Sapphire Rapids Based New Chips Aim To Regain Lost Market Share, Intel Executive Say

Intel Corp INTC launched its 4th Gen Intel Xeon Scalable processors (code-named Sapphire Rapids), the Intel Xeon CPU Max Series (code-named Sapphire Rapids HBM), and the Intel Data Center GPU Max Series (code-named Ponte Vecchio).
Intel delivered a leap in data center performance, efficiency, security, and new capabilities for AI, the cloud, the network and edge, and the most powerful supercomputers.
Xeon processors based on the new Sapphire Rapids design made their way into cloud-computing systems run by Alphabet Inc's GOOG GOOGL Google and Amazon.com Inc's AMZN Amazon Web Services.
Also Read: Intel Restructures Graphics Chip Division To Win Market Share From Nvidia, AMD
The debut of Sapphire Rapids is the first step in rebuilding confidence that Intel is once again leading the computer industry forward, Sandra Rivera, the head of Intel's Data Center & Artificial Intelligence division, told Bloomberg.
The debut with its delayed server design was the key to regaining control of one of the most lucrative markets in computing.
Intel's Xeon range once held more than 99% of the market in machines needed to make sense of the growing flood of data created by smartphones and the internet.
Rival Advanced Micro Devices, Inc AMD and home-grown efforts by some of Intel's largest customers have eaten into that dominant position, Bloomberg noted.
Intel first announced Sapphire Rapids in 2019 and postponed its availability at least twice.
Third-quarter sales for Intel's data-center division dropped 27% to $4.2 billion. AMD's data center unit reported revenue growth of 45% in the same period. Still, Intel retained a formidable 83% server market share, according to Mercury Research.
Nvidia Corp NVDA chose the new Intel design as the processor for its DGX artificial intelligence acceleration server systems, moving away from the AMD chips.
Hans Mosesmann at Rosenblatt and Stacy Rasgon of Bernstein said Intel's competitive position would remain challenging this year. CEO Pat Gelsinger has said server competition will be a "knife fight" for a while.
For Rivera, Sapphire Rapids and its successors are the beginning of reversing any perception that Intel is in permanent decline.
Price Action: INTC shares traded higher by 0.15% at $29.49 on the last check Wednesday.