Not too long ago, the notion of AMD overtaking Intel seemed like a distant pipe dream, but that “impossible” scenario has become a reality. Datacenter SVP/GM Forrest Norrod touched upon AMD’s remarkable turnaround during this week’s Barclays tech conference, noting that the company is rather shocked by its new market position. According to Norrod, the goal with Zen was merely to reach parity with the competition.
First time in the industry, we’re going to break the laws of nature that had governed the semiconductor industry for the last 30 years, which is — it’s like the fourth wall of Physics in semiconductors, Intel has a process node advantage. We were excited 4 years ago, because we thought we’re going to be at parity. We didn’t dream that we would be ahead.