The chipset manufacturing industry has been under constant transformation due to the rivalry between Intel and Advanced Micro Devices (AMD). These two chipmakers are the dominant players in the manufacture of CPUs. The fierce competition between Intel and AMD has caused considerable changes in chipset technologies as each firm tries to gain market control.
These two companies undertake frequent refinements of their chipsets to achieve optimal performance in terms of speed, graphics and power consumption to achieve greater customer appeal. A chipset’s performance depends on factors such as cache memory, clock speed, host-bus speed.
Of the two companies, AMD was the first to introduce a 64-bit chipset with a clocking capability measurable in gigahertz. In response, Intel introduced its EMT64 chipset possessing 64-bit functionalities. Intel and AMD employ different chipset production techniques. AMD focuses on the issue of compatibility and manufactures chips based on pre-existing sockets.
The company produces a range of chips based on a particular socket until there is need to upgrade to a new socket due to technological constrictions. In this regard, consumers face few difficulties when there is need to upgrade or replace a chipset.
In addition, AMD processors support backward-compatibility and thus provide users with a lot of flexibility. AMD’s focus on compatibility extends to its processors’ bridge components, which are easy to mix and match unlike Intel chips whose design considers certain processor families.
To counter AMD’s strategy, Intel ensures frequent release of chipsets and system boards. This cushions consumers against difficulties associated with replacement or upgrading as socket sizes vary with new chipset releases.
AMD places emphasis on the issue of energy consumption by designing processors that operate at low energy levels. This has helped to boost the company’s customer appeal as it considers the minimization of consumers’ energy expenses. An Intel processor with similar functionalities will operate at higher energy consumption levels.
A processor clocking speed and its extendibility are key considerations in high-end operations. The architecture of AMD chips support faster clocking and over-clocking while maintaining stability. AMD chips’ design ensures the location of the L3 cache memory outside the CPU core to support over-clocking.
One can vary the BIOS settings and increase the speed of a processor accordingly. An Intel chip constitutes of a L2 cache memory located in its core. Although Intel chips resist over-clocking, the location of the L2 cache memory facilitates faster memory access and thus enable higher performance when compared to the AMD L3 cache memory.
The correlation between performance and cache memory speed becomes significant during small data applications. Intel chipsets exhibit effectiveness in extracting and analyzing data during a single program operation.
The architecture of Intel CPUs ensures minimal heat generation during execution of tasks. In this regard, Intel chipsets are likely to last longer than AMD chipsets with equivalent functions as they normally exhibit higher heat generation. This is a major setback for AMD equipped machines when dealing with heavy applications.
Although both companies have exhibited high levels of innovativeness regarding chipset technology, Intel controls a considerably large portion of the chipset market. Intel’s dominance over AMD in terms of customer appeal emanates from extensive campaigns and licensing of the brand’s name to several PC manufacturers.
However, AMD continues to penetrate market segments previously dominated by Intel and has proven to be the greatest threat to Intel in the whole chipset industry.