Last Tuesday, AMD's stock price jumped up by about 8% into the $29 range; AMD's stock has dropped about a dollar since but remains solid in the $28 range. AMD hasn't been able to break back into this bracket since the tech stock downturn that occurred late last year. Before that though, the last time AMD was ever worth $29 was in the mid 2000s. This recent spike in price is primarily thanks to reports that TSMC, which provides the 7nm node for AMD's upcoming Zen 2 processors, is seeing high amounts of orders from AMD.
AMD has promised Zen 2 will deliver a high performance and power efficiency boost thanks to the 7nm process, as well as architectural improvements that will also improve performance and power efficiency. Zen 2 will also be coming in chiplet form, meaning AMD could have a great advantage in core count and core density.
AMD's upcoming Rome server CPU will have a world-record-breaking 64 cores thanks to the usage of 8 CPU dies and one IO die. Additionally, AMD's upcoming Ryzen 3000 CPUs for gamers and mainstream content creators could wrest the performance crown from Intel thanks to the advantages of the 7nm node. Investors are taking note of AMD's technological advances and believe AMD has great potential to take market share across the board.
Meanwhile, Intel's inability to address its CPU shortage have lead Wells Fargo to downgrade Intel stock, which also raised in price on Tuesday by about 3% thanks to its Data-Centric Innovation Day, though Wells Fargo's downgrade on Friday has almost eroded that slight increase. Wells Fargo cites AMD's upcoming Zen 2 processors as a cause for concern; Zen 2 is expected to decrease demand of Intel's current products.
One analyst was primarily concerned that AMD would be able to snatch away server market share thanks to Rome. The server market has proven to be a vulnerable one for Intel, as AMD has jumped from owning almost no share to just 3.2% within the last year.
