AMD's Winning Streak: Server Market Share Approaches 40%, Desktops Roar Ahead
It seems AMD is starting 2025 with some real momentum. New numbers from Mercury Research for the first quarter give us a very pretty picture for the "Red Team," particularly in the hotly contested server market and on our desktops.
Taking the Data Center: EPYC's Rapid Ascent
The server market is where AMD is really excelling. Their unit share went up to 27.2%, but the real headline is their revenue share, which has leapt to an astounding 39.4%. That's a tremendous 3.1 percentage point jump from just last quarter and a whopping 6.5 points higher than this time last year. This robust growth is being fueled by their existing Zen 4-based EPYC processors, including Genoa and Bergamo, even as new Turin "Zen 5" processors are starting to make their mark, with yet more data center performance and efficiency.
Here is a quick look at how their revenue share has grown across the board from last year as well as the last quarter:
- Server Revenue Share: Up 6.5% year-over-year and 3.1% quarter-over-quarter to that record 39.4%.
- Client (Desktop & Laptop) Revenue Share: A whopping 10.2% year-over-year jump, and 2.7% rise from Q4 2024, to 26.5%.
- Desktop Specific Revenue Share: A staggering 15.2% year-over-year explosion, and a 6.4% rise from last quarter.
- Mobile (Laptop) Revenue Share: Also coming into shape with a 7.3% year-over-year rise and a modest 0.5% quarter-over-quarter increase.
- Total CPU Revenue Share: AMD now holds 31.6% of the total CPU revenue, up 9.0% from last year and 2.9% from Q4 2024.
Desktop Dynamos: Ryzen Continues to Impress
It's not just servers that AMD is making waves in. On the desktop front, their unit share was a robust 28%, with revenue share a whopping 34.4%. That's even bigger year-over-year growth than their server chips. Gamers are clearly taking a liking to CPUs like the Ryzen 7 7800X3D and more recent Ryzen 7 9800X3D. And their 12 and 16-core CPUs are ever more the go-to choices for content creators needing heavy-duty multi-threaded horsepower.
Mobile Momentum and a Broad CPU Strategy
The story is also good on the laptop side, with unit share 3.6 points higher and revenue 9.0 points higher year to year. AMD's broad strategy of maintaining a wide line of x86 products, ranging from low-end silicon to high-end Ryzen AI 300 series and the behemoth "Fire Range" Ryzen 9000HX and "Strix Halo" Ryzen AI MAX APUs, is seemingly paying off.
With the groundbreaking Zen architecture as their foundation, AMD shows no signs of slowing down. They're already hard at work on Zen 6, so expect them to keep pushing the boundaries in the x86 world.
Beyond CPUs: AMD's Big Bet on AI with Instinct MI450
But AMD is not just focused on CPUs. They are making a strong foray into the booming AI sector. Their new Instinct MI450 AI clusters are their first foray into rack-scale solutions, in the hopes of offering a compelling choice in a market currently dominated by NVIDIA.
Challenging the AI Giants: MI450 vs. NVIDIA
NVIDIA enjoys a comfortable advantage with its AI clusters like GB200 Blackwell configurations. AMD, however, is going to shake things up. AMD will supposedly introduce its MI450 IF128 cluster (a 128-GPU solution) as well as a 64-GPU model by the second half of 2026. These are designed to go head-to-head with NVIDIA's next-gen "Vera Rubin" VR200 NVL144 design.
One of those technologies AMD is counting on is "Infinity Fabric" over Ethernet that can deliver an amazing 1.8 TByte/s of unidirectional bandwidth per GPU. To link these clusters, AMD is looking to use three Pensando 800GbE network cards per GPU in the MI450 that can deliver 2.4 Tbit/s of network bandwidth – 1.5 times more than NVIDIA's VR200 NVL144 is alleged to offer. Another setup with custom Ethernet network cards is also in the pipeline.
The Road Ahead for AMD in AI
While these specs sound good, there are also difficulties ahead for AMD. The MI450 IF128 cluster is a very complex design, reportedly, which could be difficult to produce in high volume. Further, as the new entrant in rack-scale AI solutions, they will be battling an incumbent market leader. To counter this, AMD might focus more initially on the "smaller" MI450 IF64 rack-scale solution, which would presumably have a less complicated design.
It's clear that AMD is looking to raise the stakes in AI with the MI400 series. If they're truly capable of delivering on the hyped performance and efficiency, it could be a game-changer for the company in the AI race.
