AMD is, of course, behind Intel and NVIDIA in CPU and GPU sales, respectively, and is still struggling financially. The company is laying off 5 percent of its 9,700-strong workforce, and two key hardware gurus, Jim Keller and Phil Rogers, recently departed. Despite all that, the company has built itself a niche supplying all the chips used by Microsoft and Sony in the Xbox One and PlayStation 4 consoles.

Samsung has been struggling against Apple with smartphone sales. At the same time, it manufactures a good chunk of the chips for Apple devices, and also builds GPUs for NVIDIA and other manufacturers. AMD's incoming CPUs should be more competitive with Intel thanks to the smaller 14-nanometer process, and could be as much as 40 percent faster and more efficient than its current generation. If AMD continues to work with Samsung (assuming the rumors are true), it might actually get a leg up on Intel in the PC market, because Samsung expects to ship even more efficient 10-nanometer chips by next year, while Intel recently confirmed that its own 10-nanometer chips won't arrive until 2017.

[Image credit: GlobalFoundries]