With Intel's Nehalem core processors, it seems the company is backpedaling from their own designs and using something that resembles more closely AMD processors in terms of how the CPU handles on-chip cache. Previously, Intel had stated that their design of shared L2 cache was superior compared to AMD's take, dedicating chunks of cache per-core, which they said wasn't efficient.
In a seeming reversal of this stance, the upcoming 45nm CPUs from Intel will feature independent L1 and L2 cache for each core, while still sharing a larger L3 cache pool. This isn't the first bit of design that Intel has adopted from AMD - the independent core design that AMD pushed early on is also finally making it into Nehalem's architecture.
But technical functionality aside, Intel boasting upcoming newer technologies cannot be good news for AMD, who seem to be rather stuck with the Phenom that has yet to really take off. Meanwhile, Intel this week confirmed this and other details that had been rumored before like a six-core CPU.