So Intel just launched LGA1156, which, by all means, eliminates AMD's competitiveness in the market above $200. And at below $200 price points, AMD has a hard time fighting it out with the still potent LGA775 solutions down there. Simply put, Intel has completely shut AMD out of the market except in the really low price segments. In pre-built PCs, anything over $550 will soon probably have the i5-750 in it. In performance, only the hardcore AMD crowd would still buy an AMD processor right now.
Looking at the Intel roadmap, the next year will be full of new products: i9 with a 32nm hexacore will be out before years end, and early 2010 will see 32nm dual cores (so Intel will most likely end up dominating the sub $200 price points as well). By the end of 2010, all of Intel's lineup will be 32nm.
And what is AMD doing to counter this?
...
Nothing. Its first hexacore will be on the 45nm process, and still based on the same K10 architecture that Intel has completely overran performance-wise. All next year, it will release more K10 products, all of which are based on the current processors. More steppings and clock speed increases to come.
Its first 32nm product won't ship until 2011. Likelyhood is, it will be at the end of 2011, when Intel starts talking about 22nm.
ATI is at least still competitive in the GPU market. It offers solid cards now at all meaningful price ranges. Nvidia hasn't paid a lot of attention to the GPU market much in recent times, and the GTX3xx series will likely be either a rehash of the current cards on a smaller process (as Nvidia has been doing recently) or will come to the market way after ATi launches its newest chips. And about those chips: they will be launching on a 40nm process that will likely be vastly improved over the last 65nm process in more than just size. The 4770 already gave us a taste of what the low end of the 40nm chips can do, and that was without a ton of structural changes.
My worry is that AMD is going to get bulldozed by Intel, and we will be back in the same spot we were pre-K8. Remember back then? Intel had a crushing hold on the CPU market, P4 was a terrible excuse for a "upgrade." AMD put the spark back in Intel, and got them innovating again. What happens when Intel decides it no longer has need for a large R&D budget?
AMD has only one thing on its side: Abu Dhabi. The oil is running out, and everyone up and down the Gulf needs something to run off of after the black gold disappears. I have no doubts that AMD can secure more financing, and the money needed to make it work again. What I do worry about is that AMD seems to not care: their roadmap is behind Intel's by a whole year, and for that whole year, Intel will dominate the market. Once you have consumers consistently buying Intel chips, its done for. Heck, we are already at that point, standing on the edge even.
What can AMD do? If they can't move the roadmap up, if they can't get a killer processor that people will be willing to spend more than $300 for, something with margin and flair, then its over.