There's a cheap and timeless emotional thrill in supporting a rising underdog, but if Intel declines too far, that thrill will not be cheap, but very expensive for most of us here. AMD will gladly collect the same quasi-monopoly margins that Intel enjoyed for the past decade, should Intel become enough of a hot mess to permit that. So be a bit careful what you wish for.
I like how Intel has been in exactly the position you describe for the past 15 years, but the moment AMD starts claiming back market-share, let's be worried about them!
No, am still worried about Intel plotting behind the scenes to undermine AMD.
AMD is nowhere near the position to abuse their power and they're unlikely to be for a long time, so let's not be alarmist here.
We're still nowhere close to Intel "declining too far".
AMD used to be quite popular in the Athlon era, especially when Intel screwed up big time with Pentium 4 and Itanium. But, as we know, Intel recovered, then used anti-competitive tactics against AMD, and finally AMD screwed-up with its next architecture. All of these more than ensured Intel's comeback.
So I'd say wait until AMD has 50% of the market (not just the custom PC market, which AMD will probably have within 2-3 years) to feel sorry for Intel and worry about Intel dying.
Pretty amazing to think back to those days. Pentium 4 was so bad and the AMD Athlon 64 4400+ reigned. The worst thing you could say about AMD at the time was the time synchronicity problems in VMware, which was eventually patched.
Then... Core2Duo happened so fast and AMD disappeared so quickly. Felt like overnight.
Intel's recovery a decade ago also came down to superior mfg, and that past strength is their main weakness this time around. I am very concerned about their ability to yield 24+ core monolithic server parts on 10nm at competitive cost/perf/timeframe, given that 10nm seems to be an out-of-control dumpster fire even compared to their 14nm node which was itself around 2 years late.
I'm not worried about Intel or AMD because x86_64 isn't the only ISA around. ARM and RISCV (amongst others) are doing quite well in terms of performance and power efficiency.
I like RISC-V more than is probably healthy, but it is not a player at all, let alone a compelling player, vs x86_64 or aarch64 in the server space and probably won't be for at least 2-3 years. One obvious missing feature is robust KVM/type 2 hyp support.
