In the 1995 settlement, Intel agreed not to challenge AMD's license as long as the company refrained from developing microprocessors that could simply plug into the socket on the PC "motherboard" where Intel's Pentium chips neatly fit. The net result was that AMD was free to stay in the microprocessor business--provided it could not only design and build a competitive chip, but also come up with its own design for the rest of the circuitry that makes up a PC.

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