listings, AMD has now confirmed the US $899 price tag for its Ryzen 9 9950X3D2 flagship. The new flagship CPU with dual 3D V-Cache comes with a hefty premium compared to its single 3D V-Cache counterpart, the Ryzen 9 9950X3D. Confirmed by AMD’s VP and GM of Ryzen CPU and Radeon graphics, David McAfee, the Ryzen 9 9950X3D2, which will be officially available on April 22nd, will be selling for $899, depending on the supply and demand. In case you missed it, the Ryzen 9 9950X3D2 is a 16-core/32-thread SKU that features dual 3D V-Cache, which means that each of the 8-core CCDs has its own cache, leaving the CPU with a total of 208MB of L2 and L3 cache. It works at 4.3GHz base and 5.6GHz Boost clocks and has a 200W TDP. Although it should be best suited for gaming, AMD is also targeting content creators and developers, saying that it should handle complex workloads and datasets. Unfortunately, AMD has so far shared only select benchmarks, and we’ll have to wait for some official reviews to check out its gaming performance and improvements in latency due to the fact that each CCD has its own cache. We’ll be keeping an eye on when official reviews go live, and it actually starts shipping from retailers/e-tailers.  

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AMD EPYC Venice “Zen 6” 192, 128, 64 Core CPU Samples Leak On SP7 Congo, Kenya, Nigeria Platforms

The Hot Take: Wow, intel has to speed up catch up from the looks if it.

AMD's next-generation EPYC Venice "Zen 6" CPU samples have leaked, giving us an early look at the SP7 platform & performance. AMD SP7 Platform Leak Reveals Congo, Kenya, Nigeria Test Boards, Featuring Up To 192 Core EPYC Venice "Zen 6" CPUs Venice is the codename for AMD's 6th Gen EPYC family, which replaces the 5th Gen "Turin" lineup. The lineup will feature the brand new Zen 6 core architecture with up to 256 cores, and some big platform updates. Currently, AMD is shipping out its first Venice samples to customers, and some of these have now appeared within the openbenchmarking […]Read full article at https://wccftech.com/amd-epyc-venice-zen-6-192-128-64-core-cpu-leak-sp7-congo-kenya-nigeria-platforms/

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