Intel and Skype Exclude AMD

Raenex writes "CNET is reporting that Intel and Skype have signed an exclusive deal that would cap the number of conference call members on all but Intel architecture. Skype will only offer 10-way conference calls on specific Intel chips while other chips, including all AMD chips, will only offer 5-way conference calls. From the article: 'Though few would argue that a niche feature like that is going to be a deal breaker for most PC buyers, the importance of the Skype-Intel alliance goes well beyond VoIP conferencing. Indeed, it's the latest, and certainly most prominent, example of Intel's new take on marketing: Lock in software partners as well as the PC makers.'"

Low Blow

To allow more conference calls to users who are using a specific CPU is a cheap shot at the market. It's not fair to chip makers, and definetly not fair to the consumers.

Gatta start watchin Intel's sucker punches.

Re:Low Blow

I agree. I think they should do a speed test on your processor and if it can handle the load, then the feature should be enabled. Disabling a feature because you don't have a specific brand of processor is kind of low.

Another sink-the-company idea from Intel.

Consider how this may have happened:

An Intel marketing person thought this was a good idea. He is one of those who knows nothing about technical things; he's just a marketing drone. What could he possibly do to advance the strength of his company? Nothing. So, to pretend that he was contributing he turned to evil. He made a deal that looks good to other know-nothings like himself, and is really, really offensive to the people who matter.

This is a violation of the anti-trust laws, I think.

New Intel mottos:

Intel: When you can't compete, be adversarial.

Intel: We're on the way down.

Intel: A technical company controlled by people with no technical knowledge.

Intel's present adversarial behavior is part of a gradual decay of the company that is more than 10 years old, in my experience. Perhaps 10 years ago, Intel arranged a pay cut for employees just before they began to do record business. During that time, Intel has done some really, really disgusting things, like trash their consumer products division by not paying enough attention to it.

Re:Low Blow

Gatta start watchin Intel's sucker punches.

You mean you're only beginning to watch now?

This is just the latest round in Intel's ongoing anti-competetive war against AMD [theinquirer.net].

Re:Low Blow

I think it's pretty clearly anticompetitive, when you're pushing someone to write software that is specifically noncompliant with a competitors hardware.

If I were Intel I would have waited until that particular competitor was no longer suing me for anti-competitive behavior before adding more weight to their argument...But that's just me.

Re:Low Blow

Your analogy would seem to suggest that currently, software that runs on intel does not run equally well on amd, which is not, in fact, the case. This is more analogous to lexmark's print cartridge scam where their printers refused to use cartridges manufactured by competitiors simply because they WERE managed by competitors.

In this situation, intel is offering incentives to a software manufacturer to cripple their product on a competitors hardware. I agree that a competing product could be released that didn't have this arbitrary restriction, but I think it is clearly anti-competitive behavior that it was released in the first place.

Re:Low Blow

The question you have to ask yourself is "What value does this add?"

See, the only difference between competitive behavior and anticompetitive behavior is that anticompetitive behavior isn't innovation; it's simply trying to squash the competition.

Further, you have to ask, what does Skype get out of all this?

Re:Low Blow

"anticompetitive? or competitive?"

Competition is making a better product or doing it for a cheaper price. Anti-competition is forcing people to use your product by artificially limiting another product that people want to only work with yours. This is just a bullying tactic. Now, Skype with 10-way conferencing isn't exactly a big stick, but it's still a stick we're being hit with. But the principle is even worse than some of Microsoft's monopolistic tactics. It's not just integration or bundling, it'd be more like only allowing Windows to play mp3 files above 128 kbps using Windows Media Player and artificially crippling others. (The fact that it's two companies here instead of two MS departments doesn't make much of a difference to the harm to the end user.)

I'm wondering if they factored in the anti-marketing this does for them. I'm less interested in using Intel and Skype products now.

Re:Low Blow

Gizmo [gizmoproject.com] appears to have most of Skype's features (direct VoIP, inbound and outbound POTS calls, IMs, conferencing, call recording) as well as a slick UI and support for Windows, Mac OS, and Linux. It may not have encrypted connections (I'm not sure), but it does have the advantage of interoperating with other SIP and Asterisk networks (it uses SIP internally), so you can call e.g. Free World Dialup subscribers from the Gizmo interface, and visa-versa. Outbound calls appear to be cheaper, as well: 1 cents/minute to the continental USA and Canada, 3-5 cents to the UK, France, Germany, Singapore, Hong Kong, and a number of other countries. Somolia, Iraq, Papua New Guinea, Antarctica, and Palestine were the only countries I recognized with rates over $1.00/minute. The highest rate I saw was $2.50/minute to Diego Garcia in Asia, and that was only for landline calls; calls to mobile phones were less expensive. Disclaimer: I only found this earlier program today (I started looking when I saw the story), so I haven't had a chance to evaluate the quality of the program in operation. Perhaps someone else could comment on that point?

