> They've been one of the largest and most successful chip manufacturers for decades Probably the 2 biggest reasons for this are that only 2 companies are allo

> They've been one of the largest and most successful chip manufacturers for decades Probably the 2 biggest reasons for this are that only 2 companies are allowed to "touch" x86, and that the second company was easily undermined by nefarious business practices. This resulted in a lot of things that were not "oversights or mistakes" but rather for the longest time lax approaches under a distinct lack of pressure. It's hard to say how the x86 world would have looked like today if someone like Nvidia had a license.