That’s what’s keeping the lights on. If they sunk the extra billions into making their discrete cards genuinely superior to Nvidia’s (which already means taking it for granted that selling comparable products for less money makes them knockoff rather than superior), then Nvidia could stop them recouping the development costs by eating into their own margins to drop their prices. Over the last decade or two, ATi/AMD’s big gambles have mostly not paid off, whereas Nvidia’s have, so AMD can’t afford to take big risks, and the semi-custom part of the business is huge long-term orders that mean guaranteed profit.
That’s what’s keeping the lights on. If they sunk the extra billions into making their discrete cards genuinely superior to Nvidia’s (which already means taking it for granted that selling comparable products for less money makes them knockoff rather than superior), then Nvidia could stop them recouping the development costs by eating into their own margins to drop their prices. Over the last decade or two, ATi/AMD’s big gambles have mostly not paid off, whereas Nvidia’s have, so AMD can’t afford to take big risks, and the semi-custom part of the business is huge long-term orders that mean guaranteed profit.