Re:Low Blow

That's not the case. This is like Ford passing a law mandating that 55 mph governors be installed on BMWs, and then advertising that their car can go much faster than BMWs. AMD is widely known to make better chips in this case, not Intel.

Re:Low Blow

I'm curious, did you even read the article that you linked to? Here's a few samples since you seemed to miss them:

"Under Battlefield 2, we're able to see a small 3% performance advantage over the Pentium M. However, compared to the Athlon 64 X2, the Core Duo does not stand a chance."

"What performance at lower resolutions does tell us is that in this type of AI/physics load, the Athlon 64 X2 is a much better performer than the Core Duo, which does have some importance for performance in future games."

And in the summary:

"In the past, power users on the go had to sacrifice mobility for CPU power, but with the Core Duo, that is no longer the case. You will still most likely have to resort to something larger if you need better GPU performance, but at least your CPU needs will be covered. The one thing that Intel's Core Duo seems to be able to do very well is to truly bridge the gap between mobile and desktop performance, at least in thin and light packages.

But what about the bigger picture? What does our most recent look at the performance of Intel's Core Duo tell us about future Intel desktop performance? We continue to see that the Core Duo can offer, clock for clock, overall performance identical to that of AMD's Athlon 64 X2 - without the use of an on-die memory controller. The only remaining exception at this point appears to be 3D games, where the Athlon 64 X2 continues to do quite well, most likely due to its on-die memory controller."

Based on that, I don't see how you can conclude that:

Itty, bitty mobile processor Yonah, at 2GHz, with no 64-bit extensions, kicks the bloody shit out of AMDs top of the line offering on almost all the benchmarks.

The Core Duo is impressive, no doubt about it. Near desktop performance with laptop-like power consumption (at least once Microsoft fixes XP so USB devices don't cause Windows to remain out of standby) but it seems you've gone a few too many laps 'round the Intel hype hampster-wheel. As a matter of fact, in direct opposition to your assertion, in all but one of the benchmarks Yonah trailed AMD's offerings. The gap wasn't generally tremendous, but it certainly was there. Yessir, that'd be kicking the bloody shit. Yup. Oh yes.

OS X

I haven't read the articles, so I apologize if this has been stated already. Is there news if these "enhancements" applies only to Wintel systems? Or will Dual-core Mactel systems get the added benefits too?

The Skype OS X client is already somewhat lacking compared to its Win-counterpart.

Re:OS X

I haven't read the articles

Why don't you read the linked articles? No need for an apology then...

Skype: Tomorrow's Napster.

Heh... In five years Skype is going to be as relavant as Napster is today: a historial footnote to a great idea that could have been much more. The dot-bomb hangover is finally fading and there's a resurging interest in funding Internet-based technologies. Some people have called it a "new boom". VoIP is far and away the biggest reason for this new boom. New VoIP providers are coming out the woodwork because the industry finally matured enough to standardize on SIP as the defacto VoIP-standard. Vendors are cranking out interoperable SIP hardware, which allows us (as part of a recent VoIP startup) to rapidly roll out services without having to second guess whether we're using the right tech. Open standards makes things cheaper. It makes it easier to find, hire and train knowledgable engineers. Etc, etc... Skype, however, is still locked into a propietary protocol. Compare the history of the CD to that of the Minidisc to see difference that open standards makes. Like Napster, the only value of Skype in five years will be the brand name.

Re:Skype: Tomorrow's Napster. - NOT QUITE

eBay knows product marketing

How? eBay is a service company. The only marketing I've seen is singing about buying crap off of eBay on TV and every single noun that I search for on Google, I can buy on eBay as well.

Back on topic, this is a _very_ bad move on Intel and Skype. I doubt that MS would even stoop so low.

A) Why would Skype agree to this? What is their benefit by limiting their customer base by splitting hairs on commodity CPU manufacturers?

b) Why would Intel do this when they are already being sued by AMD?

Is Sony involved in these decisions?

Devices

I'm going to make a wild guess that Intel is not thinking about ye olde PCs, but devices. VoIP is the next thing, and they want to make sure all those appliances are running Intel chipsets.

Cisco has a good start on them though - but not the software, that's Skype.

This is going to be an interesting field to watch for the next five years.

Are they crazy?

Whatever the merits of AMD's existing anti-trust complaints, there is no freaking way this isn't an anti-trust violation. It's completely artificial and a clear loss to consumers. Seems odd that Intel would voluntarily give out ammunition like this.

Re:Are they crazy?

Whatever the merits of AMD's existing anti-trust complaints, there is no freaking way this isn't an anti-trust violation.

Yes, there is one way. I had the exact same thought as you did, right up until I realized something: Intel no longer has a monopoly in the processor market.

The conclusion that then follows is: There is no more anti-trust. Just competition.

Scary.

Re:Are they crazy?

It's probably still illegal though.

In Europe it's product tying, which has been illegal for a while - if Skype try this there they'll be sued to oblivion by AMD under these laws.

