>lost a lot of ground to the Athlon 64 before they could come up with a high-performance successor to the Pentium M.
You realize that Intel's EMT-64 is effectively AMD-64, right? Intel, which loathed that cross-patent deal, is now reaping AMD's rewards. Core2 and later series processors are all using AMD's intellectual property (legally).
Intel is most certainly not using AMD's architecture, they are using AMD's instruction set, yes, but they internals have nothing to do with AMD's designs. The Core series was an evolution of the Pentium M which was based on the Pentium III architecture.
Yes. Intel has more than made up for the mess they were in circa 2003-2005, but the fact remains that AMD was able to truly embarrass Intel for quite some time, both by beating Intel to market with several new technologies, and by significantly eroding Intel's market share for desktop and server chips.
You realize that Intel's EMT-64 is effectively AMD-64, right? Intel, which loathed that cross-patent deal, is now reaping AMD's rewards. Core2 and later series processors are all using AMD's intellectual property (legally).