Someone over at Firing Squad does not like the way Intel is running its business and thinks that the latest CPU is nothing more than another response to the AMD threat, instead of truely innovating.
That Intel, the old Intel, led the way.
How times have changed.
The problem is that Intel isn’t responding to the AMD challenge. Or rather, the problem is that Intel is merely responding. There was a time when Intel dictated the features processors would have. Intel wasn’t the company responding to competitors, rather it was they who were playing catch-up.
Isn’t Intel playing catch-up though? From a technical standpoint, AMDs processors are making the leaps to smaller, low voltage chips with new tech such as true 64 bit processing first, and Intel is coming out with the same tech second, often replicating exactly what AMD just did. From an economic standpoint, AMD proved the x86 market is cross-price elastic and the rate of market-share change is very much in AMD’s favor at the moment. From a financial standpoint, there is an inverse relationship right now between INTC and AMD, and many fund managers are switching over to AMD for their long positions and shorting INTC.
I think the idea that Intel is playing catchup to AMD is closer to fact than theory.