YB -
I think that's right. All those points are correct. There is a bunch of laws that prohibit Intel from completely crushing AMD, but just keeping them low is very expensive.
Clearly Intel can produce cheaper than AMD. I know of no law that would prevent Intel from dropping their prices to a point where they would still be profitable yet AMD could not match them without facing a quick bankruptcy.
From second half of 2000 and almost for a year after that, AMD kept the performance crown, having the Athlon running faster than fastest P4. Intel spent close to 10 $billion in capex to make P4 faster than Athlon
The bulk of that went for new fabs and those would retain their value P4 or no P4, so you are really exaggerating here.
Pay attention that this is 3 times AMD market cap.
And they built about 3 times as many fabs as AMD has.
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