>As Intel owns all rights to the x86 architecture, there will never be any new manufacturers licensed to make x86 chips ...
This strikes me as the root problem here. How can one company be granted a monopoly on what is basically an instruction set? Particularly in the case of the instruction set our civilization runs on?
Since I can't understand how something like this could happen I don't understand why any replacement architecture wouldn't end up being controlled by a single entity.
The legality of x86's ISA being copyrighted/patented aside, the x86 ISA isn't that attractive for any new endeavours. It's a very complex ISA which is incredibly difficult to decode. Internally, it is anyway converted to RISC style microops. So as a competitor, you don't really gain a whole lot by implementing the x86 ISA apart from the ability to run software without writing a new compiler. What's more important is the microarchitecture.
This strikes me as the root problem here. How can one company be granted a monopoly on what is basically an instruction set? Particularly in the case of the instruction set our civilization runs on?
Since I can't understand how something like this could happen I don't understand why any replacement architecture wouldn't end up being controlled by a single entity.