Haddock,
By the way, you can't 'buy' gcc due to the GPL license which protects it, and even Intel would have trouble buying MS.
That was really my point, actually. Not spelled out but left it to the astute reader - the two best compiler organizations for x86-64 are rather immune to being bought out by Intel, so I disbelieve that Intel would try to starve AMD of compiler resources by buying Compaq's group.
Intel has a lot of reasons for doing what they do, and some of them aren't obvious to us. They went on a buying spree a few years back (which everyone now agrees was a mistake - they apparently were a little too free with their money). I tend to think they purchased that compiler expertise for other in-house projects, not as a move against AMD.
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