Thank you for saying this. It's clear that processors are going through something really interesting right now after an extended dwindling and choke point onto x86. This x86 dominance has lasted entire careers, but from a longer perspective we're simply seeing another cycle in ecosystem diversity, specialized functions spinning out of and back into unified packages, and a continued downward push from commoditization forces that are affecting the entire product chain from fab to ISA licensing. We're not quite at the wild-west of the late 80s and 90s, but something's in the air.

It seems almost like the forces that are pushing against these long-term trends are focused more on trying to figure out how to saturate existing compute on the high-end, and using that to justify drives away from diversity and vertical integrated cost/price reduction. But there are, long-term, not as many users who need to host this technology as there are users of things like phones and computers who need the benefits the long-term trends provide.

Intel has acted somewhat as a rock in a river, and the rest of the world is finding ways around them after having been dammed up for a bit.