Not sure about the US... I guess from the comments that there are no such laws there.

Re:Are they crazy?

Intel no longer has a monopoly in the processor market.

You got it backwards. Intel is not leveraging a (no longer existing) monopoly in the processor market to help Skype gain a monopoly in the VOIP market. Rather, it's the other way round: they are leveraging Skype's near monopoly in VOIP to bolster Intel's dying processor monopoly.

So the real question should be: are there today any credible competitors to Skype?

Re:Are they crazy?

So the real question should be: are there today any credible competitors to Skype?

Yes [gizmoproject.com]. Standards based, and is at least 37% less evil.

Re:Are they crazy?

And don't tell me Linux isn't preinstalled because nobody wants it.

Nobody wants it.

At least, nobody wants it enough to pay a premium for it. Because a Linux pre-install is a *separate* product from the Windows pre-install, it doesn't get made for free. It actually costs the manufacturer to provide Linux pre-isntalls. If the demand for Linux pre-installs is high enough then the cost is worth it. But if not, it's a loss, and so the manufacturer stops providing that product line.

Linux users, as a whole, are perfectly capable of installing Linux on their own. Even if you did pre-install Linux, odds are the Linux user is going to slap on another distribution anyway. You might as well be marketing OS-less systems rather than Linux systems.

In short, the absence of Linux pre-installs on desktop machines from the large OEMs is not evidence of a dastardly conspiracy.

Solution..

Stick to open source telephony. Asterisk [asterisk.org] makes an excellent enterprise grade open-source PBX for the back end. For the end user, Free World Dialup [freeworlddialup.com] offers a SIP compatible service with a free downloadable client that does not limit you like this.

wha?

does this mean Intel is actually actively trying to chase off all the geek customers that were just starting to consider not despising them again when the Yonah benchmarks came in? or did some middle-manager just accidentally outsource their public relations to Sony?

Downright Disgusting

This is a disgusting way of getting customers, it seems like there could be some kind of possible litigation considering they are making you buy one thing in order to use another. Maybe THIS is why VOIP companies should be regulated like we do the baby bells.

Ya, well... uh... NO SOUP FOR YOU!

Haha, like that is gonna make people want to stop their migration to AMD. Although this is a scary precident, it will most likely backfire. AMD will be able to further fan the fire with this.

I'd make a choice--but not on the hardware...

From TFA: "Would you avoid buying a PC with an Advanced Micro Devices chip inside because it wouldn't let you host an Internet conference call with six of your friends?"

No, I wouldn't avoid buying a PC with an AMD chip. I pretty much buy all AMD now, and I plan to continue. I would, however, be sure to not use software that tries to dictate to me what type of hardware I use. I wonder if this will backfire on Skype?

Re:I'd make a choice--but not on the hardware...

I wonder if this will backfire on Skype?

Don't wonder. I recently signed up for skype, just because my family was on it and it was free. But I think it may be time to think about alternatives. Thing about a free service, it is really easy to walk away when they do stupid things like this. I can't possibly see why skype thought crippling its software would be good for business. And it really makes me think Intel is on its way out if they can't compete anymore on the merits of their products, but have to conspire with other businesses to exclude competition.

It is a sad day for those two companies.

It will just drive more people to...

Asterisk. [asterisk.org]

It does conference calls really well and is not just free as in beer.

Corporate stupidity isn't always a bad thing. It's just a matter of letting them shoot themselves in the foot and then reaping the benefits of their pain.

MTW

Stupid move

It only opens the door for Skype's competitors to gain a foothold by not instituting such a silly restriction.

It also turns into bad PR for Skype for the tech community to find out that Skype intentionally hobbles their software.

Re:Processor Mask

Skype already takes extreme measures to prevent reverse engineering and to abend the application if you try to run it under a debugger.

So does World of Warcraft, but people still hack it from time to time. Up until now there hasn't been much of a reason for anyone to want to modify Skype, so it hasn't been in the crosshairs of the reverse engineering crowd.

Example: Attaching a normal windows debugger or using softice isn't the only way to trace execution. Even if the app attempts to detect a virtualized CPU (say vmware), a full emulator can be completely invisible -- just slower. qemu even supports a gdb socket connection.

Trying to prevent reverse-engineering is a never-ending arms race and I'm not sure Skype has the will to stick it out. Just witness sites like game copy world to see how effect anti-reverse-engineering technologies are.

We'll keep on saying it...

... This is what you get for using a closed, proprietory technology. Use SIP (or H.323) and you're not going to get any of this "10 user max" limit crap.

It's a stupid move for Skype

AMD has better and cheaper desktop chips and they keep gaining market share keeps on rising. If a user has an AMD chip and Skype will only support a 5 way conference call on AMD then I'd imagine the user would probably look to another VOIP solution instead of lookinf for a new PC with an Intel chip. It's a stupid move for Skype.