But if you look at the HP Journal, you will see that many remarkable advances did come from labs. And that's why the shouldn't be written off yet. But always remember to kick the tyres!
If you read the HP Journal, sure, everything is amazing (including Itanium). If you look at what they have done that actually succeeded, it's hard to see why it hasn't been shut down
I mean, memristors and photonic links? Seriously?
And what good does any of it do when you don't have the resources to build a CPU to go with it?