For about 20 years I had the mantra of "Don't bet against Intel". A good example of this was in the early 90's when all the hype from the Apple fans about PowerPC and the end of x86 by the year 2000. The hype was real but Intel was just quietly saying "we have a road map and we will go well beyond what people expect" and then Intel did it - while PPC slowly faded away (for various reasons).
Everytime someone predicted the end of Intel - they just kept knocking out of the park when least expected. Thinking going from Pentuim 4 Prescott to Intel Core series for instance. Side note - At least the Prescott was vaguely ambitious!
But the last decade has not been great for Intel. That engineering prowess has faded a little. Their new GPU stuff is neat and very forward thinking but it is still a wait and see on that. But when it comes to their other elements, it feels like they have just been doing the same thing with very minor tweaks for far too long now.
---
Another aside, it is same theoretical greatness doesn't always translate to market greatness. If it worked like that we would probably all be using PowerPC machines in some degree. A wonderful ISA!
Everytime someone predicted the end of Intel - they just kept knocking out of the park when least expected. Thinking going from Pentuim 4 Prescott to Intel Core series for instance. Side note - At least the Prescott was vaguely ambitious!
But the last decade has not been great for Intel. That engineering prowess has faded a little. Their new GPU stuff is neat and very forward thinking but it is still a wait and see on that. But when it comes to their other elements, it feels like they have just been doing the same thing with very minor tweaks for far too long now.
---
Another aside, it is same theoretical greatness doesn't always translate to market greatness. If it worked like that we would probably all be using PowerPC machines in some degree. A wonderful ISA!