3 Ways AMD Has Disrupted the Mainstream Desktop PC Market
For around five years the PC market was bound by incremental increases in performance — a focus on flagship and high-end solutions with exaggerated prices when compared to performance. What was really pushing the market was the adoption of new features, supported by the latest generations, such as PCIe 3.0, NVMe, and DDR4. The lack of competition did not make the situation any better. But this all changed two years ago when AMD introduced its Zen architecture. Here is why we believe it positively disrupted the market.
An Explosion of Threads
Chip manufacturers were able to push performance when Moore’s Law was achievable and the number of transistors in a chip was almost doubling every two years. With technology nodes getting smaller, however, squeezing out 20% extra performance over the previous generation became increasingly difficult for a number of factors.
AMD was able to bypass these limitations with a new design — the Zen microarchitecture — combining multicore with multidie to reach up to 16 threads on the Ryzen desktop platform and 32 threads on the Ryzen Threadripper enthusiast platform. AMD then doubled this already large number of cores in the 2018 release of its second-gen Ryzen Threadripper, to reach an unprecedented 64 threads per single socket.
As a result, the change in the status quo on the hardware side made the game design houses adapt to the new reality, supported by DX12 and Vulkan APIs, to take advantage of multithreaded performance. Productivity software houses, especially those dedicated to digital content creation, which rely heavily on precision and abiding to the laws of physics in CPU rendering, were also benefiting from this, and professional users in turn are now able to save precious time and money.
Another disruptive effect was moving the long considered mainstream 4 core/4 thread processors down to entry-level and making 6 cores/6 threads the new mainstream for gaming and general use. Competitors were also pushed to adopt the same trend, after holding back for a long time — and gamers finally got what they were asking for.
High-End Datacenter Designs for the Desktop
AMD realized there was an opportunity for its datacenter and consumer products between Ryzen and EPYC. The evolution of digital transformation created a new hybrid breed of users, defined by AMD as “prosumers” — designers, engineers, and content creators looking for a clever investment to get the best out of two worlds: productivity and gaming. This would include, for example, a professional photographer who needs to edit and render a wedding video and photos as fast as possible, to handle more jobs in the queue, but who plays competitive games and streams sessions on YouTube and Twitch at night.
Those end users were left out in the cold between gaming products that do not have enough power to cover their professional needs and workstation components that are not designed for gaming and are often too expensive to justify the investment, considering the independent, solo nature of their jobs. To satisfy those users, AMD introduced the industry’s first 16-core HEDT processor, the AMD Ryzen Threadripper featuring more PCI Express lanes, support for larger amounts of RAM, and larger cache memory. It is also worth mentioning that all of AMD’s Ryzen CPUs have full support for error-correcting code memory (ECC RAM), which is essential for high-precision computing and calculations. Those features pushed the mainstream PC builds to handle professional workloads, multitasking, AR/VR development, and online streaming, along with an excellent gaming and entertainment experience.
The Price Rebellion
The sweet spot of affordable high performance came with the introduction of the Polaris graphic architecture with the Radeon RX480 in 2016, followed by the Zen architecture in 2017 with a line of CPUs including the Ryzen 1500X, meeting and exceeding VR requirements and high-quality gaming at 1080p and 1440p, at launch prices below $250.
IDC’s Worldwide Quarterly PC Monitor Tracker shows that 1080p monitors accounted for 61.1% and 64.4% of all shipments in 2017 and 2018 respectively, while 1440p was 3.4% and 4.8%. Addressing the majority with products that would offer them quality at these resolutions for the right price was a clever play, paying dividends with growing market share.
AMD’s value does not come from prices alone, but also in useful free applications, such as AMD StoreMI; in effective and good-looking cooling solutions bundled with most of the processors; in good embedded graphics within APUs that are suitable for multimedia users and casual esports gamers; and in having all Ryzen CPUs unlocked and overclocking ready for experienced users to squeeze more performance out of them. It is worth mentioning as well that the value-oriented motherboards based on the B350 and B450 chipsets generally support the high-end processors and overclocking also, which adds up to the overall saving.
