AMD Hits Record High Share in x86 Desktops and Servers in Q1 2024
Coming out of the dark times that preceded the launch of AMD's Zen CPU architecture in 2017, to say that AMD has turned things around on the back of Zen would be an understatement. Ever since AMD launched its first Zen-based Ryzen and EPYC processors for client and server computers, it has been consistently gaining x86 market share, growing from a bit player to a respectable rival to Intel (and all at Intel's expense).
The first quarter of this year was no exception, according to Mercury Research, as the company achieved record high unit shares on x86 desktop and x86 server CPU markets due to success of its Ryzen 8000-series client products and 4th Generation EPYC processors.
"Mercury noted in their first quarter report that AMD gained significant server and client revenue share driven by growing demand for 4th Gen EPYC and Ryzen 8000 series processors," a statement by AMD reads.
Desktop PCs: AMD Achieves Highest Share in More Than a Decade
Desktops, particularly DIY desktops, have always been AMD's strongest market. After the company launched its Ryzen processors in 2017, it doubled its presence in desktops in just three years. But in the recent years the company had to prioritize production of more expensive CPUs for datacenters, which lead to some erosion of its desktop and mobile market shares.
As the company secured more capacity at TSMC, it started to gradually increase production of desktop processors. In Q4 last year it introduced its Zen 4-based Ryzen 8000/Ryzen 8000 Pro processors for mainstream desktops, which appeared to be pretty popular with PC makers.
As a result of this and other factors, AMD increased unit sales of its desktop CPUs by 4.7% year-over-year in Q1 2024 and its market share achieved 23.9%, which is the highest desktop CPU market share the company commanded in over a decade. Interestingly, AMD does not attribute its success on the desktop front to any particular product or product family, which implies that there are multiple factors at play.
Mobile PCs: A Slight Drop for AMD amid Intel's Meteor Lake Ramp
AMD has been gradually regaining its share inside laptops for about 1.5 years now and sales of its Zen 4-based Ryzen 7040-series processors were quite strong in Q3 2023 and Q4 2023, when the company's unit share increased to 19.5% and 20.3%, respectively, as AMD-based notebook platforms ramped up. By contrast, Intel's Core Ultra 'Meteor Lake' powered machines only began to hit retail shelves in Q4'23, which affected sales of its processors for laptops.
In the first quarter AMD's unit share on the market of CPUs for notebooks decreased to 19.3%, down 1% sequentially. Meanwhile, the company still demonstrated significant year-over-year unit share increase of 3.1% and revenue share increase of 4%, which signals rising average selling price of AMD's latest Ryzen processors for mobile PCs.
Client PCs: Slight Gain for AMD, Small Loss for Intel
Overall, Intel remained the dominant force in client PC sales in the first quarter of 2024, with a 79.4% market share, leaving 20.6% for AMD. This is not particularly surprising given how strong and diverse Intel's client products lineup is. Even with continued success, it will take AMD years to grow sales by enough to completely flip the market.
But AMD actually gained a 0.3% unit share sequentially and a 3.6% unit share year-over year. Notably, however, AMD's revenue share of client PC market is significantly lower than its unit share (16.3% vs 20.6%), so the company is still somewhat pigeonholed into selling more budg... CPUs
Posted by The Techinical Support
![](https://twitter.com/share?url=https://compbuddey.blogspot.com/2024/05/amd-hits-record-high-share-in-x86_27.html&text=AMD Hits Record High Share in x86 Desktops and Servers in Q1 2024 <p align="center"><a href="https://www.anandtech.com/show/21392/amd-hits-record-high-share-in-x86-cpus-in-q1-2024"><img src="https://images.anandtech.com/doci/21392/amd-cpu-gpu-generic-678_575px.jpg" alt="" /></a></p><p><p>Coming out of the dark times that preceded the launch of AMD's Zen CPU architecture in 2017, to say that AMD has turned things around on the back of Zen would be an understatement. Ever since AMD launched its first Zen-based Ryzen and EPYC processors for client and server computers, it has been consistently gaining x86 market share, growing from a bit player to a respectable rival to Intel (and all at Intel's expense).</p>
<p>The first quarter of this year was no exception, according to <a href="http://www.mercuryresearch.com">Mercury Research</a>, as the company achieved record high unit shares on x86 desktop and x86 server CPU markets due to success of its Ryzen 8000-series client products and 4<sup>th</sup> Generation EPYC processors.</p>
<p>"Mercury noted in their first quarter report that AMD gained significant server and client revenue share driven by growing demand for 4th Gen EPYC and Ryzen 8000 series processors," a statement by AMD reads.</p>
<p align="center"><a href="https://www.anandtech.com/show/21392/amd-hits-record-high-share-in-x86-cpus-in-q1-2024"><img alt="" src="https://images.anandtech.com/doci/21392/amd-market-share-q1-2024.png" style="width: 100%;" /></a></p>
<h3>Desktop PCs: AMD Achieves Highest Share in More Than a Decade </h3>
