Mercury Research: AMD closes 2021 with record x86 CPU market share at 25.6%

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Advanced Micro Devices made sizable gains in market share against Intel in the x86 processor market, according to year-end data from Mercury Research. In the fourth quarter of 2021, it had a record 25.6% share of the market for processors using the x86 architecture.

AMD has been gaining share (in the combined PC, game console, and internet of things x86 chip market) against Intel for 11 quarters now thanks to the acceptance of its Zen architecture, which enables AMD chips to process more instructions per clock cycle. But in Q4 Intel took back some mobile market share.

Every segment of the x86 (Intel-compatible) processor market grew in the fourth quarter of 2021. Mobile central processing unit (CPU) shipments were up weakly, however the remaining segments all had strong growth. The overall market is down on-year, however, largely due to the collapse in entry-level mobile processor volume that occurred in mid-2021.

For the full PC processor market, which includes Arm devices for Chromebooks and Apple’s M1-based Macs, the overall market grew at a healthy rate. The x86 market grew 16% in 2021, said Dean McCarron, president of Mercury Research, in an email to VentureBeat.

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“While this is nominally a share discussion, I would mention that the total X86 market set a record for both units and revenue, as did the server and mobile CPU markets among others,” McCarron said. “Moving beyond just x86 clients and servers, the total market size, including x86 internet of things and