Driven by AI demand, the overseas CPU battle in the second quarter sees AMD outperforming Intel!

With the continuous deepening of AI applications, the demand for high-performance chips in the PC and server markets is soaring, and the central processing unit (CPU) market is being taken over by AI chip companies, putting immense pressure on traditional chip giants.

According to the latest research report from Bank of America Merrill Lynch, in the CPU battle in the second quarter of this year, AMD's performance was particularly outstanding, surpassing Intel and becoming the focus of the entire market.

Bank of America Merrill Lynch analysts Vivek Arya, Duksan Jang, and Michael Mani released a report on Wednesday stating that in the second quarter of this year, both the PC and server markets have returned to typical growth trends.

Although PC shipments have slightly decreased on a quarter-on-quarter basis, the significant year-on-year growth indicates the overall health and stable demand of the market.

The server market also showed a positive growth trend, with a slight year-on-year decrease but an increase in average selling prices (ASP), indicating a strong demand for high-performance processors in the market.

In this round of CPU market competition, AMD has shown strong growth momentum.

According to data from Mercury Research, AMD's CPUs not only significantly exceeded Intel in unit shipments for PCs and servers, but also achieved higher growth in ASP. Specifically:

In the second quarter, AMD's PC unit shipments and ASP increased by 2% and 10% year-on-year, respectively, while Intel decreased by 2% and 3% year-on-year.

Server unit shipments increased by 2% quarter-on-quarter (down 12% year-on-year), and ASP increased by 2% quarter-on-quarter (up 28% year-on-year), with AMD once again slightly surpassing Intel in these two indicators.

Bank of America Merrill Lynch predicts that by the end of 2024, AMD's market share in the PC market will slightly increase to 17-18%, and in the server market, it will significantly increase to 37% by 2026.

The institution also pointed out that AMD's market share is expected to continue to grow at least until 2025, by which time its overall revenue share in the PC and server markets will reach 25%, compared to 19% in 2023 and 10% in 2020, marking a significant leap.

The development of AI technology has had a profound impact on the CPU market, with the increasing demand for chip processing power as AI applications deepen.

The Bank of America Merrill Lynch report mentioned that AI has had a positive impact on both CPU shipments and ASP. Especially in the server market, high core counts and higher-end processors have driven market expansion, leading to an increase in ASP.

Data shows that due to the increased demand for AI processors in cloud deployments, AMD's CPU shipments in the second quarter increased by 15% year-on-year.

Bank of America Merrill Lynch maintains a buy rating for AMD, while maintaining an underweight rating for Intel, expecting AMD's CPU sales to achieve a 38% year-on-year growth in 2024, compared to Intel's expected growth rate of only 2%. At the same time, AMD will launch the Zen 5 Turin product, which will be the first major server update in two years. Bank of America Merrill Lynch believes that this will further drive AMD's market share growth.

However, the research report points out that with the rise of manufacturers based on the Arm architecture, it is expected that the PC and server markets will face more intense competition in the future. The Arm architecture, known for its high energy efficiency and small size, has already achieved great success in the mobile device market and is now gradually expanding into the server and PC markets. This will undoubtedly bring a new competitive landscape to the CPU market