<p>Desktops, particularly DIY desktops, have always been AMD's strongest market. After the company launched its Ryzen processors in 2017, it doubled its presence in desktops in just three years. But in the recent years the company had to prioritize production of more expensive CPUs for datacenters, which lead to some erosion of its desktop and mobile market shares.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.anandtech.com/show/21392/amd-hits-record-high-share-in-x86-cpus-in-q1-2024"><img alt="" src="https://images.anandtech.com/doci/21392/cpu-mkt-shares-q1-2024-mercury-desktops.png" style="width: 100%;" /></a></p>
<p>As the company secured more capacity at TSMC, it started to gradually increase production of desktop processors. In Q4 last year it introduced its Zen 4-based Ryzen 8000/Ryzen 8000 Pro processors for mainstream desktops, which appeared to be pretty popular with PC makers.</p>
<p>As a result of this and other factors, AMD increased unit sales of its desktop CPUs by 4.7% year-over-year in Q1 2024 and its market share achieved 23.9%, which is the highest desktop CPU market share the company commanded in over a decade. Interestingly, AMD does not attribute its success on the desktop front to any particular product or product family, which implies that there are multiple factors at play.</p>
<h3>Mobile PCs: A Slight Drop for AMD amid Intel's Meteor Lake Ramp</h3>
<p>AMD has been gradually regaining its share inside laptops for about 1.5 years now and sales of its Zen 4-based Ryzen 7040-series processors were quite strong in Q3 2023 and Q4 2023, when the company's unit share increased to 19.5% and 20.3%, respectively, as AMD-based notebook platforms ramped up. By contrast, Intel's Core Ultra 'Meteor Lake' powered machines only began to hit retail shelves in Q4'23, which affected sales of its processors for laptops.</p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://www.anandtech.com/show/21392/amd-hits-record-high-share-in-x86-cpus-in-q1-2024"><img alt="" src="https://images.anandtech.com/doci/21392/cpu-mkt-shares-q1-2024-mercury-mobile.png" style="width: 100%;" /></a></p>
<p>In the first quarter AMD's unit share on the market of CPUs for notebooks decreased to 19.3%, down 1% sequentially. Meanwhile, the company still demonstrated significant year-over-year unit share increase of 3.1% and revenue share increase of 4%, which signals rising average selling price of AMD's latest Ryzen processors for mobile PCs.</p>
<h3>Client PCs: Slight Gain for AMD, Small Loss for Intel</h3>
<p>Overall, Intel remained the dominant force in client PC sales in the first quarter of 2024, with a 79.4% market share, leaving 20.6% for AMD. This is not particularly surprising given how strong and diverse Intel's client products lineup is. Even with continued success, it will take AMD years to grow sales by enough to completely flip the market.</p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://www.anandtech.com/show/21392/amd-hits-record-high-share-in-x86-cpus-in-q1-2024"><img alt="" src="https://images.anandtech.com/doci/21392/cpu-mkt-shares-q1-2024-mercury-client.png" style="width: 100%;" /></a></p>
<p>But AMD actually gained a 0.3% unit share sequentially and a 3.6% unit share year-over year. Notably, however, AMD's revenue share of client PC market is significantly lower than its unit share (16.3% vs 20.6%), so the company is still somewhat pigeonholed into selling more budg... CPUs){kind=link}
![](https://www.pinterest.com/pin/create/button/?url=https://compbuddey.blogspot.com/2024/05/amd-hits-record-high-share-in-x86_27.html&media=https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/blogger_img_proxy/AEn0k_sAh49BaYNJjVyo_qlRe6tB9YEeXjyKZgl5oZ_BfgtwYrUU8W800znkD9UH8CP8TQgxVsVLAf_Yeew5Cxpt6n6nseWHdxd7bWj63CmIJ6PPxd1kv_sdIH239bsWQowK1g6EoBX07q0tffV-YQ&description=AMD Hits Record High Share in x86 Desktops and Servers in Q1 2024 <p align="center"><a href="https://www.anandtech.com/show/21392/amd-hits-record-high-share-in-x86-cpus-in-q1-2024"><img src="https://images.anandtech.com/doci/21392/amd-cpu-gpu-generic-678_575px.jpg" alt="" /></a></p><p><p>Coming out of the dark times that preceded the launch of AMD's Zen CPU architecture in 2017, to say that AMD has turned things around on the back of Zen would be an understatement. Ever since AMD launched its first Zen-based Ryzen and EPYC processors for client and server computers, it has been consistently gaining x86 market share, growing from a bit player to a respectable rival to Intel (and all at Intel's expense).</p>
<p>The first quarter of this year was no exception, according to <a href="http://www.mercuryresearch.com">Mercury Research</a>, as the company achieved record high unit shares on x86 desktop and x86 server CPU markets due to success of its Ryzen 8000-series client products and 4<sup>th</sup> Generation EPYC processors.</p>
<p>"Mercury noted in their first quarter report that AMD gained significant server and client revenue share driven by growing demand for 4th Gen EPYC and Ryzen 8000 series processors," a statement by AMD reads.</p>
<p align="center"><a href="https://www.anandtech.com/show/21392/amd-hits-record-high-share-in-x86-cpus-in-q1-2024"><img alt="" src="https://images.anandtech.com/doci/21392/amd-market-share-q1-2024.png" style="width: 100%;" /></a></p>
<h3>Desktop PCs: AMD Achieves Highest Share in More Than a Decade </h3>
