Even though AMD’s move to sell off their manufacturing assets has been seen by many as a good move for the company, it may not be a smooth transition. Only hours after the announcement, Intel stepped in to say that they are concerned about what AMD has done.
The issue that Intel apparently has is with the cross-licensing that the two companies share. Primarily, AMD is heavily invested in cross-licenses from Intel, which allow them to manufacture processors based on the X86 instruction set, among other technologies that Intel originally created (such as MMX). According to Intel, AMD doesn't have the right to sell those licenses – and thus can't have a third party manufacturing their hardware.
This could prove to be an interesting kink in this developing story, especially if Intel tries to get involved and stop AMD from executing this plan.
Source
Intel voices concerns over AMD spinoff
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