In the past 5 years, Intel has made mistakes and left itself vulnerable. AMD has managed to punch us in every soft spot. Being first to x86, security technology, and dual core are big examples. Intel got lucky by having Centrino when the market realized that 90nm P4's turned your desktop into a roasting oven.

90nm was a tough move for Intel. It was also the first time we switched from 8" to 12" wafers. I was on the the 90nm P4 design team, Prescott, which is practically considered one of the toughest ill-managed products at Intel. The rest of the industry followed the 90nm route but Intel hits the tough issues first. It's the price they pay for being ahead as far as having a production-quality process is concerned.

"Itanic" was definitely a good idea not executed well. AMD really hit Intel where it hurt by expanding to 64 bits on x86. Early in Prescott, when we learned about it, we decided to throw in 64 bit as well to compete. It hurt Itanium because it now lost its goal for becoming the general 64 bit arch from Intel. Now, it's slated for only large servers and directly competes with it's 64-bit Xeon cousins and is losing. 64-bit x86 will eventually "sink" the Itanic to farther depths.