AMD will no longer exist in a year and a half. They borrowed more than 2 billion dollars last year to buy ATI (who just released a really shitty line of cards), and they are currently in debt to the tune of about 3 billion dollars. Once the ATI 2000 series bomb is taken into account, they will be scrambling. I'm not betting money on their new processors being too hot either - they aren't partaking in the "core wars" and to match the leap made by Intel would take a phenomenal breakthrough.
Intel has killed AMD dead. If AMD had not begged for money to buy ATI, they might've had a shot of surviving into 2009.
As it stands, I expect Intel to eventually bail out AMD, similar to MS bailing out Apple in the late 90s. In both situations, letting their biggest competition die would leave them wide open for antitrust suits. Intel has partaken of some shady operations over the past 7 years (though not as many as they did during the height of the 90s pc era), and I bet they are too smart to leave themselves too open for assault.
For reference, AMD's stock value has dropped by more than 50% in the past year. Intel's has remained stable.
