content: And yet they're more powerful than any other chip on the market.  In their specific market yes. x86 stagnates but is it because of a lack of competition or is it because Intel have run out of steam? While x86 hasn't advanced in any meaningful way since sandybridge, RISC keeps moving onwards and upwards, at the low end with ARM and at the high end with IBM Power and SPARC - the latter being massively more performant and scalable than anything intel have to offer at the moment. Intel dominate the desktop, workstation and mainstream server markets but they are a one trick pony and it increasingly looks like they are struggling with a dead end architecture.