People are speculating because of AMD's past. Granted it is because their recent moves haven't been that great, but here is the thing. This was developed ground up using the newest technology available and developed by someone that knows what he is doing.
The past means nothing as this is a new chip. AMD has been limping by with their CPU's for years. As a company this product has to pull through. It is why they went back to a more traditional chip design. As people have seen this die shrink can be a huge asset in power consumption. People that have seen the newest GPU's from AMD have been amazed what it can do with its power draw. The below example isn't the best video I have seen on this but was the first one I found with a simple google search on Polaris power draw.
So all things taken into consideration so far it would seem AMD should have the intention and ability to make a competitive CPU. Even more so if you consider the fact that Intel hasn't really made any super ground breaking moves with their CPU's for a while now. They have just been chugging along. Granted you would have to expect that Intel themselves might not be that far away from their next CPU line as the Core line has been going for a while now and maybe they have been waiting on that to see what AMD has to offer.
It is easy to doubt AMD, but considering what is on the line for AMD as a company at this point it would be unwise to underestimate them, because they can't afford another Bulldozer, in fact another Bulldozer would probably be the end of AMD, and they know that, so you have to expect that if they where going to put the resources into designing a new chip from the ground up that they would make sure it is the best it can be.
