I feel like this is a great time to make the argument that AMD chased short term profitability ahead of long term profitability. The pushed the fabs and debt off their books, and in the process handicapped themselves for the future.
They really had no control over the engineering stack necessary to push innovation and keep pace with Intel. It's especially difficult if you cannot have your own engineers intimately involved in manufacturing to go back to design and make the necessary changes to keep pace with your competitors who can do this. Has fab-less worked before? Sure, but that's a different ball game than the market AMD is in, often shipping much lower volumes and in lower power devices with smaller die sizes.
And obviously, this on top of other management blunders at AMD.
They really had no control over the engineering stack necessary to push innovation and keep pace with Intel. It's especially difficult if you cannot have your own engineers intimately involved in manufacturing to go back to design and make the necessary changes to keep pace with your competitors who can do this. Has fab-less worked before? Sure, but that's a different ball game than the market AMD is in, often shipping much lower volumes and in lower power devices with smaller die sizes.
And obviously, this on top of other management blunders at AMD.
2 cents.