<p>Desktops, particularly DIY desktops, have always been AMD's strongest market. After the company launched its Ryzen processors in 2017, it doubled its presence in desktops in just three years. But in the recent years the company had to prioritize production of more expensive CPUs for datacenters, which lead to some erosion of its desktop and mobile market shares.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.anandtech.com/show/21392/amd-hits-record-high-share-in-x86-cpus-in-q1-2024"><img alt="" src="https://images.anandtech.com/doci/21392/cpu-mkt-shares-q1-2024-mercury-desktops.png" style="width: 100%;" /></a></p>
<p>As the company secured more capacity at TSMC, it started to gradually increase production of desktop processors. In Q4 last year it introduced its Zen 4-based Ryzen 8000/Ryzen 8000 Pro processors for mainstream desktops, which appeared to be pretty popular with PC makers.</p>
<p>As a result of this and other factors, AMD increased unit sales of its desktop CPUs by 4.7% year-over-year in Q1 2024 and its market share achieved 23.9%, which is the highest desktop CPU market share the company commanded in over a decade. Interestingly, AMD does not attribute its success on the desktop front to any particular product or product family, which implies that there are multiple factors at play.</p>
<h3>Mobile PCs: A Slight Drop for AMD amid Intel's Meteor Lake Ramp</h3>
<p>AMD has been gradually regaining its share inside laptops for about 1.5 years now and sales of its Zen 4-based Ryzen 7040-series processors were quite strong in Q3 2023 and Q4 2023, when the company's unit share increased to 19.5% and 20.3%, respectively, as AMD-based notebook platforms ramped up. By contrast, Intel's Core Ultra 'Meteor Lake' powered machines only began to hit retail shelves in Q4'23, which affected sales of its processors for laptops.</p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://www.anandtech.com/show/21392/amd-hits-record-high-share-in-x86-cpus-in-q1-2024"><img alt="" src="https://images.anandtech.com/doci/21392/cpu-mkt-shares-q1-2024-mercury-mobile.png" style="width: 100%;" /></a></p>
<p>In the first quarter AMD's unit share on the market of CPUs for notebooks decreased to 19.3%, down 1% sequentially. Meanwhile, the company still demonstrated significant year-over-year unit share increase of 3.1% and revenue share increase of 4%, which signals rising average selling price of AMD's latest Ryzen processors for mobile PCs.</p>
<h3>Client PCs: Slight Gain for AMD, Small Loss for Intel</h3>
<p>Overall, Intel remained the dominant force in client PC sales in the first quarter of 2024, with a 79.4% market share, leaving 20.6% for AMD. This is not particularly surprising given how strong and diverse Intel's client products lineup is. Even with continued success, it will take AMD years to grow sales by enough to completely flip the market.</p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://www.anandtech.com/show/21392/amd-hits-record-high-share-in-x86-cpus-in-q1-2024"><img alt="" src="https://images.anandtech.com/doci/21392/cpu-mkt-shares-q1-2024-mercury-client.png" style="width: 100%;" /></a></p>
<p>But AMD actually gained a 0.3% unit share sequentially and a 3.6% unit share year-over year. Notably, however, AMD's revenue share of client PC market is significantly lower than its unit share (16.3% vs 20.6%), so the company is still somewhat pigeonholed into selling more budg... CPUs){kind=link}
![](https://web.whatsapp.com/send?text=AMD Hits Record High Share in x86 Desktops and Servers in Q1 2024 <p align="center"><a href="https://www.anandtech.com/show/21392/amd-hits-record-high-share-in-x86-cpus-in-q1-2024"><img src="https://images.anandtech.com/doci/21392/amd-cpu-gpu-generic-678_575px.jpg" alt="" /></a></p><p><p>Coming out of the dark times that preceded the launch of AMD's Zen CPU architecture in 2017, to say that AMD has turned things around on the back of Zen would be an understatement. Ever since AMD launched its first Zen-based Ryzen and EPYC processors for client and server computers, it has been consistently gaining x86 market share, growing from a bit player to a respectable rival to Intel (and all at Intel's expense).</p>
<p>The first quarter of this year was no exception, according to <a href="http://www.mercuryresearch.com">Mercury Research</a>, as the company achieved record high unit shares on x86 desktop and x86 server CPU markets due to success of its Ryzen 8000-series client products and 4<sup>th</sup> Generation EPYC processors.</p>
<p>"Mercury noted in their first quarter report that AMD gained significant server and client revenue share driven by growing demand for 4th Gen EPYC and Ryzen 8000 series processors," a statement by AMD reads.</p>
<p align="center"><a href="https://www.anandtech.com/show/21392/amd-hits-record-high-share-in-x86-cpus-in-q1-2024"><img alt="" src="https://images.anandtech.com/doci/21392/amd-market-share-q1-2024.png" style="width: 100%;" /></a></p>
<h3>Desktop PCs: AMD Achieves Highest Share in More Than a Decade </h3>
