Timeline Set for Intel/AMD Antitrust Trial 151
Vitaly Friedman writes "The stage is set for the biggest tech battle in years: the antitrust lawsuit filed by AMD against rival Intel. What sort of effect is it likely to have on the industry and the consumer? From the article:
'Last year, the company filed an antitrust lawsuit against Intel, claiming that their rival had "unlawfully maintained its monopoly by engaging in a relentless, worldwide campaign to coerce customers to refrain from dealing with AMD" for more than ten years. AMD has already subpoenaed computer manufacturers, retailers, and even Microsoft to provide documentation pertaining to the case. Now, the timeline has been set for the trial of the Megayear to commence.'"
Megayear? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Megayear? (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Megayear? (Score:1)
I really hope (Score:2)
Great.... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Great.... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Great.... (Score:4, Insightful)
The part where... (Score:1)
That's an easy 5-pointer (Score:4, Insightful)
Just seems strange.... Intel is the one accused of antitrust violations.... meanwhile the lawyers for the two sides get together and agree that it will take them two or three years to figure it all out.
It's called civil procedure [wikipedia.org] and it is in place to ensure that each side gets an opportunity to bring in all relevant parties, conduct thorough discovery, and reach a decision that isn't arrived at in an arbitrary fashion. It's certainly not perfect, but if you were charged with a violation that could seriously affect your business, you'd want all the facts to be laid out on the table before a judge just arbitrarily swooped in and made a decision based on idle whim.
Sure, lawyers make money when companies have disputes. Perhaps that's just the sad side effect of the rule of law in a complex society. The discovery process in particular takes a very long time because finding all of the pertient information in a suit involving two massive organizations, spanning a period of many years is not easy.
Nobody wants the alternative, a society without laws, where the party that can dish out the most physical violence wins the dispute. Then again, lawyers are convenient scapegoats for all the wrongs of our society. It makes sense. After all, nobody really cares all that much for plumbers until their drain gets backed up.
Re:That's an easy 5-pointer (Score:2, Insightful)
The thing is, you give a sense of only two choices, and the dichotomy is false. We're not stuck choosing between anarchy and lawyers running everything. There are infinite levels of complexity in the legal system that can be simplified or eliminated, but since lawyers are currently the ones running everything, that won't happen.
Complex indeed (Score:2)
There are infinite levels of complexity in the legal system that can be simplified or eliminated, but since lawyers are currently the ones running everything, that won't happen.
I agree that lawyers aren't likely to be the ones to make the legal system less complex. However, I think it's a natural consequence of living in a more complex society that laws and legal procedure becomes more complicated as well. This is particularly true given that we don't live in a homogeneous society, and we value individu
Torts (Score:1)
There's the rub (Score:2)
Lawyers will proclaim and defend any claim ever made, any act ever committed, any atrocity ever foisted upon mankind -- just as long as they get paid to do so.
True. It's a travesty. Until you are the amoral bastard being accused of something evil, something in opposition to the state, or something against public morality. Then an adversarial system of justice makes a lot more sense.
Re:Complex indeed (Score:2)
The real problems with lawyers:
They should not be in charge of creating laws. Since their fortunes are made in the process of hashing out the meaning and applicabil
Re:Complex indeed (Score:2)
Re:Complex indeed (Score:2)
Funny, I think that's the ultimate act of morality. To stand up for someone who has done something wrong and defend them. I think the issue is with high-profile lawyers trying to get their clients off entirely through dishonest means, bad science, and helping their clients lie.
Certainly even Osama deserves a defense lawyer if he's ever brought to t
Re:That's an easy 5-pointer (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:That's an easy 5-pointer (Score:2)
Intel gets screwed either way (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Intel gets screwed either way (Score:1)
Re:Intel gets screwed either way (Score:2)
Re:Intel gets screwed either way (Score:1)
Re:Intel gets screwed either way (Score:2)
the soloution to that (Score:2)
i'm pretty sure linux now does this for network cards.
also i bet flusing the 34 stage pipeline (i'm assuming that roughly maps to 34 instructions worth of time lost) is fairly small compared to the time taken to deal with the interrupt.
Re:Intel gets screwed either way (Score:2)
So not breaking the law is the same as getting screwed ? Nice logic. Not that Intel is necessarily breaking the law of course - the court case hasn't happened, so that hasn't been proved. But if they haven't been breaking the law, they shouldn't worry about losing the case.
