2017 AMD was using a silicon interposer.
It goes a couple of years further back to the original R9 GPUs which had the first HBM memory, e.g. R9 Nano. Vega wasn't the first, but AMD were the first to do it in that way... I just wish it was more successful in terms of the actual product. In practice the approach has many benefits which is why Intel have gone all in - probably because they have better resources to - a shame AMD haven't been able to leverage it in the same way but I guess the post-Athlon64 / pre-Ryzen years prohibited such moves.
BUT.... whilst innovative and certainly pushing tech forward thanks to integrating the seperate dies into one physical block unit (and not just seperate dies sharing an interposer), it's not exactly a new general idea - the seperate dies are still interconnected with their own interposer, so it's an interconnecting block on top of another interconnecting block.
As much hate/dislike/distain anyone may have they did a LOT first and have moved the needle for consumers.
Here are their firsts.
Tessellation
GPU compute
X64
Chiplet
Interposer
3D stacking
HBM
SSD on GPU
HDR
Intel was the pioneer of HT/SMT. They have made huge advances in paying off companies in monopolistic practices and been fined a pittance for trying to eliminate competitive companies. Nvidia has a great PR and spin team and a lot of money.
Erm... not sure that list will stand up to scrutiny...
Tessellation:
Conceptually not an AMD idea and on some level 'tessellation' work has been done by lots of 3D hardware/software before ATI did it (expanded upon in a sec) - as part of some rendering pipelines is to break objects/surfaces down for processing and rendering. ATI/AMD Incorporating a Tessallation engine (like they did with the Radeon 8500) to try and restore lost fidelity (i.e. to make curves more round rather than polygon stepped, etc.) was a good idea but never properly adopted - had a play with one back in the day and it sure made things in Counter-Strike funny looking (you turned it on to test/play about with, and then off again to actually properly play a game). Fortunately DX10/11 properly implemented it.
Chiplet + Interposer:
Multi-chip modules have existed for a very long time, and in the PC space Intel were doing something like that a long time before AMD were, e.g. the Pentium Pro (1995 - CPU and cache dies both on same ceramic package). What do you define as a chiplet exactly...? And for that matter the interposer is surely the ceramic package in this case:
Other 'chiplet' / 'interposer' combinations pre-AM4:
PS3 RSX:
View attachment 1728582406838.webp
Intel Pentium D:
3D Stacking:
I'm afraid in the push for more NAND flash storage space for SSDs, Toshiba were ahead there:
Toshiba has announced the development of the world’s first 16-die (max.) stacked NAND flash memory utilising Through Silicon Via (TSV) technology. The prior art of stacked NAND flash memories are connected together with wire bonding in a package. TSV technology instead utilises the vertical...
www.electronicspecifier.com
HDR:
You'd need to provide some specific example - dynamic range (and the lack of ability to recreate it on screen) has been well known for decades. There were many 'solutions' developed - I'm not sure what AMD brought to the table seeing as the 'modern' current take on it really is more along the lines of work done by Brightside/Dolby in terms of actual displays and standards, meanwhile game engines (even Valve's Source engine) were tackling HDR like capabilities through software approaches. Being first to support a standard others may have come up with isn't really a first in terms of developing that solution / standard.
On the other hand - things you didn't mention which people may attribute to Intel or AMD:
On-die memory controller - maybe not the first in terms of tech as many ARM devices for example use such a thing, but in the PC space AMD were first for consumers.
If it wasn't delayed, AMD would have had the first on-die full socketed 'northbridge' SoC with Llano / FM1 socket incorporating PCIe, IMC, and other bus connections directly to the CPU package... but it was late so Intel technically gets there with the LGA 1156.
But technically, these items themselves are really just a derivative of the 'Geode' line features conceptually speaking, which Cyrix (eeewwww) started.
www.tomshardware.com