<p>Desktops, particularly DIY desktops, have always been AMD's strongest market. After the company launched its Ryzen processors in 2017, it doubled its presence in desktops in just three years. But in the recent years the company had to prioritize production of more expensive CPUs for datacenters, which lead to some erosion of its desktop and mobile market shares.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.anandtech.com/show/21392/amd-hits-record-high-share-in-x86-cpus-in-q1-2024"><img alt="" src="https://images.anandtech.com/doci/21392/cpu-mkt-shares-q1-2024-mercury-desktops.png" style="width: 100%;" /></a></p>
<p>As the company secured more capacity at TSMC, it started to gradually increase production of desktop processors. In Q4 last year it introduced its Zen 4-based Ryzen 8000/Ryzen 8000 Pro processors for mainstream desktops, which appeared to be pretty popular with PC makers.</p>
<p>As a result of this and other factors, AMD increased unit sales of its desktop CPUs by 4.7% year-over-year in Q1 2024 and its market share achieved 23.9%, which is the highest desktop CPU market share the company commanded in over a decade. Interestingly, AMD does not attribute its success on the desktop front to any particular product or product family, which implies that there are multiple factors at play.</p>
<h3>Mobile PCs: A Slight Drop for AMD amid Intel's Meteor Lake Ramp</h3>
<p>AMD has been gradually regaining its share inside laptops for about 1.5 years now and sales of its Zen 4-based Ryzen 7040-series processors were quite strong in Q3 2023 and Q4 2023, when the company's unit share increased to 19.5% and 20.3%, respectively, as AMD-based notebook platforms ramped up. By contrast, Intel's Core Ultra 'Meteor Lake' powered machines only began to hit retail shelves in Q4'23, which affected sales of its processors for laptops.</p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://www.anandtech.com/show/21392/amd-hits-record-high-share-in-x86-cpus-in-q1-2024"><img alt="" src="https://images.anandtech.com/doci/21392/cpu-mkt-shares-q1-2024-mercury-mobile.png" style="width: 100%;" /></a></p>
<p>In the first quarter AMD's unit share on the market of CPUs for notebooks decreased to 19.3%, down 1% sequentially. Meanwhile, the company still demonstrated significant year-over-year unit share increase of 3.1% and revenue share increase of 4%, which signals rising average selling price of AMD's latest Ryzen processors for mobile PCs.</p>
<h3>Client PCs: Slight Gain for AMD, Small Loss for Intel</h3>
<p>Overall, Intel remained the dominant force in client PC sales in the first quarter of 2024, with a 79.4% market share, leaving 20.6% for AMD. This is not particularly surprising given how strong and diverse Intel's client products lineup is. Even with continued success, it will take AMD years to grow sales by enough to completely flip the market.</p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://www.anandtech.com/show/21392/amd-hits-record-high-share-in-x86-cpus-in-q1-2024"><img alt="" src="https://images.anandtech.com/doci/21392/cpu-mkt-shares-q1-2024-mercury-client.png" style="width: 100%;" /></a></p>
<p>But AMD actually gained a 0.3% unit share sequentially and a 3.6% unit share year-over year. Notably, however, AMD's revenue share of client PC market is significantly lower than its unit share (16.3% vs 20.6%), so the company is still somewhat pigeonholed into selling more budg... CPUs | https://compbuddey.blogspot.com/2024/05/amd-hits-record-high-share-in-x86_27.html){kind=link}
![](mailto:?subject=AMD Hits Record High Share in x86 Desktops and Servers in Q1 2024 <p align="center"><a href="https://www.anandtech.com/show/21392/amd-hits-record-high-share-in-x86-cpus-in-q1-2024"><img src="https://images.anandtech.com/doci/21392/amd-cpu-gpu-generic-678_575px.jpg" alt="" /></a></p><p><p>Coming out of the dark times that preceded the launch of AMD's Zen CPU architecture in 2017, to say that AMD has turned things around on the back of Zen would be an understatement. Ever since AMD launched its first Zen-based Ryzen and EPYC processors for client and server computers, it has been consistently gaining x86 market share, growing from a bit player to a respectable rival to Intel (and all at Intel's expense).</p>
<p>The first quarter of this year was no exception, according to <a href="http://www.mercuryresearch.com">Mercury Research</a>, as the company achieved record high unit shares on x86 desktop and x86 server CPU markets due to success of its Ryzen 8000-series client products and 4<sup>th</sup> Generation EPYC processors.</p>
<p>"Mercury noted in their first quarter report that AMD gained significant server and client revenue share driven by growing demand for 4th Gen EPYC and Ryzen 8000 series processors," a statement by AMD reads.</p>
<p align="center"><a href="https://www.anandtech.com/show/21392/amd-hits-record-high-share-in-x86-cpus-in-q1-2024"><img alt="" src="https://images.anandtech.com/doci/21392/amd-market-share-q1-2024.png" style="width: 100%;" /></a></p>
<h3>Desktop PCs: AMD Achieves Highest Share in More Than a Decade </h3>
<p>Desktops, particularly DIY desktops, have always been AMD's strongest market. After the company launched its Ryzen processors in 2017, it doubled its presence in desktops in just three years. But in the recent years the company had to prioritize production of more expensive CPUs for datacenters, which lead to some erosion of its desktop and mobile market shares.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.anandtech.com/show/21392/amd-hits-record-high-share-in-x86-cpus-in-q1-2024"><img alt="" src="https://images.anandtech.com/doci/21392/cpu-mkt-shares-q1-2024-mercury-desktops.png" style="width: 100%;" /></a></p>