In Conclusion
AMD’s disruptive innovation comes from combining the old multi-die approach with new designs, and the company continues to do so with its 7nm Zen 2 architecture, such as moving the memory controller to the CPU chip and doubling the amount of L3 cache in gen 3 over the previous two generations. And the company is doing so very quickly — three generations over the course of three years — to overcome the traditional incremental increase in performance. The same is happening on the consumer graphics side with the recently introduced Radeon RX 5700 series, based on the new Navi architecture.
Finally, the company is addressing the wide consumer base, which is cost-per-performance oriented, and not just pushing to increase the high-end enthusiast segment share. This approach has proved to be effective — the company has returned to profitability and increased its overall market shares, while its stock prices have reached levels not seen in more than a decade.
If you want to learn more about this topic or have any questions, please contact Malini Paul, or Mohamed Hefny, or head over to https://www.idc.com/eu and drop your details in the form on the top right.
Staying Ahead of Manufacturing Disruption
Manufacturing is undergoing a transformation. Fueled by disruptive forces such as digital transformation and Industry 4.0, a major overhaul of key business processes is needed — across product innovation, production, and supply chain.
Your Next Big Security Threat Already Works for You!
Six years after the Snowden revelations, insider threats still preoccupy the thoughts of European security decision makers. After ransomware and malware — the two most commonly seen vectors for breaches — malicious insiders are the threats that European enterprises are most concerned by.
With thermometers hitting record levels all across Europe, it is the perfect time to take the temperature of the region’s security market. One of the hottest findings from this year’s European security survey, gathering the insights of 700 security decision makers from across the region, relates to the interplay of which threat vectors enterprises fear and which vectors they have suffered breaches through.
Perhaps unsurprisingly it is ransomware and malware that enterprises are most concerned by. These threat vectors are cited as a concern by 74% and 73% of respondents respectively, following on naturally from the finding that these are the two attack types that have been suffered most in the past two years (by 43% and 42% of respondents in turn). However, when we look at the next most cited concern (and the next most frequently suffered attack), there is a bit of a surprise: instead of phishing or unwitting insiders (i.e., poor security hygiene), it is malicious insiders — cited by 70% of respondents as a concern, and with 33% of respondents suffering attacks through this vector.
This focus on malicious insiders is an interesting development given the imbalance when comparing the degree of concern with the frequency of impact. While malicious insider threats are cited by just a fraction fewer respondents as a concern, there were considerably fewer attacks through this vector in the past two years. This suggests that, while malicious insider attacks may occur less frequently than ransomware and malware attacks, their impact may be higher.
Here, we need to consider the motivation behind these attacks. For ransomware, in particular, the motivation may simply be to cause distraction and damage to the subject of the attack. However, malicious insider attacks come from two primary sources: on one hand, they may be launched by disgruntled employees seeking to cause embarrassment and reputational damage, or they may be initiated by malicious third parties who have either compelled or incentivised employees to launch specific attacks on potentially high-value targets.
So, what is to be done to resolve this challenge? IDC has three key recommendations.
- First, there are technologies available out there to help deal with this. For example, more analytics-based products focusing on pattern and anomaly detection can help to detect unusual, suspicious and unwanted behaviour.
- Second, better integration between security products can elevate them to become more than merely the sum of their parts. This helps, for example, to share threat intelligence between different protection layers to encourage faster, more accurate responses.
- Finally, and most importantly, enterprises must focus on launching security education and awareness initiatives. Helping employees in general to understand the importance of security and to establish security hygiene as part of “business as usual” is critical in establishing a culture and environment that is secure by design. In this way, ransomware, malware and insider attacks are less likely to address the enterprise in the first place if security can, in effect, “recruit” the workforce to work on their behalf.
If you want to learn more about this topic or have any questions, please head over to https://www.idc.com/eu and drop your details in the form on the top right.
Alexa vs Google Assistant - The Battle of the Voice Assistants
Voice Summit 2019 took place on July 22–26 in New Jersey. In the smart home space, voice is one of the key elements of a unified ecosystem, facilitating device control and interaction.
