Processing of Intel and AMD: Chipset Technology

Intel and AMD are multinational companies that were incorporated in Valley in the USA and are well known for developing production facilities in Asia, such as in Taiwan, China, Malaysia, and Singapore and their products are used in every country where PCs are used.

AMD and Intel both make motherboards, which are the circuitry at the heart of all computers. Personal computers are also powered by CPUs, or Central Processing Units.

With 40 years of experience manufacturing semiconductors, microchips, and other types of computer equipment, Intel is established as the market leader in motherboards and processors for personal computers. AMD produces semiconductors, microchips, and other types of computer equipment.

AMD which is deemed to produce “clones” of Intel products is the second largest company in this sector currently after Intel.

While both are always vying against each other for market share and technological changes, AMD offers the same basic product at a lower price than Intel. 

Market Share & Competition 

The x86 series of microprocessors was invented by Intel. However, today both AMD and Intel compete against each other in this field. Even though both Intel and AMD have been constantly working to advance the technology employed in their chipsets to retain a larger market share, Intel faces stiff competition from Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) in the manufacturing of Central Processing Units (CPUs). AMD has a significant share in the total number of CPUs sold annually, which are key components in computers.

The frequent refining of the chipset technology by the two companies is aimed at realizing optimum performance in terms of graphics, speed, and power consumption along with other features. Both the chipsets vary in their clock speed, host-bus speed, and cache memory. While AMD employs hyper-transport technology in its processors, Intel uses hyper-threading technology.

This has led to fast changes in chipset architecture as well as price wars between Intel and AMD.

While AMD was the first company to introduce a 64-bit processor clocking the gigahertz speed, Intel introduced the EMT64 CPU. Additionally, when the NX processor technology was introduced by AMD, Intel responded by introducing the XDB technology in its processors.

Until and unless technological constrictions demand the upgrade to a new socket, AMD chips are manufactured from pre-existing sockets. This strategy is highly favorable for consumers in order to replace and upgrade the chips. AMD processors also provide support to the backward-compatibility feature as seen with the introduction of the AMD64 processor which supports 32-bit software with optimum functionality. This provides a lot of flexibility to the users, unlike the equivalent Intel EMT64 CPU which has minimal 32-bit functionalities.

AMD bridge components are easier to mix than Intel chips, whose design considers certain processor families. On the other hand, Intel chip releases occur too fast, thus consumers face difficulties in replacement and upgrading due to varying socket sizes accompanying new releases.

AMD CPUs operate at a low energy consumption of about 275 watts whereas intel processors with similar functionalities require higher power of about 400 watts. 

Intel CPUs are designed in a way to ensure the execution of tasks with minimal heat generation. Additionally, they have advanced cooling features. Hence, Intel chipsets are likely to last longer than AMD chipsets with equivalent functions which exhibit a higher heat generation.

This acts as a major setback for AMD-equipped machines in case of heavy applications. While Intel manufactures its own system boards to support its processors, AMD relies on third parties to build system boards for their CPUs which leads to dragging new releases of chipsets.