Intel had crappy products for a long time. For like 10 years they sold a retail CPU that had no increase in performance. That's how they got passed by Lisa Su and AMD so easily. Their recent CPUs both retail & data center are a lot better and more competitive with the Ryzen & EPYC CPUs. Now they are seen as lagging so it will take a while to get back some market share they lost to AMD especially in the data center arena.
Intel needs to fix their process technology. AMD had a better processor design for a few years during the Pentium 4 era. But even then, Intel still had better process technology which helped make up for a relatively weaker design. Today, for most applications, Intel still makes competitive CPUs despite having a process technology disadvantage. https://www.tomshardware.com/features/amd-vs-intel-cpus I have been buying Intel stock recently so I'm talking my book a bit. But what I find really interesting is their work in AI and GPU. Their new A770 GPU is rumored (Youtube Linus Tech Tips / GamersNexus) to be about as competitive as an RTX 3060. That's not nVidia's most powerful card, but if it's already in that ballpark, that's pretty good for Intel's first discrete GPU product. It also has specialized hardware for AI (matrix multiplication) and I think that's where nVidia is most vulnerable. Intel market cap: 150B. nVidia Market cap: 454B. So nVidia 3x the market cap of Intel. nVidia has a P/E of 48, AMD is 35, Intel is 8. Intel has a lot of upside if they can just start executing better...or if... https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/pelosi-leading-delegation-asia-taiwan-stop-not-clear AMD, NVDA, and AAPL all dependent on a Taiwanese semi company. Intel is not (well...not for all products).
The Intel GPUs are going to compete with the low end nVidia & AMD but that is where the bulk of the buying is anyway. Most people,even gamers don't need an $1800 3090Ti card (or an AMD $1100 6950XT). It took AMD at least 3 or 4 generations to catch up with nVidia (even that's debatable). At the server level its really no competition -- it is all nVidia. One interesting note that really differentiates Intel CPUs vs. AMD CPUs is the Intel focus on maximizing single core performance which is crucial to gamers since most of the processes are still not written for SMP processing. The Intel i5-12600K $250 CPU is faster than the Apple M1 Ultra 20-core, which is pretty impressive.
AMD's earth moving equipment(bulldozer, piledriver, excavator) series almost drive AMD to the ground literally speaking. Ryzen turn the tide for AMD. With a stroke of luck, jettison GFS for TSMC and the 7nm took off. At the same time, INTC was still struggling with 10nm and kept push high mhz with 14+++nm. INTC's motto... 4 core is good enough. Chip design and node technology go hand in hand.
I think it's just a marketing BS argument. I doubt that nowadays single-core plays any role anymore in modern top applications, and especially games. Intel's products are not competitive anymore, they consume too much energy. And especially nowadays with such high energy costs, this is even more important to consider. IMO a CPU should have many cores and threads, but should allow to programmatically (by the OS) cycle each down to 0 Hz, ideally stepless, to save energy.
LOL @ the difference in those PE ratios. I'll be curious to see how terrible sales get as we head deeper into the recession. All those boomers who just retired and were planning to spend, now realize they don't have the purchasing-power they thought anymore and are already in poverty. I'm sure they remember those go-go years like it was yesterday.