Off the top of my head without looking at reference materials - there were a lot of legal issues going on at the time involving AMD/Intel disputes and AMD was o

Off the top of my head without looking at reference materials - there were a lot of legal issues going on at the time involving AMD/Intel disputes and AMD was on the ropes back then. The 386 project was highly contentious with Intel, I think they started the project as a worse case scenario in the licensing deal - if Intel forbade 386 from the initial contract, AMD could show proof of work on an entirely ground up project to replicate the 386 - the guys on the team were up against a rock and a hard place and were determined but not always optimistic. Also, there was some grumbling when I started because shortly before I started they had some layoffs. AMD was on the brink. This is off of my memory from 25 years ago and I was a pretty lowly coop and only heard this from meals and shared open workspace with the other project. edit: I looked it up and there was a dispute if the license applied until 1991 for the 386. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Am386 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Am386