It’s no fun being a Japanese microprocessor manufacturer these days even if you are an official Intel second source: Intel is increasing restrictions on what second sources may do, prohibiting the development and manufacture of gate array versions of its microprocessors, saying that it violates the agreement – and it ain’t going to let any Japanese firm second-source the 80386; the current issue is incorporation of 8-bit 8080 and 8085 standard cells into gate arrays and follows on from Intel and NEC’s unfinished business in the courts of Silicon Valley; the effect is going to be to force Japanese manufacturers to come up with original architectures.
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