Grandmastersexsay :
catfishtx :
So, what's to keep some Intel engineers from obtaining a sample of said chip and reverse engineering it? Now Intel could make an ARM compatible chip with no license fees.
The same thing that stops them now, patents.
AMD reverse engineered the i386 (Am386) and i486 (Am486) while its litigation with Intel was still going on. They were not copies, but they were compatible, and ran the same software. That is why Intel switched to names for its products instead of numbers, you can't patent numbers. There are quite a few examples of one company reverse engineering another company's product that do not infringe on the original company's patents.