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AMD (NASDAQ:AMD) stock today spiked 5 percent to $25.26 after hitting a session high of $27.30 (11 percent), which means the firm has completed its third consecutive day of strong gains on the market. Investors in the Santa Clara-based semiconductor company have had an astounding year; $AMD is up 150 percent in 2018 and the stock has gained around 30 percent in August alone.

AMD's recent positive earnings statement has been the catalyst for a near 50 percent run since the last week of July and the company has been the fortunate recipient of several investment firm upgrades in terms of the price target of the stock itself, most recently enjoying an upgrade from Rosenblatt Securities.

General sentiment on AMD is strong in analyst circles. The company is already sampling next generation 7nm EPYC products aimed at enterprise applications and data centers; while the marketjuggernaut Intel seems to be facing multi-year setbacks with its equivalent 10nm foundry process. The uncertainty swirling around Intel's(NASDAQ:INTC) ability to fabricate on this next generation node seems to be the common thread mentioned when analysts comment on AMD's outlook.

Today also saw the departure of AMD SVP of Computing and Graphics Jim Anderson.Although by no means as worrisome as recent departures like famed CPU architect Jim Keller or graphics guru Raja Koduri, this still was cause for concern as Jim Anderson is a 20 year veteran with experience at both Broadcom and Intel. His commercial and business leadership acumen will be sorely missed.

Today's closing price represents a 12-year high for the company and is no doubt due to the perceived opportunity AMD is looking at in terms of finally penetrating the x86 cloud/big data/enterprise market for the first time in almost a decade. That market is a roughly $12 billion market that AMD owns effectively none of. Should the company capture just 10 percent of this market they could increase total revenue by a total of 30 percent or more.