AMD CEO outlines 2020 plans

In an interview with VentureBeat, AMD CEO Lisa Su has offered insight into AMD's plans for the future. 

She announced that AMD's next-generation 7nm Zen 2-based mobile processors are on course to ship in early 2020, with Su claiming that its latest Epyc processor with 64 cores has a performance advantage over Intel in datacenters. 

She also anticipates that sales of chips for game consoles will be bouncing back in the second half of 2020 courtesy of production of the next-generation Sony and Microsoft games consoles. 

This forward thinking by Su is perhaps why AMD has seen its stock rise 13-fold in the past five years to a market value of $38.8 billion. That's not slowing down either. The past week saw the company post strong third-quarter results with AMD's highest quarterly revenues since 2005. 

Su cites some of that being down to the increased production of AMD's 7nm processors during the quarter. Su also mentioned the popularity of the Ryzen 9 and Ryzen 7 processors, as well as the Epyc's growth in popularity for the server and datacentre market.

And while Samsung may have partnered up with Intel on its Project Athena programme, there's still the continuing partnership between AMD and Samsung when it comes to ultra low power and high performance mobile graphics. Su suggested continuing plans to look for opportunities there as things go forward.  

Given Su's past prominence in getting AMD chips placed in both Microsoft and Sony consoles, and the fact that since her appointment as CEO, the firm has gone from strength to strength, it seems like the age old battle of Intel vs AMD could be heating up for next year. 

That's further reinforced by Intel's chief performance strategist, Ryan Shrout, not so subtly throwing some shade at AMD's push for ever higher CPU core counts via a Medium post last week that took quite a few potshots at the concept. 

Whatever your opinion of the battle, any time that Intel and AMD heat up the fight is a good time for the consumer. It'll be fascinating to see what 2020 brings for the two firms while AMD is so keen to build upon its renewed success.