But that’s only half of the story. They need that R&D budget because they have the (massive and growing) expense of building and upgrading their own fabs, which have undergone a series of costly mistakes in the last decade. I wonder what % of intel’s R&D budget is actually comparable to AMD’s if you exclude the amount poured into fabs—betting those figures are much closer despite enormous differences in market cap. TSMC, who along with GloFo fab the AMD chips, is basically all-in on R&D investment and taking on debt to facilitate the construction of the most advanced fabs to date. And their prior investments in 7nm have scaled rapidly and panned out well. I think it was the fastest ramp for a node shrink that they’ve done.
Oh and Keller is definitely smart but you imply that he’s got a monopoly on talent in the semiconductor industry. There’s no way that’s the case lmao