Intel was washed up when the Athlon came out and was faster. Intel was washed up when the pentium 4 was too hot. Point being, intel has done pretty well for a company rendered obsolete a decade and a half ago.
Agreed. They've also got a big process-node lead on everyone else in the market; I find it hard to believe they can't leverage that to optimize whatever processor design parameters they need to.
The process node lead won't last forever though. We're going to reach the end of silicon soon, by the mid-2020s at least. Whatever replaces it isn't necessarily going to be from Intel, because they don't have expertise in much besides silicon. I wouldn't be surprised if it's another player, like IBM, that finally cracks it.