<p>As the company secured more capacity at TSMC, it started to gradually increase production of desktop processors. In Q4 last year it introduced its Zen 4-based Ryzen 8000/Ryzen 8000 Pro processors for mainstream desktops, which appeared to be pretty popular with PC makers.</p>
<p>As a result of this and other factors, AMD increased unit sales of its desktop CPUs by 4.7% year-over-year in Q1 2024 and its market share achieved 23.9%, which is the highest desktop CPU market share the company commanded in over a decade. Interestingly, AMD does not attribute its success on the desktop front to any particular product or product family, which implies that there are multiple factors at play.</p>
<h3>Mobile PCs: A Slight Drop for AMD amid Intel's Meteor Lake Ramp</h3>
<p>AMD has been gradually regaining its share inside laptops for about 1.5 years now and sales of its Zen 4-based Ryzen 7040-series processors were quite strong in Q3 2023 and Q4 2023, when the company's unit share increased to 19.5% and 20.3%, respectively, as AMD-based notebook platforms ramped up. By contrast, Intel's Core Ultra 'Meteor Lake' powered machines only began to hit retail shelves in Q4'23, which affected sales of its processors for laptops.</p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://www.anandtech.com/show/21392/amd-hits-record-high-share-in-x86-cpus-in-q1-2024"><img alt="" src="https://images.anandtech.com/doci/21392/cpu-mkt-shares-q1-2024-mercury-mobile.png" style="width: 100%;" /></a></p>
<p>In the first quarter AMD's unit share on the market of CPUs for notebooks decreased to 19.3%, down 1% sequentially. Meanwhile, the company still demonstrated significant year-over-year unit share increase of 3.1% and revenue share increase of 4%, which signals rising average selling price of AMD's latest Ryzen processors for mobile PCs.</p>
<h3>Client PCs: Slight Gain for AMD, Small Loss for Intel</h3>
<p>Overall, Intel remained the dominant force in client PC sales in the first quarter of 2024, with a 79.4% market share, leaving 20.6% for AMD. This is not particularly surprising given how strong and diverse Intel's client products lineup is. Even with continued success, it will take AMD years to grow sales by enough to completely flip the market.</p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://www.anandtech.com/show/21392/amd-hits-record-high-share-in-x86-cpus-in-q1-2024"><img alt="" src="https://images.anandtech.com/doci/21392/cpu-mkt-shares-q1-2024-mercury-client.png" style="width: 100%;" /></a></p>
<p>But AMD actually gained a 0.3% unit share sequentially and a 3.6% unit share year-over year. Notably, however, AMD's revenue share of client PC market is significantly lower than its unit share (16.3% vs 20.6%), so the company is still somewhat pigeonholed into selling more budg... CPUs&body=https://compbuddey.blogspot.com/2024/05/amd-hits-record-high-share-in-x86_27.html){kind=link}
Kioxia Demonstrates Optical Interface SSDs for Data Centers 
A few years back, the Japanese government's New Energy and Industrial Technology Development Organization (NEDO ) allocated funding for the development of green datacenter technologies. With the aim to obtain up to 40% savings in overall power consumption, several Japanese companies have been developing an optical interface for their enterprise SSDs. And at this year's FMS, Kioxia had their optical interface on display.
For this demonstration, Kioxia took its existing CM7 enterprise SSD and created an optical interface for it. A PCIe card with on-board optics developed by Kyocera is installed in the server slot. An optical interface allows data transfer over long distances (it was 40m in the demo, but Kioxia promises lengths of up to 100m for the cable in the future). This allows the storage to be kept in a separate room with minimal cooling requirements compared to the rack with the CPUs and GPUs. Disaggregation of different server components will become an option as very high throughput interfaces such as PCIe 7.0 (with 128 GT/s rates) become available.
The demonstration of the optical SSD showed a slight loss in IOPS performance, but a significant advantage in the latency metric over the shipping enterprise SSD behind a copper network link. Obviously, there are advantages in wiring requirements and signal integrity maintenance with optical links.
Being a proof-of-concept demonstration, we do see the requirement for an industry-standard approach if this were to gain adoption among different datacenter vendors. The PCI-SIG optical workgroup will need to get its act together soon to create a standards-based approach to this problem.
Storage
Western Digital Introduces 4 TB microSDUC, 8 TB SDUC, and 16 TB External SSDs 
Western Digital's BiCS8 218-layer 3D NAND is being put to good use in a wide range of client and enterprise platforms, including WD's upcoming Gen 5 client SSDs and 128 TB-class datacenter SSD. On the external storage front, the company demonstrated four different products: for card-based media, 4 TB microSDUC and 8 TB SDUC cards with UHS-I speeds, and on the portable SSD front we had two 16 TB drives. One will be a SanDisk Desk Drive with external power, and the other in the SanDisk Extreme Pro housing with a lanyard opening in the case.