Within the wide portfolio of smart home hardware, smart speakers are usually the first entry into the space. In Europe, the smart speaker market is less than three years old, registering a growth of 526.7% from 2016 to 2017 and 90.2% from 2017 to 2018, with 16 million units shipped in 2018. The first question before buying one of these devices is which one — Amazon Alexa or Google Assistant?
Amazon Alexa – The Pioneer
Alexa and the first Amazon Echo were released in the US in November 2014 for Prime members only. It took almost two years for Amazon to release a smart speaker in Europe (September 2016), debuting with an English version in the UK and a German version for Germany and Austria. Since then, Amazon has also released local-language devices in France, Italy, and Spain.
Google Assistant
Though Google Voice Assistant was released in May 2016 through a mobile app, it was only at the end of that year that Google released its first smart speaker: the Google Home. In Europe, the first devices were launched in the UK in the second quarter of 2017 and in Germany and France in the following quarter.
Taking advantage of having Google Assistant in a range of devices, from smart TVs to Android mobile phones, Google was able to gain rapid traction; its smart speakers are now available in 10 European countries.
The Competition
Amazon and Google are putting a lot of effort into the race to be the smart home market leader. This applies to the full range of smart home devices, and not just smart speakers.
Both brands know that voice assistants are a good way of getting information on consumer behaviuor and purchasing trends. Research shows that when consumers make their first smart speaker choice, they become bonded to an ecosystem that will determine their preferences for further smart home purchases… so Google or Alexa?
With this in mind, Amazon and Google have been in a constant price and promotions war. Of course, as they try to strengthen their position and increase their penetration across Europe. Both offer a similar range of smart speakers. From the smaller (and best-selling) versions, to regular speakers and smart displays. These are the most recent addition to the vendors’ portfolios.
However, their strategies have been different. Amazon has been trying to increase its device capabilities and expand the use cases for its smart speakers. For example, Improving Alexa’s skills in each of the existing languages and promoting the ongoing development of new skills has also enhanced the end-user experience.
Google is much more focused on developing new languages and entering new countries, working on the basic commands and questions for smart speakers.
From 2016 to 2018, Alexa was the best voice assistant in Europe, making Amazon the leader of the smart speaker market. The market is currently driven by the first-entrant advantage: the first voice assistant that enters a new market automatically establishes a lead in that location.
As both tech giants move to new geographies, managing the supply chain and new launches can be challenging. Even Amazon, which had the first-entrant advantage in the UK and Germany, the two biggest markets in Western Europe, has had its share of problems. These included supply issues with Echo devices and Google’s expansion into new countries (enabling Google to gain the top spot in the market in 1Q19).
The Voice Assistant’s Market
The two leading suppliers also face competition from other players. Traditional technology players (i.e. Sony, LG Electronics, and Lenovo) and regular speaker makers (i.e. JBL, Sonos, and Bose) also launched devices. Though they have only a small share of the market, these players are more focused on sound quality. Also, they have partnered with either Amazon or Google (or both) to use their artificial intelligence capabilities.
Amazon and Google, of course, want to be available in as many devices as possible to maintain their leading positions. Even though they could try to get exclusivity from one of the third-party manufacturers, the first smart speakers enabling both Amazon and Google Assistant were already launched in 2Q19.
Being able to choose which voice assistant to use will be crucial, as this will be the hook to lock consumers into one voice assistant and one ecosystem from day one.
There are other voice assistants in the European market. For example, Apple’s Siri and the HomePod smart speaker; or Samsung’s Bixby, which is expected to arrive in Europe later this year. But the space is still heavily dominated by Alexa and Google Assistant.
Though they have different strategies, IDC still expects both of them to expand to new countries over the next few years, enabling new languages and more capabilities, and democratizing the interaction with electronic devices through voice. IDC expects the market to grow to 43 million units shipped in 2023 in Europe, with a CAGR of 21.93% from 2018 to 2023.
If you want to learn more about this topic or have any questions, please contact Antonio Arantes or head over to https://www.idc.com/eu and drop your details in the form on the top right.