May I ask how much a burden 2$ billion debt actually is?
What is the interest rate? Let's be generous here, 10%?
So 200 million $ per year (ATI was profitable for the most of those years but let's ignore that) has "killed AMD"?
Those annual 200 million bucks of a burden forced AMD to quit EXTREMELY EXPENSIVE fab business, really?
If you bid on "APU is the future" you can't just "buy IP". You can't get to "integrated out of the box CPU-GPU"'s with just slapping some GPU transistors next to your CPU chip.
Buldozer was doomed, wrong way, no way more money into R&D would have saved it.
Neither would these money allow AMD to keep the fabs in competitive shape.
Why couldn't the new owner of the AMD fabs keep on par with Intel? Why couldn't Samsung, TSMC?
Intel can afford them only because of the dominant market share AND fat (to a point when getting 100% of the mobile market is laughable from total revenue perspective) margins.
The only competitive part of AMD at the moment is their GPUs and APUs.
Intel invests into GPUs and went APU, following AMD.
Overpaying for ATI shadows it a bit, but in no way warrants "oh, AMD was killed" comments.
Being an underdog all these years and hence having to fight uphill battles is likely to kill it eventually, and rather soon as it is very weak at this point already, but don't call things which are theories at best, "facts" please.