[ksec]

>Athlon64/X2 also totally destroyed Intel but Core architecture arrived

That is not 100% accurate. First being Athlon 64 didn't destroy Intel. It was good, but businesses were still buying Intel for stability reason. AMD's chipset at the time, were no where as good as Intel, especially in the I/O speed. The WinTel Alliance meant all the software, from library to compiler were optimise for Intel.

Now the market is multiple times bigger, we have many Open Sources alternatives, like LLVM and GCC, the Web Stack are mainly open sources meant optimisation is a lot easier. I/O and Chipset are no longer a problem due to maturing IP selection from Multiple vendors. No longer will AMD has to do it all by themselves. The magic of Licensing IP and Pure Play Foundry. And Nadella Microsoft is an entirely different Microsoft than 20 years ago.

Finally it wasn't necessary the Core architecture that killed AMD, AMD went downhill with Bulldozer design and lots of execution problem. Basically they have their own moment of Pentium 4, except when Intel had the resources for a backup plan ( Core ) and able to sustain losses while they figure it out, AMD had nothing. It took them nearly 15 years to get out of it.