Whoever wins the soon-to-be-vacant CEO chair at Intel will presumably inherit a strong seat. Financially, Intel had a blowout year in 2011, in which both the top and bottom lines hit record highs. This year, its Data Center Group (server CPUs), is showing strong 5% year-over-year growth, and Intel dominates the server business, as our InformationWeek State of Servers report makes clear.

Sounds great, but Intel still generates over three times as much revenue from the PC side of its business. That's a problem. The PC market, if not in outright decline, is undoubtedly in a state of long-term lethargy. And it's starting to show up in Intel's books. Its revenue and income have been flat this year, with a rough Q3 that can be easily blamed on procrastinating PC buyers waiting for Windows 8.