> eco-system where they have all the advantages Maybe this is what you're alluding to, but Intel used a whole host of anti-competitive practices to prevent AMD

> eco-system where they have all the advantages Maybe this is what you're alluding to, but Intel used a whole host of anti-competitive practices to prevent AMD from gaining a foothold in the market at a time when AMD had faster and better CPUs. And this was part of the reason why AMD ended up buying ATI (IIRC they were after NVIDIA for a while) - they wanted another angle from which to attack Intel. But it seems like they overpaid for ATI, and then Barcelona happened and Bulldozer was delayed beyond belief and so the last few years have been very tough for AMD. Let's hope this gets them back into the game.