Dan, Re: But the fact remains that despite that laudably dense cache, and despite all those Intel R&D dollars, AMD has produced and is selling superior server chips and a superior server platform:
Those $4B in development dollars went towards projects such as Manitoba (cell phone "Internet-on-a-chip"), Banias and successors, Madison and successors, Prescott and successors, Springdale/Canterwood and successive desktop chipsets, Plumas/Placer/Granite Bay and successive server chipsets, 855 and successive mobile chipsets, motherboards for all of the above, next generation and future X-Scale, 802.11b and future wireless networking, 10Gb and future networking products, RAID and misc networking controllers, new and future flash designs, and future manufacturing on 90nm, 65nm, etc.
AMD has been very successful in creating a winning server CPU, so let's not take that away from them. On the other hand, AMD developed interesting MirrorBit flash designs, yet AMD's technical documents suggest that they are all still at 230nm. AMD's Alchemy group has some interesting designs, but no one seems to be banging down the door trying to buy them, and sales from this group have yet to show up on AMD's balance sheet. AMD does not seem to compete very much in the gigabit networking market, if at all. They don't get into chipset or motherboard design. They leverage most of their manufacturing from companies like IBM. All these things amount to much less in R&D. It's nearly impossible to compare R&D efficiency between the two companies.
On the other hand, AMD's bread and butter is still CPUs, much like Intel's. The Opteron design alone can turn AMD from a bankruptcy candidate to a leader in the server market, as long as they can execute well. I am putting money on AMD, because I believe it will be difficult for them to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory in this case. Even a small win for them goes a long way towards returning to profitability. Maybe I am wrong, but in the mean time, I intend to make some money by trading AMD options. We'll see how that turns out.
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