Chipmaker, Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) has forecast continuing momentum in its notebook PC processor business in the year ahead. Despite its stock which fell.
In a keynote speech at the virtual CES 2021 trade show, AMD Chief Executive, Lisa Su said she expects the number of notebook PCs designed with AMD chips to increase by 50% in 2021.
Helping to fuel the growth will be the company’s new Ryzen 5000 Series mobile processors, announced Tuesday.
“We’re starting 2021 by launching the most powerful PC processors ever built for ultrathin and gaming notebooks,” Su said. The Ryzen 5000 Series will offer “a significant step forward in performance and efficiency,” she added.
Su further stated: “This year we expect the number of notebook designs powered by our new generation of Ryzen mobile processors to grow by 50% compared to the Ryzen 4000 series. We expect more than 150 ultrathin, gaming and professional notebooks powered by Ryzen 5000 Series to launch this year.”
The first notebook PCs with the new processors will come out in February, she said.
Su expects PC sales to remain strong in 2021, even after getting a lift from the work-from-home and distance-learning trends during the Covid-19 pandemic.
“In 2020, approximately 300 million notebooks, desktops and Chromebooks were sold,” She said. “That’s the highest number since 2014. And we expect demand to be even higher in 2021 as the PC continues playing an even larger role in our daily lives.”
During her keynote speech, Su also talked up AMD’s growing presence in the high-performance computing market. She previewed AMD’s third-generation Epyc server processors, code-named Milan. The new processors are due out later this quarter.
AMD competes with Intel in making central processing units, or CPUs, for personal computers and servers.
It also rivals Nvidia in the market for graphics processing units, or GPUs, for PCs, gaming consoles and data centers.
Also Tuesday, Nvidia introduced a lower-cost graphics processing unit for PC gamers. The new GeForce RTX 3060 graphics card costs $329 and will be available in late February.
AMD stock ranks second out of 31 stocks in IBD’s Electronics-Semiconductor Fabless industry group. It has an IBD Composite Rating of 98 out of 99, according to the IBD Stock Checkup tool. Monolithic Power Systems (MPWR) is the top-ranked stock in the group with a best-possible Composite Rating of 99.