All of these are using BiCS8 QLC NAND, though I did hear booth talk (as I was taking leave) that they were not supposed to divulge the use of QLC in these products. The 4 TB microSDUC and 8 TB SDUC cards are rated for UHS-I speeds. They are being marketed under the SanDisk Ultra branding.
The SanDisk Desk Drive is an external SSD with a 18W power adapter, and it has been in the market for a few months now. Initially launched in capacities up to 8 TB, Western Digital had promised a 16 TB version before the end of the year. It appears that the product is coming to retail quite soon. One aspect to note is that this drive has been using TLC for the SKUs that are currently in the market, so it appears unlikely that the 16 TB version would be QLC. The units (at least up to the 8 TB capacity point) come with two SN850XE drives. Given the recent introduction of the 8 TB SN850X, an 'E' version with tweaked firmware is likely to be present in the 16 TB Desk Drive.
The 16 TB portable SSD in the SanDisk Extreme housing was a technology demonstration. It is definitely the highest capacity bus-powered portable SSD demonstrated by any vendor at any trade show thus far. Given the 16 TB Desk Drive's imminent market introduction, it is just a matter of time before the technology demonstration of the bus-powered version becomes a retail reality.
Storage
Kioxia Demonstrates Optical Interface SSDs for Data Centers
A few years back, the Japanese government's New Energy and Industrial Technology Development Organization (NEDO ) allocated funding for the development of green datacenter technologies. With the aim to obtain up to 40% savings in overall power consumption, several Japanese companies have been developing an optical interface for their enterprise SSDs. And at this year's FMS, Kioxia had their optical interface on display.
For this demonstration, Kioxia took its existing CM7 enterprise SSD and created an optical interface for it. A PCIe card with on-board optics developed by Kyocera is installed in the server slot. An optical interface allows data transfer over long distances (it was 40m in the demo, but Kioxia promises lengths of up to 100m for the cable in the future). This allows the storage to be kept in a separate room with minimal cooling requirements compared to the rack with the CPUs and GPUs. Disaggregation of different server components will become an option as very high throughput interfaces such as PCIe 7.0 (with 128 GT/s rates) become available.
The demonstration of the optical SSD showed a slight loss in IOPS performance, but a significant advantage in the latency metric over the shipping enterprise SSD behind a copper network link. Obviously, there are advantages in wiring requirements and signal integrity maintenance with optical links.
Being a proof-of-concept demonstration, we do see the requirement for an industry-standard approach if this were to gain adoption among different datacenter vendors. The PCI-SIG optical workgroup will need to get its act together soon to create a standards-based approach to this problem.
Storage
Western Digital Introduces 4 TB microSDUC, 8 TB SDUC, and 16 TB External SSDs
Western Digital's BiCS8 218-layer 3D NAND is being put to good use in a wide range of client and enterprise platforms, including WD's upcoming Gen 5 client SSDs and 128 TB-class datacenter SSD. On the external storage front, the company demonstrated four different products: for card-based media, 4 TB microSDUC and 8 TB SDUC cards with UHS-I speeds, and on the portable SSD front we had two 16 TB drives. One will be a SanDisk Desk Drive with external power, and the other in the SanDisk Extreme Pro housing with a lanyard opening in the case.
All of these are using BiCS8 QLC NAND, though I did hear booth talk (as I was taking leave) that they were not supposed to divulge the use of QLC in these products. The 4 TB microSDUC and 8 TB SDUC cards are rated for UHS-I speeds. They are being marketed under the SanDisk Ultra branding.
The SanDisk Desk Drive is an external SSD with a 18W power adapter, and it has been in the market for a few months now. Initially launched in capacities up to 8 TB, Western Digital had promised a 16 TB version before the end of the year. It appears that the product is coming to retail quite soon. One aspect to note is that this drive has been using TLC for the SKUs that are currently in the market, so it appears unlikely that the 16 TB version would be QLC. The units (at least up to the 8 TB capacity point) come with two SN850XE drives. Given the recent introduction of the 8 TB SN850X, an 'E' version with tweaked firmware is likely to be present in the 16 TB Desk Drive.
The 16 TB portable SSD in the SanDisk Extreme housing was a technology demonstration. It is definitely the highest capacity bus-powered portable SSD demonstrated by any vendor at any trade show thus far. Given the 16 TB Desk Drive's imminent market introduction, it is just a matter of time before the technology demonstration of the bus-powered version becomes a retail reality.
Storage
Intel Sells Its Arm Shares, Reduces Stakes in Other Companies 
Intel has divested its entire stake in Arm Holdings during the second quarter, raising approximately $147 million. Alongside this, Intel sold its stake in cybersecurity firm ZeroFox and reduced its holdings in Astera Labs, all as part of a broader effort to manage costs and recover cash amid significant financial challenges.
The sale of Intel's 1.18 million shares in Arm Holdings, as reported in a recent SEC filing, comes at a time when the company is struggling with substantial financial losses. Despite the $147 million generated from the sale, Intel reported a $120 million net loss on its equity investments for the quarter, which is a part of a larger $1.6 billion loss that Intel faced during this period.