Re:Intel gets screwed either way (Score:2)
Timeline (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Timeline (Score:4, Insightful)
Since the case only starts in 2008, this is largely dependent on who is elected president that year. If we end up with another pro-business administration, this case probably won't have any effect whatsoever. If we end up with a more consumer-friendly administration, then yes, this could be a precedent-setting case. Of course, this all assumes that Intel is found guilty, which isn't a particularly wise assumption to make at this stage.
Re:Timeline (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Timeline (Score:2)
yeah they make a lot of them. so what exactly ms makes a lot of copies of windows
cheap
competitors are generally cheaper.
ever increasing in quality
ever increasing in processing power yes but also using more power and needing more elaborate cooling to keep working.
not to mention embroiled in healthy competition.
hardly, AMD lacks the capactity to take the big name deals and noone else even comes close to INTEL in the pc processor game.
Re:Timeline (Score:1)
Actually, by far the most likely outcome will be a settlement, but the terms will be determined by the above three factors.
Re:Timeline (Score:2)
The difference (Score:1)
pro-business (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:pro-business (Score:2)
The US is largely considered to be a capitalist country. If you go by the defintion of capitalism it is readily apparent that we aren't. The best I can describe it is either state capitalist or possibly corporate socialist.
Another example is the PRC. They're offically "socialist with chinese characteristics". Really, they are state capitalist.
The key here is to notice that capitalism has a gene
Re:Timeline (Score:3, Interesting)
Actually, I rather doubt that. The case against Microsoft lost steam when Bush entered office because the federal government was one of the parties in the case. But for AMD v Intel, there's really nothing the White House can do to influence the result.
Re:Timeline (Score:2)
Re:Timeline (Score:2)
Re:Timeline (Score:3, Informative)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AMD [wikipedia.org]
So although saying "they were founded to compete with Intel" is incorrect, the part about them not being able to whipe AMD off the map is still pretty true. Due to requirements by chip buyers like IBM and the US military there needs to be at least two chip makes not to
Trial of the Megayear? (Score:2, Funny)
Doesn't anybody read over what they write before pressing SBUMIT? Doh!
Megayear = 1,000,000 Years (Score:3, Interesting)
I even linked to Wikipedia so give me my Karma whoring [wikipedia.org] points.
Re:Trial of the Megayear? (Score:1)
Sunday! Sunday! Sunday! (Score:3, Funny)
Will AMD take revenge upon Intel? Will Intel be crushed under years of litigation from AMD? Watch for the exciting conclusion next time on, "The Processors." <soap_opera>
Re:Sunday! Sunday! Sunday! (Score:2)
Great News (Score:5, Insightful)
Anti-competitive behavior hurts everyone. It hurts the customers, the economy, competitors and eventually erodes the competitive spirit of the company engaging in it.
Anti-competitive behavior seems to be running rampant these days and its important that Intel get in trouble for it. If they get away with it sends a signal to the business community that it's ok, everyone can do it. If they get meaningfully punished it will send a signal to businesses to clean up their acts and play fair.
The capitalist economic system requires fair competition to work properly. The computers and electronics industries have gone far away from fair competition and everything needs a real shake up.
Re:Great News (Score:2)
Re:Great News (Score:2)
Re:Great News (Score:2)
So sure, the past situation were different and more clearly anticompetitive on Intel's part. And no I'm not really arguing with the substance of your post. Like you s
Re:Great News (Score:2)
Source?
This is one of the best I could find that says Dell sticks with Intel for simplicity of product choices, supply, and they are OK chips. http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/02/23/dell_amd_d efection/ [theregister.co.uk]
If AMD should sue anybody, they should have sued themselves for not being a good enough chip supplier.
There is this company called Apple. They have made computers since the 70s with various chips in
Re:Great News (Score:2)
If Dell chose Intel exclusivity based on merrit alone and not based on pricing (formally or informally) contingent on Dell using Intel exclusively then your argument holds up. This is almost certainly not the case.
Re:Great News (Score:2)
As I have said.. it's not about discounts for volume purchases, it's about discounts contingent on not using AMD as a supplier. That is illegal.
It is sad that most business that cry monopoly...
Anti-competitive trade pratices have nothing to do with monopolies. An underdog can engage in anti-competitive practices too (although it's harder).
Re:Great News (Score:2)
and they put in an if (cpu not intel) then (use slow code path even if the feature bits indicate the fast one would be fine)..........
