Over the years, the chip giant Intel has occupied an absolute advantage in the field of server CPU, even AMD targeted enhancement and optimization design in high-performance computing such as servers and data centers, and launched server CPU products. However, the Intel still accounts for about 94% of the data center market share, which is called

Now, things have changed. On top of AMD's comeback in the server CPU market, chipmaker NVIDIA, known for its GPU, announced its $40 billion acquisition in Septembe

Although chips developed by Intel and AMD based on X86 instruction set are the mainstream of PC and server market, chips based on ARM architecture are also expanding from mobile device market to data center. Nowadays, many companies have tried to introduce ARM chip into data center, but their achievements are still limited.

NVIDIA, with its GPU, has a large data center customer base, which can ultimately help arm expand its business and customers in the data center field. NVIDIA's latest quarterly results show that the company's Data Center Division has revenue of $1.75 billion.

AMD's deal with Xilinx is a bigger threat

If AMD's server CPU and NVIDIA are about to introduce arm into its data center business is not enough to pose a threat to Intel, then there is a greater threat waiting for Intel.

Amd agreed on Tuesday to buy sargens for $35billion through full stock trading, which has programmable processors (FPGA) that can speed up specific tasks, and early in the FPGA market with Altera, which was acquired by Intel in 2015.

AMD is already selling CPUs and GPUs for data centers, and with the addition of Xilinx, the product portfolio will be expanded to include FPGA and other dedicated chips.

It should be noted that Intel is also preparing to extend its data center business with its latest Xe architecture, independent graphics cards.

Whether it's a deal between AMD and Xilinx, or NVIDIA and arm, the two companies will provide a variety of data center products competing with Intel。 AMD is expected to complete the deal with Xilinx by the end of 2021, while NVIDIA is expected to complete its acquisition of arm within 18 months.

The price disadvantage of Intel data center products in the current epidemic

On the other hand, even if there is no competitive pressure from other companies, Intel's data center business has some problems due to the impact of the new crown epidemic.

In its third quarter 2020 results, revenue from its data center division fell 7%, sales to corporate and government customers fell 47%, and sales to cloud customers rose only 15%.

With Intel's data center customers facing unprecedented economic uncertainty, it's no surprise that some customers are cutting back on their spending.In a tough economic environment, some former Intel customers may look for lower cost alternatives.

A few years ago, there was no better alternative to Intel for data centers, but today AMD is a good choice. If NVIDIA can sell arm chips to its customers, NVIDIA will become another reliable choice in the future.

In the past, Intel has performed very well in a market where there is almost no data center competition, but this market is about to disappear. Amd has begun to erode the market share of Intel server CPU, and the transaction with Xilinx will make the company more competitive. NVIDIA will also compete with arm based chips.

Although Intel's dominant position in the data center will not disappear in an instant, as the competition intensifies, it may lose a lot of market share.