Agreed except there's only 2 outcomes: #1 (win) or #3 (lose). The chips business is a winner-take-all market where if your product isn't the best (in efficiency

Agreed except there's only 2 outcomes: #1 (win) or #3 (lose). The chips business is a winner-take-all market where if your product isn't the best (in efficiency, performance, whatever metric), then it can't command a price premium nor the attention of OEMs. Also the core business isn't consumer but for enterprise/datacenter market where efficiency/performance is paramount. If #1, then everything is rosy and Intel will regain its dominance from the days of Sandy Bridge. Its chips will be fabricated internally and they get to enjoy the profits from vertical integration. If #3, then Intel will certainly spin off or sell off its manufacturing/fabrication business very similar to AMD more than a decade ago. The caveat is that I don't think Intel's problem right now is simply a manufacturing issue. Sure their Alder Lake is competitive but it's not superior to AMD's offerings or even measured against Apple's SOCs. Remember that unlike the last iteration (Rocket Lake), Alder Lake doesn't suffer from a mismatch in design vs. manufacturing cadence - it's arrived as expected.