AMD companies claim to pay "Intel tax" with Xeon Server processors



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AMD claims that customers of its biggest rival pay an "Intel tax" when they use Xeon processors, which dominate the market, in data centers.

The Santa Clara, California-based company recently released a white paper on its website to promote AMD EPYC server processors and criticize its competitor for what it calls the "Intel Tax," a set of costs associated with a "self-taxation designed" in performance bottlenecks "that would have forced Intel customers to buy more expensive Xeon processors.

[Related: AMD Fares Better Than Intel On Wall Street As It Steals CPU Market Share]

"That's the extra price you have to pay to get the features and performance you need, for Intel processors," says the white paper.

The white paper was released on Intel's data-driven innovation day on April 2 when the semiconductor giant is expected to announce new announcements for Xeon and other server products. .

An Intel spokesman said his response would come with the event next week.

Andrew Kretzer, director of sales and marketing at Bold Data Technology, a custom systems builder based in Fremont, Calif., Said he subscribed to AMD's message, calling on Intel to create its "maze of more of 42 SKUs of different processors, four codes and 5 different series. "

"Not only is Intel blocking its processors to create slotted (and extremely expensive) SKUs, but they have added incredible complexity to the buying process for potential customers," he said in a letter. electronic. "We had to create a tool that helps customers understand what they are buying and what they need with Intel Xeon processors, and this tool has become more complex with each new family of Xeons."

However, he adds, the increased complexity does not necessarily represent a benefit for AMD, as customers opt for purchasing older Xeon products from Intel, such as the Broadwell range.

"The majority of these clients still claim Broadwell parts, largely to prevent brain cramps and price cuts caused by this new line," he said. "Unfortunately for AMD, it seems that these customers are turning to previous generations of Intel Xeon towards a probably better experience than AMD, thus reinforcing the validity of this old man that" no one has never been fired for buying IBM ".

Dominic Daninger, vice president of engineering at Nor-Tech, a high-performance computer systems builder based in Burnsville, Minnesota, said that AMD's return to the server market with EPYC was beneficial. for the competition, which would ultimately benefit customers while pushing Intel

"I know that – especially on a single jack, AMD has an attractive competition," he said, referring to AMD's unique EPYC solutions, "and their price is still competitive."

Daninger said that if the white paper on AMD spelled out some bright spots, such as the cost of Intel 's high – end Xeon processors and AMD' s powerful I / O capabilities, the company 's high – end Intel' s Xeon processors and AMD 's powerful I / O capabilities have made it even more affordable. AMD's argument regarding more cores per processor is not necessarily relevant for some markets, such as -performance computing.

For high performance computing, faster clock speeds are often more important than higher core counts, Daninger said, and Intel is performing particularly well. This is relevant in high performance computing when it comes to commercial software that charges for licenses by heart, which means that it is important to optimize performance within from each heart.

"What is always done by Intel, is to have higher performance per heart," Daninger said. "In the HPC business, often a customer will choose to use fewer cores and a higher clock speed."

In the AMD white paper, the company says companies can save money on software licenses by choosing its single-socket processor or a processor with fewer cores without sacrificing features such as memory capacity and bandwidth.

The white paper compares price and performance between Intel Xeon processors and Amd's EPYC processors, showing that AMD processors deliver superior or equivalent performance at a lower cost. However, the white paper compares only with a single benchmark, SPECrate2017_fp_base, which is a standard test for compute performance. The document also does not take into account the wider selection of Intel Xeon processors for comparison purposes.

According to a recent study, AMD has made gains against Intel in the server market, especially with companies. Although the company is about to beat Intel in the market this year with processors based on a new generation manufacturing process, AMD still has many hurdles to overcome.

"You're going to have a hard time dismantling Intel from a business," Bob Venero, CEO of Holbrook, New York-based IT services provider Future Tech, told CRN earlier this month.

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