Part of the missing picture in the datacenter market is TCO(total cost of ownership). The margin Intel used to have was driven by what it would cost you to recr

Part of the missing picture in the datacenter market is TCO(total cost of ownership). The margin Intel used to have was driven by what it would cost you to recreate the performance they could provide by other means. If Intel had a 20% performance lead at the same power, you'd have to deploy 25% more of the closest competitor to match it. That's 25% more racks, space, electricity, heating, etc. In the alternative, the CPU might reasonably represent 1/5 to 1/3 of total costs. How much higher could Intel price their chip while still being competitive from the TCO perspective? The answer is nearly 2x on a per unit basis using those numbers. That calculation was relatively easy when all of the chips had very similar number of cores, and the advantage was squarely in single-core performance. It's slightly harder now, in a world where there is considerable divergence in things like number of cores and energy efficiency in addition to single core performance. But the implications of those equations have obviously swung strongly against Intel for large parts of the market. There are AMD/arm chips that are probably 2x or more the current multi-core performance of the Intel chips that were at similar prices last year. Intel has advantages around lock-in and brand, but the economic incentive of transition now can be quite staggering, and people are waking up to it. Whether Intel will be able to make chips that would be competitive in that market, even with no margin, is yet to be seen.