Intel pins hopes on new Xeon chip

Reuters

Intel launched its next generation Xeon server processors yesterday in a bid to regain data center market share, and revealed that its Gaudi 3 artificial intelligence accelerator chips would be priced much lower than its rivals' products.

The sixth generation Xeon chips are crucial for Intel which has been steadily losing data center market share to Advanced Micro Devices.

Intel's share of the data center market for x86 chips has declined 5.6 percentage points over the past year to 76.4 percent, with AMD now holding 23.6 percent, according to data from Mercury Research.

Stumbles in Intel's manufacturing process have allowed AMD to take business, as the latter uses Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company to fabricate its chips.

The Xeon 6 server processors come in two main flavors, a larger, more powerful version, and an "efficiency" model that Intel pitched as a replacement for older-generation chips.

To achieve the same level of computing power as its second generation chips, they will now require about 67 percent fewer server racks with the efficiency model, which is designed to serve media, websites and perform database calculations.

"Simply put, performance up, power down," Intel chief executive Pat Gelsinger said at the Computex trade fair in Taipei, where he gave a presentation of the server.