After ruling the world's computer microprocessor market for well over a decade with virtually no serious competition to deal with, it was almost natural to expect Intel to get lazy and reduce their scope for innovation. And why wouldn't they? With long-standing archrival AMD wallowing in the aftermath following the release of one disastrous product after another, it appeared that Intel did not have a great deal to worry about, as long as its products were better than those of its rivals. INTEL'S COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE HAS BEEN CHALLENGED AFTER A VERY LONG TIME However, it didn't take very long for Intel's stagnation to creep into general consumer markets, where they remained stuck with their Core i3-i5-i7 range of CPUs for many years, only releasing periodical refreshes across generations of CPUs, slightly increasing processing power, or moving to more efficient and elegant manufacturing processes. However, one thing didn't change much – the number of cores on the Core CPUs.