things that have always been in Intel's favor have been their truly massive and always cutting edge fab capability (which no other cpu manufacturer has been able to even come close to)
On a flight a while back I struck up a conversation with a PhD that specialized in chip design. He suggested that if AMD was able to manufacture their chip designs in Intel's fabs, that they would be out Intel chips in terms of performance and power.
The idea was that because AMD uses fabs that are, basically, two generations behind Intel, that their designs have to be more innovative to be able to work within the constraints of the older process.
I'm no electrical engineer, so I took him at his word, but it certain points out that Intel's fabs are a distinct advantage.