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I believe the licensing deal would terminate if AMD is sold

You're correct. Here's AMD's statement:

>Advanced Micro Devices has clarified terms of the cross-license agreement with Intel Corp. on Thursday. As it appears, if either AMD or Intel change their control (i.e., gets acquired), the cross-license agreement between the two companies is automatically terminated for both parties.

Since AMD invented x64 this would leave Intel in quite a bind and the only solution would be to work with the new owner to reach an agreement.

Yeah, that would be a really, really dangerous agreement for Intel given the market cap of AMD and how it would gut Intel's CPU lineup. I would assume their would be one damn quick agreement after the fact.

Apple would have them by the plums at least for a little while.

IBM would also be interesting given POWER.

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