Snatching defeat from the jaws of victory

A smoother hike up 95-Peak this morning, though I struggled during the final third. The cooler weather definitely helped to make the climb a little more pleasant. I would like to think that increased fitness was also a factor but have no way of proving it. Let’s see how I fare tomorrow morning.

It has been a strange week watching AMD struggle amid the blowback against its disappointing Ryzen Zen-5 processor launch just as it was building up a strong head of steam against Intel. Talk about snatching defeat from the jaws of victory! It is going to take the company a lot of hard work to recover from this misstep.

Not that Intel is in much of a position to take advantage of AMD’s troubles given the serious problems it is facing, even though it managed to generate some reasonably positive reviews of early samples of its forthcoming Arrow Lake part over the past few days. Lunar Lake better deliver on its promised power and performance metrics if Intel is to regain momentum. Otherwise, it will be a long and lonely winter in Santa Clara.

One likely winner from all this x86 processor mayhem is Arm, which has long eyed the PC market. Together with Qualcomm, the company is already making progress in the emerging AI CoPilot+ PC segment with over twenty laptop design wins from all the leading PC brand names. The rumored launch of an Arm-based chip developed by Nvidia and MediaTek in the middle of next year should further boost its PC market presence.

The biggest winner, however, is sure to be Nvidia as it continues to enjoy huge demand and high margins for its AI accelerators and surrounding CUDA moat while its once fiercest competitors struggle. Not even the glitches it is experiencing with Blackwell will have much of an impact on its leadership position in the market.