Xilinx announces fierce battle between AMD, Intel and FPGA market

AMD announced that it has reached a final agreement in a deal to acquire all of its $35 billion worth of shares from US semiconductor company Xilinx. By acquiring Xilinx, which leads the FPGA market, which is an integrated circuit for data centers, AMD will be able to strengthen its data center and communication base business and face rival Intel.

Reports of AMD’s attempt to acquire Xilinx have already appeared since early October. At the same time, AMD CTO, Mark Papermaster, asked in an interview about the possibility of developing new markets, focusing on gaining market share that could provide the industry with high performance that is valuable and what it can deliver as valuable I have said yes.

The FPGA developed by Xilinx is a rewriteable integrated circuit that enables high-speed processing such as data centers and communication base stations. AMD has unveiled Epic (EPYC), a CPU brand that adopts the Zen microarchitecture for the server embedded system market, but it can absorb Xilinx’s FPGA technology and brand to provide a more powerful system package for high-performance computing.

Intel, an AMD competitor, acquired Altera, a Xilinx competitor in the FPGA market, in 2015 and is developing the Intel FPGA brand. With AMD’s acquisition of Xilinx, it is in a fierce battle with Intel not only in the CPU market but also in the FPGA market.

AMD CEO Lisa Su said that the acquisition of Xilinx is the next step in establishing AMD’s position as an industry high performance computing leader and a partner selected as the world’s largest and most important technology company, creating great value for all stakeholders, including AMD and Xilinx shareholders. He emphasized that it is an attractive combination. He added that Xilinx is one of the most powerful teams in the industry and is pleased to welcome it into the AMD product line. Combining this will result in an industry leader with the vision, talent and scale that will define the future of high-performance computing.

Xilinx CEO Victor Penn is also excited to be part of AMD, and AMD, which has a common denominator such as innovation, will be an ideal combination. Xilinx’s advanced FPGA adaptation SoC, accelerator, and smart NIC solution will bring innovation from cloud to edge computing. It is expected that the combination with AMD will accelerate the growth of the data center business, which will result in a broader customer base in more markets.

Meanwhile, AMD announced the settlement of the third quarter of 2020 at the same time as the acquisition of Xilinx. In the third quarter, sales increased by 565 to $2.8 billion from the same period of the previous year, operating profit increased by 141% from the same period of the previous year to $449 million, and net income increased by 225% compared to the same period of the previous year to $390 million, and earnings per share increased to $0.32. Achieved.

Sales in the computing and graphics division, dealing with CPUs and GPUs, increased 30% year-on-year to $1.667 billion, and operating profit was $384 million, up 114% year-on-year. In addition, the enterprise products and embedded systems segment recorded sales of $1,143 million, a 116% increase over the same period last year, and operating profits of $141 million, a 131% increase from the same period last year. Related information can be found here .