just look at what it cost to develop Itanium and the multi-billion dollar commitments, years ago. The sales, haven't been high enough to pay for that alone, yet.
Show us the numbers Pete. Don't make them up, show us.
The not paying for process development is easy too. By the time they relase at a process node, that process has been in production for 2 to 3 years. By that point, it is a fully matured process, ergo, no development is needed. Ditto for equipment. Even Intel states this from time to time ("using depreciated equipment on a mature process"). How any reasonable Intel booster could fail to see these points, just shows how out of touch they must be.
Where is the problem? This is a good thing, not something to make excuses over and Intel investors applaud it. Intel has been producing chipsets for many years on fully depreciated processes and equipment. It helps to lower their costs overall because they can reuse everything. AMD would love to do this too but they don't have the facilities. It's another reason their costs are so high and they continue to lose money.