At the Morgan Stanley Technology, Media & Telecom Conference 2026, AMD and Intel announced growing demand for central processing units (CPUs) amid the continued advancement of artificial intelligence technologies, according to Tom's Hardware.
Intel CFO David Zinsner noted that "processors have become popular again this year." The Intel executive cited the development of agent-based AI, which requires processors to coordinate resource-intensive computing tasks performed by graphics processing units (GPUs) and neural processing units (NPUs), as one of the main drivers of growth. The company has even begun entering into long-term agreements with customers to guarantee the uninterrupted supply of chips needed to scale their operations. AMD CEO Lisa Su, meanwhile, stated at the same conference that the company is seeing a significant increase in demand for processors amid the increase in inference workloads. She also added that demand for processors has significantly exceeded her expectations.
The AI boom, which began with the release of the AI-powered chatbot ChatGPT in 2022, has led to shortages of various computer components. The graphics processing unit (GPU) market was initially affected. Data centers and large cloud companies purchased these components en masse to build powerful servers with hundreds of thousands of GPUs. As GPU supplies normalized around mid-2025, experts and analysts began warning of shortages of RAM and storage chips due to the huge demand for high-speed memory and enterprise storage from AI-focused data center operators.
The full force of this crisis was felt by the market in the fourth quarter of last year, when prices for RAM modules and SSDs rose to record levels. This growth continuesTrendForce expects DRAM contract prices to nearly double in the current quarter, while NAND prices will rise by at least 50%. The memory market crisis is more pronounced than the GPU shortage, as it has a broader impact. While graphics accelerators are primarily used in home PCs and laptops with discrete graphics cards, memory chips are used in virtually every modern digital device—from consumer devices such as smart TVs and smartphones to automobiles and industrial equipment. The production chain for memory chips for consumer products uses the same silicon wafers as those used to produce memory chips for enterprise-class systems, which provide manufacturers with higher margins.
As AI evolves—from large language models and chatbots to agent systems capable of observing, reasoning, planning, acting, and learning independently—data centers are increasingly demanding the computing power of multiprocessor systems, as agent-based AI uses combinations of CPUs, GPUs, and NPUs. Against this backdrop, China is already seeing a surge in demand for Intel and AMD processors, with some companies in the region reporting a shortage of server processors. According to Tom's Hardware, the rise of open-source agent-based AI systems like Clawdbot, Moltbot, and OpenClaw for on-premises use (i.e., at home, not in the cloud) is also driving demand for Apple's high-performance Mac Studio and Mac mini systems.
When AMD and Intel discuss growing demand for their processors, they likely have server chips in mind, the demand for which is primarily driven by data centers. Consumer systems, by and large, are not yet ready for large-scale local deployment of agent-based AI and the associated need for massive amounts of available memory.
Over the past few generations, AMD and Intel have been moving toward unification, allowing them to maximize profits by using the same microarchitecture for both client and enterprise solutions. Unlike Nvidia, which has seen exponential revenue growth driven by ever-increasing demand for high-performance memory and GPUs in the data center segment, AMD and Intel still generate about half of their total revenue each quarter from the consumer market. This remains an important segment for them. And while data center demand for high-performance server processors may increase, this should not come at the expense of the consumer market, at least not to the same extent as it did with the memory market.
Let's hope both Intel and AMD can meet the demand for processors to avoid exacerbating the already deteriorating situation in the PC market as a whole. Otherwise, some are already predicting the end of the entry-level PC era by 2028 if the situation continues to develop in the current direction.
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Source: 3dnews.ru
