Paul, yes, system throughput is an area where AMD is shining. I am wondering, going forward, what the three big CPU designers - AMD, Intel and IBM - will do to add value to the processor itself. There has been a lack of imagination in this area because of the obsession with speed.
It would seem that there are opportunities to integrate a higher layer of logic right on the processor so that repetitive tasks can be offloaded. An obvious one that was integrated in the original 8086 is string moves. There are lots of examples of repetitive computer tasks which don't need to be run from software. How about an encryption engine? Implementing these well-known and standard algorithms directly in silicon is not difficult, and it would mean that every computer has built-in VPN acceleration. How about hash table algorithms? The database community would love it!
My speculation is that direct performance improvements are becoming harder and more costly. The big three should start looking at opportunities to integrate commonly used features.