Well your almost right on the original license.
In order for the new to cpu's and mostly unheard of Intel to supply its fancy new design chip to IBM, IBM wanted a backup supplier (like the airline industry demands two engine suppliers for airplanes). Intel Contracted AMD and gave them the license.
This was grand from 1982 - 1986 ... or from 8088/8086 up to the 286. When the 386 rolled around IBM was more or less gone, and Intel was looking to the Dell and HP style OEM's. It tried to cut AMD but AMD sued AND WON. but it didn't happen until 1994, so how did AMD keep going?
While x86 use was in limbo, and Intel weren't sharing AMD reverse engineered the 386, the 486 and even the original Pentium. At this time they managed, with no further help from Intel, to reverse engineer their chips to the point where their CPU's were considered MORE compatible with Intel chipsets then Intel's own (quite and achievement i think)
No one knows exactly what was agreed in 1994 when Intel was forced by court order to make an agreement with AMD, but since then AMD hasn't been making drop in replacments for Intel chips but has been using its own chip design requiring its own motherboards.
Assuming the Intel - AMD agreement isn't one sided... how is what AMD is doing any different from what Intel is doing with TSMC to produce Atom chips for it (is it just that the current low end Atom has no x86-64 extensions?) That aside... do the same circumstances exist that existed in 1994 that Intel has to, under court order, make an agreement with AMD which allows AMD have a license to x86. I reckon it must. Intel wasn't half the monopoly it is now back then.
