Computex keynotes and reality checks
Beware of semiconductor industry CEOs presenting tradeshow keynotes! That’s one of the main lessons from Computex 2024. Despite their grandiose claims about one-year new product cadences and relentless execution, all the main industry players have hit some bumps in the in the space of just two months.
For all the Qualcomm marketing hype about the PC Reborn at Computex, the launch of Windows Copilot+ laptops featuring the Snapdragon X Elite processor has been mixed at best. Although reviewers have praised the platform for its long battery life, they have also pointed to problems running popular games and, in some cases, even configuring printers caused by incompatibility with the Arm architecture that Qualcomm adopted for the platform. Even though Qualcomm and Microsoft are working to fix these issues, the rebirth of the PC has been nowhere near as smooth as was originally promised.
The launch of AMD Zen 5 Ryzen processors hasn’t exactly set the world alight either, perhaps because it failed to meet the expectations of the company’s most avid enthusiasts. While gaming performance and power consumption are solid, there is little to get people excited about the parts. No doubt AMD will deliver greater improvements in future iterations of the Zen 5, but it’s hard not to conclude that the company has missed a great opportunity to achieve a significant boost to its positioning the client PC market. Despite this misstep, the company is continuing to tear it up in the data center space, where it’s increasing its share with the AMD Instinct and Epyc processors.
Intel has had a torrid time since Computex without even launching its Lunar Lake processors yet, thanks to poor financial results, impending layoffs of 15,000 staff, and the cancellation of its official Arrow Lake desktop processor launch event. With rumoured yield issues and high production costs, it doesn’t look like the official launch of Lunar Lake on September 3 will do much to clear the alleviate the gloom and doom surrounding the company either.
Nvidia hasn’t escaped the malaise either because of the delay with its highly touted Blackwell platform. Although this will have a minimal impact on the company’s financial results, it does highlight the need to take the industry executives’ claims about future product readiness with a liberal pinch of salt. There’s a huge difference between a pretty picture on a PowerPoint slide and a production part!
