[greggyb]

I'd say that it's not just spin and trying to be closer to what Intel's architecture is.

The FP contention between the cores in a Bulldozer module makes all recent AMD chips perform objectively worse in most benchmarks than their peers from Intel.

Intel's architecture isn't a priori a goal to achieve. Intel's performance in real-world workloads is a good goal.

There are some heavily-threaded, integer-heavy workloads that Bulldozer and related parts are still incredibly competitive at, even compared to current-gen Intel parts. For the right workload, a Bulldozer-family processor can be a real screamer and they are priced incredibly aggressively. We should recognize, though, that the architecture is high performance only for these specific workloads.

Perhaps AMD should have pursued more innovative architectures. I am not saying that Intel's is perfect. But it is important to note that for current general purpose computing workloads, Intel's architecture is superior to Bulldozer.