There's probably truth to that - we talk like companies just miss potential breakthroughs, but they frequently make a conscious decision to abandon a new domain

There's probably truth to that - we talk like companies just miss potential breakthroughs, but they frequently make a conscious decision to abandon a new domain because they have no special expertise there. I don't think it's much of the story, though. Judging by the Stevens quote, the risk seems to be that async chips would have the same optimization patterns as sync chips - so unlike digital imaging, which started behind and leapfrogged ahead, async makers would be stuck in the past indefinitely. Intel would be set back 20-30 years on retraining, retooling, and redoing old work, but that could still be worth it if they considered async the way of the future. Unlike Kodak and digital, they would still have enough of their skills and investments transfer to take a massive lead over any other player. So it seems to me that the concern is less "we won't profit", but we "we would never catch AMD's synchronous work". I wonder if that'll stay true, though; as annual speedups decline, constant factor improvements in power and speed become increasingly appealing. I guess it's a question of whether we're stuck down around 10nm for a long time, or hit a breakthrough in some alternate basis for synchronous chips.