indeed, if we have one company for anything prices and performance will suffer, look at the performance of the p4 ee compared to amd back in the day,,, it was a world of difference (also amd does really well in servers and work stations :-p it wasnt all pentiums at all, since xeon is the server side of pentium ) i admit intel is doing very well right now, but that could just be for right now. intel would want to bankrupt amd and the best way to bankrupt the competition is to offer better price-performance, but once the competition is gone, say good bye to all those perks. 

Crisis Causer:

Willard, that really isn't a question worth asking.  You answered it in your first sentence "competition is good".  Intel is doing nice right now, but AMD is not dead yet.  They still sell CPUs. 

Here is my point:

Don't get excited about AMD... they can't compete. End of story (my opinion). Ya.. they sell processors... and ya... they arn't bankrupt... but Intel is steaming forward with better architecture and engineering with or without AMDs presence.

 Ya... competition can drive down prices... but Intel chips will ALWAYS cost more than AMD (like they always have)... and for the most part, Intel's high end chipsets have always been better. I also think most people over-exaggerate the "one company dominating the market" phenomenon.. i've talked to a few computer engineers (and some students), they all agree that we won't get completely price raped if Intel is the only player. Intel will continue to have their higher range processors and lower range... We arn't in the times of one flagship processor per company like in the Pentium age, there are multiple lines that each have a separate price structure. If AMD dropped out tomorrow, I really don't think prices would sky rocket... components and systems are so cheap, and consumers arn't that stupid.

Plus, technology isn't only driven by competition (although it is a healthy contributor)... Intel's 2 year cycle of new architectures will have a few cycles before they begin to slow down. I doubt they would "hide" architectures... with each new architecture they release just offers them another opportunity to overcharge for their 'high' end cpus like they did with kentsfield, penryn, and soon, nehalem. Engineering isn't that shallow.. sure, money is important... but remember that commerical and consumer electronics is not the only application. There will ALWAYS be more research progressing despite market progress.. that is what academia is for :)

I'm fine with AMDs existence.. just not with people pretending like they are going to have some breakthrough technology out of nowhere with no research or proven designs around.