AMD seems to only succeed with outside help. K6 was all NexGen, K7 was practically a DEC Alpha, new mobile chips were only possible due to ATI takeover. Sadly there is no one in sight to buy out/poach from/take over to make the next performance bump. Intel and AMD bought everything that moved. AMD even picked up Cyrix leftovers from National Semi (Geode). What is left? insignificant VIA(centaur)? Vortex86(Rise mP6)? Not to mention they seem to be taking ages coming out with v8 arm, all they do is talk and produce slides, with no products in sight.
When youre competing against someone that 70 times larger you take all the help you can get :). AMD however has provided its fair share of innovation to the x86 ecosystem over the years - AMD64, integrating memory controllers, launching multi core chips, current work with integrating GPU's and CPU's (HSA and shared memory spaces).