In addition to selling its stake in Arm, Intel also exited its investment in ZeroFox and reduced its involvement with Astera Labs, a company known for developing connectivity platforms for enterprise hardware. These moves are in line with Intel's strategy to reduce costs and stabilize its financial position as it faces ongoing market challenges.
Despite the divestment, Intel's past investment in Arm was likely driven by strategic considerations. Arm Holdings is a significant force in the semiconductor industry, with its designs powering most mobile devices, and, for obvious reasons, Intel would like to address these. Intel and Arm are also collaborating on datacenter platforms tailored for Intel's 18A process technology. Additionally, Arm might view Intel as a potential licensee for its technologies and a valuable partner for other companies that license Arm's designs.
Intel's investment in Astera Labs was also a strategic one as the company probably wanted to secure steady supply of smart retimers, smart cable modems, and CXL memory controller, which are used in volumes in datacenters and Intel is certainly interested in selling as many datacenter CPUs as possible.
Intel's financial struggles were highlighted earlier this month when the company released a disappointing earnings report, which led to a 33% drop in its stock value, erasing billions of dollars of capitalization. To counter these difficulties, Intel announced plans to cut 15,000 jobs and implement other expense reductions. The company has also suspended its dividend, signaling the depth of its efforts to conserve cash and focus on recovery. When it comes to divestment of Arm stock, the need for immediate financial stabilization has presumably taken precedence, leading to the decision.
CPUs
![Rapidus Wants to Offer Fully Automated Packaging for 2nm Fab to Cut Chip Lead Times <p align="center"><a href="https://www.anandtech.com/show/21525/rapidus-2nm-fully-automated-chip-packaging-to-cut-lead-times"><img src="https://images.anandtech.com/doci/21525/intel-foundry-wafer-semiconductor-fab-ifs-678_575px.jpg" alt="" /></a></p><p><p>One of the core challenges that Rapidus will face when it kicks off volume production of chips on its 2nm-class process technology in 2027 is lining up customers. With Intel, Samsung, and TSMC all slated to offer their own 2nm-class nodes by that time, Rapidus will need some kind of advantage to attract customers away from its more established rivals. To that end, the company thinks they've found their edge: fully automated packaging that will allow for shorter chip lead times than manned packaging operations.</p>
<p>In an interview with <a href="https://asia.nikkei.com/Editor-s-Picks/Interview/Japan-s-Rapidus-to-fully-automate-2-nm-chip-fab-president-says">Nikkei</a>, Rapidus' president, Atsuyoshi Koike, outlined the company's vision to use advanced packaging as a competitive edge for the new fab. <a href="https://www.anandtech.com/show/21411/rapidus-adds-chip-packaging-services-to-plans-for-32b-2nm-fab">The Hokkaido facility</a>, which is currently under construction and is expecting to begin equipment installation this December, is already slated to both produce chips and offer advanced packaging services within the same facility, an industry first. But ultimately, Rapidus biggest plan to differentiate itself is by automating the back-end fab processes (chip packaging) to provide significantly faster turnaround times.</p>
<p>Rapidus is targetting back-end production in particular as, compared to front-end (lithography) production, back-end production still heavily relies on human labor. No other advanced packaging fab has fully automated the process thus far, which provides for a degree of flexibility, but slows throughput. But with automation in place to handle this aspect of chip production, Rapidus would be able to increase chip packaging efficiency and speed, which is crucial as chip assembly tasks become more complex. Rapidus is also collaborating with multiple Japanese suppliers to source materials for back-end production. </p>
<p>"In the past, Japanese chipmakers tried to keep their technology development exclusively in-house, which pushed up development costs and made them less competitive," Koike told Nikkei. "[Rapidus plans to] open up technology that should be standardized, bringing down costs, while handling important technology in-house." </p>
<p>Financially, Rapidus faces a significant challenge, needing a total of ¥5 trillion ($35 billion) by the time mass production starts in 2027. The company estimates that ¥2 trillion will be required by 2025 for prototype production. While the Japanese government has provided ¥920 billion in aid, Rapidus still needs to secure substantial funding from private investors.</p>
<p>Due to its lack of track record and experience of chip production as. well as limited visibility for success, Rapidus is finding it difficult to attract private financing. The company is in discussions with the government to make it easier to raise capital, including potential loan guarantees, and is hopeful that new legislation will assist in this effort.</p>
</p> Semiconductors](https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/blogger_img_proxy/AEn0k_uNHWRwkrj9Z3OSw3HYlNqhmCG4uJycdeGEUJihiQ99D_GQTZQ_5F4BgP9m7rMteBxzMtCqi17kY0nPNSciZgLyH-vGdPIOcrZoMCmb9L1CHbkbDuSkTeVVTf6cXKtGHTUaUUomDlJQvor7zsuPqeK4ScECji_0RqJbJSaNeTDfkwc7=w72-h72-p-k-no-nu)
Rapidus Wants to Offer Fully Automated Packaging for 2nm Fab to Cut Chip Lead Times 
One of the core challenges that Rapidus will face when it kicks off volume production of chips on its 2nm-class process technology in 2027 is lining up customers. With Intel, Samsung, and TSMC all slated to offer their own 2nm-class nodes by that time, Rapidus will need some kind of advantage to attract customers away from its more established rivals. To that end, the company thinks they've found their edge: fully automated packaging that will allow for shorter chip lead times than manned packaging operations.
