> They're Intel's only major x86 competitor, IIRC their x86 license is non-transferrable, and no way Intel would be permitted in the USA to have an actual monop

> They're Intel's only major x86 competitor, IIRC their x86 license is non-transferrable, and no way Intel would be permitted in the USA to have an actual monopoly on x86 production. I just looked this up, and it seems to boil down to the patent cross-licensing agreement between Intel, which developed the x86 architecture, and AMD, which developed the 64-bit instruction set. I don't think there's a unilateral "non-transferable license" per se — and they're free to enter into a new agreement if either party does get acquired. This Reddit thread seems pretty good at explaining it in much more detail: https://www.reddit.com/r/hardware/comments/3b0ytk/discussion_what_is_an_x86_license_and_why_do/ https://www.reddit.com/r/hardware/comments/3b0ytk/discussion...