A factor of 2 is within the noise, but I cannot really comprehend the concept of buying a product because their company stock is cheaper than their competitor. The only ones benefitting from that here are Intel investors who have held on despite the serious publicly visible company problems for at least the past 5 years, and then are surprised that their dividends have disappeared. Why do they deserve a gift?

If the goal is to encourage a competitive chip market, Intel stock price is healthy enough that it could be used to raise cash for the company if needed, so there is no significant imbalance there -- as opposed to 10+ years ago when AMD stock was much lower when they looked to be at risk at bankruptcy