In an interview with Nikkei, Rapidus' president, Atsuyoshi Koike, outlined the company's vision to use advanced packaging as a competitive edge for the new fab. The Hokkaido facility, which is currently under construction and is expecting to begin equipment installation this December, is already slated to both produce chips and offer advanced packaging services within the same facility, an industry first. But ultimately, Rapidus biggest plan to differentiate itself is by automating the back-end fab processes (chip packaging) to provide significantly faster turnaround times.
Rapidus is targetting back-end production in particular as, compared to front-end (lithography) production, back-end production still heavily relies on human labor. No other advanced packaging fab has fully automated the process thus far, which provides for a degree of flexibility, but slows throughput. But with automation in place to handle this aspect of chip production, Rapidus would be able to increase chip packaging efficiency and speed, which is crucial as chip assembly tasks become more complex. Rapidus is also collaborating with multiple Japanese suppliers to source materials for back-end production.
"In the past, Japanese chipmakers tried to keep their technology development exclusively in-house, which pushed up development costs and made them less competitive," Koike told Nikkei. "[Rapidus plans to] open up technology that should be standardized, bringing down costs, while handling important technology in-house."
Financially, Rapidus faces a significant challenge, needing a total of ¥5 trillion ($35 billion) by the time mass production starts in 2027. The company estimates that ¥2 trillion will be required by 2025 for prototype production. While the Japanese government has provided ¥920 billion in aid, Rapidus still needs to secure substantial funding from private investors.
Due to its lack of track record and experience of chip production as. well as limited visibility for success, Rapidus is finding it difficult to attract private financing. The company is in discussions with the government to make it easier to raise capital, including potential loan guarantees, and is hopeful that new legislation will assist in this effort.
Semiconductors
Lorem Ipsum is simply dummy text of the printing and typesetting industry. Lorem Ipsum has been the industry's.
Kioxia Demonstrates Optical Interface SSDs for Data Centers
A few years back, the Japanese government's New Energy and Industrial Technology Development Organization (NEDO ) allocated funding for the development of green datacenter technologies. With the aim to obtain up to 40% savings in overall power consumption, several Japanese companies have been developing an optical interface for their enterprise SSDs. And at this year's FMS, Kioxia had their optical interface on display.
For this demonstration, Kioxia took its existing CM7 enterprise SSD and created an optical interface for it. A PCIe card with on-board optics developed by Kyocera is installed in the server slot. An optical interface allows data transfer over long distances (it was 40m in the demo, but Kioxia promises lengths of up to 100m for the cable in the future). This allows the storage to be kept in a separate room with minimal cooling requirements compared to the rack with the CPUs and GPUs. Disaggregation of different server components will become an option as very high throughput interfaces such as PCIe 7.0 (with 128 GT/s rates) become available.
The demonstration of the optical SSD showed a slight loss in IOPS performance, but a significant advantage in the latency metric over the shipping enterprise SSD behind a copper network link. Obviously, there are advantages in wiring requirements and signal integrity maintenance with optical links.
Being a proof-of-concept demonstration, we do see the requirement for an industry-standard approach if this were to gain adoption among different datacenter vendors. The PCI-SIG optical workgroup will need to get its act together soon to create a standards-based approach to this problem.
Storage
Western Digital Introduces 4 TB microSDUC, 8 TB SDUC, and 16 TB External SSDs
Western Digital's BiCS8 218-layer 3D NAND is being put to good use in a wide range of client and enterprise platforms, including WD's upcoming Gen 5 client SSDs and 128 TB-class datacenter SSD. On the external storage front, the company demonstrated four different products: for card-based media, 4 TB microSDUC and 8 TB SDUC cards with UHS-I speeds, and on the portable SSD front we had two 16 TB drives. One will be a SanDisk Desk Drive with external power, and the other in the SanDisk Extreme Pro housing with a lanyard opening in the case.
All of these are using BiCS8 QLC NAND, though I did hear booth talk (as I was taking leave) that they were not supposed to divulge the use of QLC in these products. The 4 TB microSDUC and 8 TB SDUC cards are rated for UHS-I speeds. They are being marketed under the SanDisk Ultra branding.
The SanDisk Desk Drive is an external SSD with a 18W power adapter, and it has been in the market for a few months now. Initially launched in capacities up to 8 TB, Western Digital had promised a 16 TB version before the end of the year. It appears that the product is coming to retail quite soon. One aspect to note is that this drive has been using TLC for the SKUs that are currently in the market, so it appears unlikely that the 16 TB version would be QLC. The units (at least up to the 8 TB capacity point) come with two SN850XE drives. Given the recent introduction of the 8 TB SN850X, an 'E' version with tweaked firmware is likely to be present in the 16 TB Desk Drive.
The 16 TB portable SSD in the SanDisk Extreme housing was a technology demonstration. It is definitely the highest capacity bus-powered portable SSD demonstrated by any vendor at any trade show thus far. Given the 16 TB Desk Drive's imminent market introduction, it is just a matter of time before the technology demonstration of the bus-powered version becomes a retail reality.
Storage
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