Intel Corporation and Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. are positioned as rivals in the CPU market and are both expanding into the Artificial Intelligence and data-centric computing space. Intel is executing an IDM 2.0 strategy to grow manufacturing capacity and reduce reliance on PC revenues, and it promotes the Xeon 6 family with Performance-cores as a solution for large Artificial Intelligence workloads with a lower total cost of ownership. The company has received direct funding from the U.S. Department of Commerce under the CHIPS and Science Act to support commercial semiconductor manufacturing and advanced packaging projects in Arizona, New Mexico, Ohio and Oregon, although the specific funding amount is not stated. Intel’s exposure to China and reported lag in GPUs compared with competitors pose strategic risks as export controls and domestic competition reshape demand.
Advanced Micro has shifted from a consumer pc focus toward enterprise and server markets, leveraging its Zen CPU and Vega GPU architectures and the acquisition of Xilinx to add FPGAs, adaptive SoCs and ACAP products. AMD’s MI300 accelerator family, based on the CDNA 3 architecture, supports up to 192 GB of HBM3 memory and is positioned for training and inference of large language models up to 80 billion parameters. The company uses Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company process nodes, including 7-nanometer technology for core processors and a chiplet design combining 5 nm and 6 nm for the Radeon RX 7900 series. Still, AMD faces entrenched inertia favoring Intel in traditional computing and fierce competition from NVIDIA in the GPU market, while its mobile segment strength could face increasing pressure from new ARM-based devices.
Zacks consensus estimates and market metrics highlight divergent trajectories. For 2025, Zacks projects Intel sales to decline 1.7% year over year with EPS growth of 215.4% despite EPS estimates trending down 46.4% over the past 60 days. AMD’s 2025 sales estimate implies 26.9% growth and EPS up 19.3%, with EPS estimates trending up 2.6% over the same period. Over the past year Intel shares rose 15.4% versus industry growth of 47.8% and AMD climbed 6.9%. On valuation, Intel trades at a forward price/sales of 2.02 compared with 7.05 for AMD. Both carry a Zacks rank of 3 Hold, but with longer term earnings growth expectations of 27% for AMD versus 7.1% for Intel, the article concludes AMD appears relatively better placed despite higher valuation.
