Beginning of the end for Intel?
For perhaps the last ten years or so Intel have been at least a generation ahead of everyone else when it comes to chip fabrication - it's no coincidence that around this time is when AMD started falling by the wayside in terms of absolute performance. Look at the trend with each feature size shrink - at each generation costs go up and up and the number of manufacturers goes down and down until Intel are out in front by themselves.
They've needed to. x86 is ultimately a 40 year old ISA and has few redeeming features. Intel have only been able to stay competitive by throwing money at the problem and engineering themselves out of a design corner created by that very ISA. If we're getting to the point not even Intel can shrink any more and the other manufacturers have a chance to begin to catch up what is the future for x86 and Intel?
The world has moved on over that same ten years and people are no longer so wedded to Wintel thank to the likes of Android and iPhone, they can see upping sticks to something else is not a complete impossibility. Whereas the likes of MIPS and Alpha were at the time a country mile ahead of Intel despite much smaller R&D budgets simply because of smarter design, people couldn't see an alternative to Wintel for the mass market at least. If the competitors catch up on fabrication technology but with similarly superior designs on a conceptual level then they could take on or even overtake Intel once more but this time with a better chance of supplanting them in the market.
If that pans out personally I'd be glad. IT's been pretty boring post-millennium with ARM for mobile and x86 for power. It we get back to the point where there are half a dozen or more different platforms of note the industry becomes a lot more interesting place.