They have the patents to do even better than that and create hierarchies of miniature programmable fabric, similar to the concept of L1-L4 caches except for FPG

They have the patents to do even better than that and create hierarchies of miniature programmable fabric, similar to the concept of L1-L4 caches except for FPGA designs [0]. Unfortunately, they don't have the organizational willpower to do true innovation though. From what I have heard, significant portions of the designs for their processor lines are not understood by any current or recent employees. There is a tremendous amount of legacy "code" and fear of changing things that may break backwards compatibility. There is no vision at the top, their process lead is gone, and the architecture team is patching decades of bad security without simplifying designs. It seems like they are just riding out their market share for as long as they can, which could be a while. Intel has a really strong brand. [0] https://patents.google.com/patent/US10310868B2/ https://patents.google.com/patent/US10310868B2/