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Have you seen their financial's? They have had great products for years but that has not translated into profits or market share. Intel has both, and not just in CPU market share. As much as I hate them, Intel graphics dominate the market.

Fusion might just change all that.

Their financials look bad right now only because of the split-off of their chip-making part they had recently. Now that those charges and hits are over, and the settlement of the lawsuit spat with Intel (where Intel is giving *AMD* a huge chunk of cash) has happened, and the economy starts to rebound, they'll do better, just as they've always done.



Its been this way for the last 2 *decades*, and for all that time people have been predicting AMD's demise, and for all that time, AMD has been disappointing everyone. There's a reason for this: all the other players want at least one alternative to Intel to be available (see below).



You're joking right? Or are you just talking about the graphically 'weaker' laptop/netbook market? AMD has ATI's graphics technology now, which blow Intel's stuff out of the water in terms of performance. AMD's IGP parts are now getting *much* better (see their 780G/790G parts - Intel has nothing like them). Even in the laptop market, now that they have the old ATI tech, AMD is far from dead. As the other poster mentioned, AMD's 'Fusion' (ATI's graphics tech + AMD's CPU tech on the same silicon) will likely guarantee their survival in the laptop & low-end desktop markets of the future. Meanwhile their current IGP parts & graphics cards are beating everyone else in the higher-up markets.



Thats obvious, *especially* to the other market players. That's the one thing everyone keeps ignoring: AMD is the only competition Intel has, the only reason they were able to do x86 parts so long ago was because Intel had to form an agreement with someone else because the players of that time, namely IBM, didn't want to depend on a single source (and have one company control that source). Those fears haven't changed one bit, there are way too many people (companies & governments) who have a vested interest in Intel having at least a 'token' competitor (and an alternate source for x86 parts). AMD won't disappear for that reason alone.

I'd bet that even the last thing Intel wants is for AMD to go under, as that would put them back in the bullseye of the antitrust hawks in both the US and Europe. Intel doesn't want to see AMD go away, they want them to just 'stick around' they way they have been doing for the last 20 odd years.

Its ok, they have + cash flows and they have good balance sheet so they will probably stand around.

AMD still sucks in the mobile market. For years people have been waiting for them to come up with a competitor to Intel that has similar low-power requirements, but it hasn't happened--AMD's chips are still more power-hungry than Intel's. Admittedly this has to do with the fact that Intel is always one step ahead in shrinking its manufacturing process--but it also has to do with architecture, and either way you cut it, it doesn't look good for AMD since laptops have been eating away at desktop market share for years now.

Pre-Athlon: not enough people cared, and even the decent PIII-M wasn't done 'right' until the Tualitin(sp), as the P4 was ramping up.
Athlon v. P4: both sucked.
Athlon XP v. P4: yay, AMD.
Turon v. Pentium-M: draw, both good.
Tyrion v. Core: Core a bit better, AMD much cheaper.
Core 2 to i7: Intel > * (except ARM).

It has really only been recently that Intel has bested them in efficiency. Since Intel can make chips small, cheaper, and faster, AMD can't beat them that way, and for now, is sort of stuck.

We could see them being competitive in mobile performance again, if Bobcat doesn't get delayed past 2011. Bobcat (and Bulldozer) is in many ways a departure from the path they've been taking from the K7. The thing is, I think the Atom pretty well blindsided everybody. Making Phenom II chips run efficiently enough to truly compete w/ the Core 2 and i-series mobile is probably wasted time and money, compared to coming out with an Atom competitor.

Intel is in a nice spot right now, but the future is not bleak for AMD (actually, the present isn't, either, except for small mobile stuff).

I sure hope you're right about AMD. People forget how much computers used to cost when Intel had an effective monopoly on processors. AMD pushed Intel hard to continue to improve their product. If AMD goes under, R&D at Intel will be cut back and processor (and computer) prices will rise rapidly.