How AMD can turn the tide

The last year or two has been rough on AMD. In the Pentium 4 days, AMD's CPUs were just plain better designs. Intel's Core 2 architecture changed all that. They have a significant advantage in process technology also have a really good core design. How can AMD compete with that? Well, they have to out-engineer Intel again, and they have to efficiently execute it. The latter part is the problem.

ATI has had execution problems this past year. They were late to the DX10 party, and when they arrived, they weren't as fast as Nvidia. ATI's chips were hotter, louder. But the RV670 chip changes all that. They have their design and qualification process in check now (let's hope it stays that way). The shipping RV670 CPUs are small, cool, quiet, powerful, and the company managed to ship A11 silicon—no re-spins or design fixes necessary. If the CPU division of AMD had been able to do the same with Phenom, who knows what the competitive landscape would look like right now?