Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger Says Alder Lake Put AMD In The Rearview Mirror For Good
It hasn't even been a full year since Pat Gelsinger took over as CEO of Intel, but in a relatively short span he has made some big comments. His boldest to date, however, came in a video posted to his LInkedIn page, in which the CEO reflected on the past year while wearing a delightfully geeky Christmas sweater. The way Gelsinger tells it, Intel is back on top and will never again concede its lead to AMD.
Company heads touting advantages in whatever spaces they compete in is nothing new, and sure, we've seen leadership take pot shots at the competition. Usually, though, high-level execs refrain from calling out competitors by name. Not this time. In no uncertain terms, Gelsinger declared "AMD in the rearview mirror" now that Alder Lake has arrived. But that's not all.
"Alder Lake—all of a sudden...Boom! We are back in the game. AMD in the rearview mirror in clients and never again will they be in the windshield. We are just leading the market," Gelsinger said.
Gelsinger's video is broken down into short sections, with the AMD comment coming in reference to looking at the best opportunity ahead. He actually mentioned two opportunities—becoming the leader in autonomous vehicles through Intel's Mobileye division, and what the launch of Alder Lake means for the company's future.
As we saw in our Alder Lake performance review, Gelsinger is completely justified in saying Intel is back in the game. It's a strong architecture that embraces the latest technologies like DDR5 and PCI Express 5.0, and the combination of high-performance Golden Cove cores with power-efficient Gracemont cores definitely brings with it some advantages.
One could also defend Gelsinger's declaration that AMD is in the rearview mirror, depending on the workload and your perspective. Alder Lake certainly comes out ahead of Zen 3 in many areas, and it leads in platform tech for the moment. However, it's not a clean sweep—the Ryzen 9 5950X notches wins here and here. Additionally, AMD's implementation of stacked 3D V-cache is going to make things interesting.
Intel will definitely face some challenges in living up to Gelsinger's comments, and specifically about AMD never again being in the windshield. Not even way off in the distance, either, with AMD reiterating at CES that it is on track to launch Zen 4 this year.
Even so, Gelsinger is confident that Intel is now "moving forward at a torrid pace" with the company launching five nodes in four years (Intel 7, Intel 4, Intel 3, Intel 20A, and Intel 18A), all of which he says are either on or ahead of schedule. That's great news for Intel, given its tumultuous road to 10nm that opened the door for AMD to spring ahead. How will it actually play out from here on? Whatever the answer, it's clearly going to be fun to watch.
