AMD semiconductor sales 'surged' 93% year-over-year

What you need to know

• MediaTek and AMD are new members of the top-15 list for semiconductor sales.
• AMD saw a year-over-year revenue increase of 93%, while MediaTek saw an increase of 90%
• Despite a 4% drop, Intel topped the charts for semiconductor sales in Q1 2021.

Just because there's a global semiconductor shortage doesn't mean semiconductor manufacturers aren't making money. New rankings from IC Insights share which companies lead the world in terms of semiconductor sales in Q1 2021. Unsurprisingly, familiar names like Intel, Samsung, and TSMC top the list. Notably, AMD is among the top-15, coming in at number 11.

Two companies are new entries to the top-15, MediaTek and AMD, which replaced HiSilicon and Sony. HiSilicon is the semiconductor design division of Huawei, which was affected by sanctions from the U.S. government.

AMD and MediaTek earned their top-15 spots following massive year-over-year improvements. AMD "surged" up 93%, as described by IC Insights, while MediaTek saw an increase of 90%. AMD is gaining ground in the server market and released some of the best CPUs last year.

In total, the sales from the top-15 semiconductor companies improved by 21% in Q1 2021 compared to the same quarter in 2020. While Intel tops the chart, it was the only group in the top-15 to show a decline in total sales compared to Q1 2020. Despite the 4% year-over-year drop, Intel had an $18.676 billion revenue from semiconductor sales in the quarter.

All but one of the companies in the top-15 had sales of $3 billion or higher during the period. Only Kioxia fell short of that mark, with a total revenue of $2,585 billion.

As highlighted by Tom's Hardware, the top-15 list includes companies that use semiconductors in a variety of ways, including making CPUs, GPUs, memory, and System on Chips. The list also includes telecommunication companies and contract makers of semiconductors.