Intel Can Conquer the Cloud With This New Chip

Intel's (NASDAQ: INTC) data center dominance seems to be on shaky ground as there is a paradigm shift in the technology used in cloud computing servers. The huge amount of data generated by fast-growing tech trends such as the Internet of Things, smart homes, and autonomous cars requires fast computation for real-time decision making, which is bad news for Intel's data center business.

More and more data centers are now using graphics processing units (GPUs) in their servers. GPUs have an inherent advantage over the central processing units (CPUs) that Intel specializes in as they can significantly boost computing capacity. NVIDIA, for instance, claims that its GPU accelerators can reduce costs by 60% and increase server computing power by five times by replacing CPUs.

This is because a GPU has thousands of cores that allow it to take on a huge amount of workload simultaneously. By comparison, AMD's latest EPYC server chip has just 32 cores at the most, while Intel's top of the line chips come with 28 cores. This is a cause for concern for Intel as the rise of GPUs could cripple its data center business, which currently supplies almost 30% of total revenue.

Source: Fool.com