1: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Athlon#Athlon_.22Classic.22
2: http://semiaccurate.com/2011/10/17/why-did-bulldozer-underwh...
When Intel introduced Core 2 Duo, performance per clock in many cases doubled, on the same socket and process node. I'm unaware of a precedent for that, at least in recent history.
Then Intel a couple of years later rolled out Nehalem, with an integrated memory controller and hyperthreading, cementing their advantage in the server market. AMD has been playing catch up ever since.
If Intel's chips were half the performance today, AMD would be winning; though not by quite as much.
Core 2 Duo review (compare it to the Pentium D, which is dual core): http://www.anandtech.com/show/2045/11
i7 3770k review (the FX 8150 is AMD's flagship 8 core Bulldozer CPU): http://www.anandtech.com/show/5771/the-intel-ivy-bridge-core...
Until very recently, AMD basically conceded the entire mobile market to Intel, which it turns out is also a profitable market to dominate.
Before intel essentially copied HT from AMD with their QPI, (I believe that Nehalems were the first QPI xeons) AMD servers nearly always came in dramatically lower power than the FBDIMM using Xeon-based servers.
Also note, in the early days of hyperthreading, it was a great way to run your two active processes on one core, while your second was idle. My understanding is that even now, in the best case, it's not a particularly huge boost.
I mean,yeah; between the release of the QPI xeons and now, for most things, intel has had the superior chip. But before QPI? man, if you paid for your own power, AMD was dramatically superior for high-ram applications.
During the Athlon/Opteron days, the silicon capabilities were much closer (does everyone remember the "paper launches" of various PIII speed bins, and of course the recall when they pushed a little too far?).
At the time ATI was 1/2 AMD's market cap. Too much of their capital got tied up in the acquisition and R&D fell off.
The overall vision is still very, very compelling (integrated FP co-processing). At the time, AMD figured it could beat Intel to the punch by buying one of the best FP companies out there. Instead they both(AMD/ATI)fell behind as merging the two companies took far more time, attention and capital than was originally anticipated.
I think AMD success is simply better viewed as Intel stumbling. The P4/Itanium split product lines were designs defined more by marketing and ideal market segmentation than they were by engineering, and they both also had some really bad design decisions. This caused Intel to fall from their technology leadership position for ~5 years, during which AMD produced steady, if slow, improvement, eventually overtaking Intel. After Intel got it's act back together, AMD hasn't been able to catch a break.
Athlon era:
1) Got HyperTransport - correct
2) Memory controller/north bridge into CPU - correct
3) lower price point than intel
They had a better product, at a lower price == market share.
Mobile:
They missed (as did intel) the ultra-low power/mobile market
1) ARM owns the market here
Bulldozer:
Made their bet on a high throughput/high latency micro-architecture, which didn`t pay off. So their now stuck with un-competitive technology at a lower price point which to the market == cheap knock off.
To make it worse, their process technology is a generation behind intel which increases costs thus eats further at any price discount.
GPU:
Meanwhile, Intel is eating their "Fusion" style cpu/gpu integration with every release they make. Can`t remember the last time some buzz about AMD fusion but intel HD 2k/3k/4k is in the news all the time.
They should have made Pat Gelsinger CEO when he was turned down for the same job at intel.