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An Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 Ti graphics processing unit.
Courtesy Nvidia
Advanced Micro Devices has steadily grown its processor enterprise on the expense of
Intel
in previous months. But the corporate’s graphics chips are a distinct story, and haven’t stacked up fairly as nicely in opposition to the formidable expertise developed by
Nvidia.
In a analysis notice late Tuesday, BMO Capital Markets analyst Ambrish Srivastava stated that Nvidia (ticker: NVDA) had taken important market share from
AMD
(AMD). Nvidia’s share of the marketplace for graphics processing items, or GPUs, was 81% in the quarter ended in March, 5.2 proportion factors increased than in the identical quarter a yr earlier, Srivastava stated. AMD captured 19%. The analyst stated that the businesses’ market shares didn’t change considerably on a sequential foundation.
AMD didn’t instantly reply to a request for remark.
Both shares superior in Wednesday buying and selling. AMD shares ticked up 1.4% to $81.96, as Nvidia climbed 2.9% to $669.62.
According to the info in the BMO report, which relies on statistics from Mercury Research, the common worth for graphics playing cards rose 10% sequentially in the primary quarter, as complete gross sales ticked up 1%. Normally in the primary quarter, gross sales drop; they fell 11% in 2020 throughout the identical interval.
It isn’t laborious to grasp why costs are rising and gross sales are regular. Like many different forms of semiconductors, videogame playing cards are in brief provide and demand is excessive. According to a March report in The Verge, customers are prepared to pay greater than twice the traditional worth for most of the latest graphics playing cards produced by both AMD or Nvidia.
Cryptocurrency miners are contributing to the robust demand for GPUs. The figures included in BMO’s report embrace repurposed videogame chips used to mine cryptocurrency, and a brand new line of processors Nvidia has designed for crypto mining.
Nvidia
stated lately it expects to report income of $400 million from the crypto chips in its fiscal second quarter. It has adjusted the performance of a number of of its different videogame playing cards to make them much less helpful to miners.
It isn’t potential for the time being to find out the precise variety of GPUs bought for mining. But Mercury co-founder Dean McCarron instructed Barron’s by way of e mail it’s potential to determine the utmost variety of extra GPUs that might have been put to work mining ethereum in the primary quarter. Ethereum is a well-liked digital forex individuals use GPUs to mine.
The most addition was the equal of 4.5 million GPUs, in response to McCarron, whereas AMD and Nvidia bought almost 22 million complete graphics chips in the quarter. Based on his information, McCarron stated that precise crypto GPUs added to mining–together with Nvidia’s customized chips–was nearer to 1 million to 2 million GPU items, lower than half of the theoretically potential addition of 4.5 million.
Shares of AMD have declined 11% this yr, as Nvidia shares notched a 29% achieve. The PHLX Semiconductor index rose 14% in the identical interval.
Write to Max A. Cherney at [email protected]