As you may recall, in the early-to-mid '80's, most MCU's, and there weren't that many, along with most microprocessors, based their usefulness on how many second sources they had. As a consequence, individual manufacturers, particularly originators of one or another core, didn't have to promote their core. Intel did actively promote their own products, and, in the process, those identical products from other manufacturers, the presence of which gave market advantage to all who offered that same core.

At the time, there really weren't any core originators whose product was just the IP. However, every erg of effort that Intel put into promoting their 805x products was of benefit to AMD, Toshiba, NEC, Signetics (later, in 1989 or so, sold to Philips) and others who had licensed their 805x series. This was common to all widely second-sourced product lines. The core-originator wasn't always the primary promoter of a given architecture, but since the originator licensed their product to other manufacturers, it was to their advantage to promote it.

Sadly, there are few "second-source" manufacturers today. Instead, we have to wade through the differences in order to select a suitable product. While there are advantages to using each of these, it is a two-edged sword, often biting one in the *ss if one fails to consider the impact of seemingly minor differences.

RE