Kev, I have stayed out of this, as I know MiniD works for Intel and is in a better position to answer the claim you made.
But, for the love of logic, think about it. Smaller process yeilds more dies per wafer. This is a substantial cost reduction per die. If the yeilds are good, and I see nothing the marketplace to suggest Intel is having any kind of yeild problems, then Intel should be able to undercut AMD AND do so with a higher net profit per CPU.
It is just logical.
From a business side, Intel had to figure they had a winner on thier hands, and also knew AMD would not be able to compete. Sales projections probably were on the order of 100% higher (a guess) than previous processors. So they are able to amoritize the development costs over a larger number of parts, keeping the costs lower than previous generations of CPU.
Now that was just some speculation. I really have no insight to how Intel handles its amoritization schedules, but a per part schedule over some period of time is generally the method most companies use. The time period is generally the projected peak sales life of the product.
At any rate, there is no way AMD's larger process can be produced cheaper than Intel's smaller process, given good yeilds for both companies.
