They got comfortable with Moore's Law, which in fairness, had held for a long time, and continued to use the model that increasing feature density quadratically was a linear problem. Now, it turns out that once you get near the 10nm gate size range, the difficulty diverges from linear to exponential (and perhaps even higher eventually as some hard limit is approached).
That, and Intel isn't an innovative company anymore. Now they are a process company riding on their manufacturing dominance and x86 market share. It looks a lot like Apple under Tim Cook, except add another decade since there was innovative leadership (Andy Grove). They are a few consultants removed from IBM at this point.
That, and Intel isn't an innovative company anymore. Now they are a process company riding on their manufacturing dominance and x86 market share. It looks a lot like Apple under Tim Cook, except add another decade since there was innovative leadership (Andy Grove). They are a few consultants removed from IBM at this point.