Intel has about 10x the revenue and 10x the employees of AMD. AMD is doing well lately, but if times get tough Intel can survive for a very long time just on inertia, just like IBM and HP are surviving. AMD probably can't.
Intel also has plenty of time to get their mojo back if they still have the drive to succeed. A lot of very smart people work there. They just need leadership that can execute. In a lot of ways Intel was a victim of its own success, having a virtual monopoly on good CPUs until Ryzen came out. Leadership got lazy. Leadership needs to fix that. It's not fair to say that the engineering culture there is dead.
Without Intel's access to AMD64-bit patents, Intel wouldn't have anything better than a 32-bit Pentium4.
Intel and AMD have each other in a MAD (mutually assured destruction) patent hold. If either pulls either patent portfolio from each other, they both die dramatic deaths.
Intel owns 32-bit x86 patents... while AMD owns the 64-bit patents. Modern x64 chips cannot function unless both parts are together.
Intel also has plenty of time to get their mojo back if they still have the drive to succeed. A lot of very smart people work there. They just need leadership that can execute. In a lot of ways Intel was a victim of its own success, having a virtual monopoly on good CPUs until Ryzen came out. Leadership got lazy. Leadership needs to fix that. It's not fair to say that the engineering culture there is dead.