Mr. Fruehe, again with all due respect to an executive of your experience and standing, I would like to explain at least "my opinion" on that statement.
It is progress, sir. The primary driving force of computer technology should be to "go where no CPU has gone before", not fill in between the waves in the wake of a faster boat. It is an inexhaustible desire of humanity which barely five years after the courageous challenge of a President landed two men on the moon at a time when a calculator weighed four pounds and NASA's fastest computer would barely drive a modern phone. Benefits to humanity are measured by historians only by the leaders as they are the ones which shape our times. Does it really matter and does anyone really care who lost to FDR in his various elections? It only matters that he motivated America to save the world and keep the stars on the stripes rather than a swastika.
A private corporation such as AMD only has responsibilities to its shareholders to make a buck, and thus it can be argued that a "fill in the blanks Intel missed" is a valid company financial strategy. However, it is a profoundly flawed technological strategy. I propose to you that CPU companies are not shoemakers or t-shirt manufacturers, sir. They have a responsibility to humanity to lead the way in demonstrating how computer technology can save us from our dire mistakes (one of which may be currently in the process of rendering half of the great nation of Japan uninhabitable for millions of years) and lead the way to a brighter and more hopeful future for ourselves and our children.
Abandoning the technological cutting-edge leadership mantle to Intel does a disservice not just to enthusiast prosumer gamers and the like, it does a disservice to humanity. AMD is the only company in the world which is positioned to save us all from decades of technological monopoly by Intel, which like any other unchallenged monopoly will have stultifying effects on its entire field. The world is depending on computer technology to write our future. If the future is written by a monopoly which can charge what it wants for whatever it feels like producing, then AMD will go down in history not as a competitor who failed, but as a villain who postponed and hindered the future of humanity.