AMD began to die as a company when Intel released their Conroe processors, which represented a unusually-large leap ahead in the performance arena (20% or so, usually you'd only see 3-5% increases from generation to generation). That was early 2006, and AMD has been downhill ever since. Fast forwarding two years, AMD finds itself unable to match Intel in performance and unable to redefine itself as a budget processor (VIA already has that spot nicely in hand, and one has to figure that its just costing AMD too much money to sell their sub-par chips at cut rate). Today is the death knell. Intel is going to release Nehalem series processors near the end of the year. These were just reviewed at Computex in Taiwan today, and they look like the next chip that makes everything before it obsolete (another 20%+ performance gain). AMD with their negative 3.5bn in retained earnings is in no place to do anything about it (surely they would have unveiled any company saving products as their stock was sliding from $40 to $7). I'm not even sure there's a clear exit strategy for AMD, unless a pc manufacturer wants to "cross the streams" and buy them out. Could be slash and burn.

AMD could benefit from the anti-trust troubles facing Intel. Not that any penalty is really going to hurt INTC in the long run. A short pop here for AMD.

I think its going to peak soon in the next year and a half.