Intel underestimated the AMD Zen Ryzen threat

Sources close to the matter

Ryzen 7 and now Ryzen 5 have launched and they are putting enormous pressure on Intel in the top-level market segment. After a whole decade, price/performance is definitely on AMD's side..

..[Ryzen] managed to deliver a 52 percent increase instruction per clock IPC compared to the previous generation.

This is the biggest IPC jump ever in the last 20 years of the PC market and AMD has delivered it. Some will focus on the fact that AMD is not winning every single benchmark, especially in gaming, but this is far less relevant. It was irrational to expect that AMD will win every single category of benchmarks, but it is winning most of them.

What matters is that performance per watt, AMD is a much better choice and Intel is feeling it. ..

..Now Intel is panicking, trying to find an answer to this major threat. The company had to warn its investors that it will lose both market share and margins to AMD...