Dell isn't the sole source of PCs though. (Score:2)
AMD could have countered by making similar deals with any reseller they chose. The big problem AMD had was up until the Athlon and the most importantly the AMD64 chips they did not have a marketable advantage other than price. Th
Re:Dell isn't the sole source of PCs though. (Score:2)
Incorrect. Strongarming companies into exclusively using your product is anti-competitive behavior and illegal under US law.
Re:You could always buy a Mac (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I'll be interesting to see outcome (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:I'll be interesting to see outcome (Score:1)
Re:I'll be interesting to see outcome (Score:2)
Re:I'll be interesting to see outcome (Score:2)
Re:I'll be interesting to see outcome (Score:1)
> Unless I am blind I have not seen an AMD commercial.
Cannot say much about AMD advertisement strategy, but sports sponsorship immediatedly comes to mind. AMD has its logos on Ferrari Formula 1 cars, AMD's sponsorship is important in rugby football, soccer in Europe and in sailing sports.
Though recently Intel moved into Formula 1 sonsorship as well with the Sauber team taken over by BMW in this season. However Formula 1 has attracted many tech companies: SUN, Acer, HP all included.
Re:I'll be interesting to see outcome (Score:2)
Re:I'll be interesting to see outcome (Score:1)
Question for the hardware techies (Score:5, Insightful)
OTOH, with Apple, which likes working with as small a set of hardware combinations as possible, I can see why they would only want to maintain one microprocessor family, motherboard chipset, etc.
So hard would it really be (financially, organizationally) for a Dell, Gateway or Apple to add the AMD chip to its lineup? Anyone have any concrete knowledge about this?
Re:Question for the hardware techies (Score:5, Informative)
Yes. However, it has more to do with the integrated IO fabric (hypertransport) than it does with the aspects of the chip that you consider traditional duties of a chip. The AMD solution is highly differentiated from Intel in this way, although the impact to single-CPU system purchasers is minimal. AMD becomes truly distinct as a platform solution at CPU counts > 2. In this market, Intel really is being hurt by AMD right now.
C//
Re:Question for the hardware techies (Score:3, Informative)
On a non-multithreaded app the two boxes are neck and neck. The above figures are for Opteron 32 bit vs. Xeon 32 bit.
Plus, I
Re:Question for the hardware techies (Score:2)
Re:Question for the hardware techies (Score:1)
The case seems to be based on pricing (Score:5, Informative)
Basically Intel had capacity to supply over 90% of the market. They would price the first 80% of the chips high and then use "volume discounts" for the last 10% of chips sold, taking them from 80% to 90% market share. Normally this is legal.
However, the end result was that the "volume discounts" priced the chips between 80% and 90% market share at below the cost to produce them.
In order for AMD to get more than 10% market share, they had to compete with Intel on this 80% to 90% market share area. But since Intel priced these below cost to manufacture, AMD could not compete.
From what I've seen Intel could be in serious trouble if this holds up because AMD could claim damages on the revenues of 10% market share over 10 years.
Re:The case seems to be based on pricing (Score:2)
Intel have 80% market share because... (Score:3, Interesting)
So, Dell threaten to use AMD chips. Intel get a bit upset, and tries to arm twist Dell. What can Dell do here? The popular belief would be that Dell gets scared and stays with Intel.
Really? So they can get their chips cheaper from AMD, and supposedly the consumer wants AMD chips. So Dell says *fsck the consumer* and stays with Intel. Doesn't ring true to me...
Fact is that Dell sells a lot of PC's & Laptops, with Intel chips.... Kinda says that the consumer (at large) is happy to buy Intel based PC products, in my opinion.
As a software engineer, not as a gamer (I don't have the spare time), I notice that Intel chip based PC's perform faster at building software under
I count myself as a member of the consuming public, and I make my choice of PC based upon price & performance at what I want it to do. It is a tool after all. Therefor I buy Intel based PC products. Now if I was a brand enthusiast (as I am with my cars, I love Landrovers) then I would by whatever I was loyal too, regardless of the shortcomings, whatever they may be!
Just my views, take them or ignore them as you see fit
Re:Intel have 80% market share because... (Score:2)
This is horribly incorrect. The P4 had a higher clock rate but often took LONGER to complete the same task [be it crypto, compiling, etc] than an AMD64 core at much lower clock rate.
This is emphasized moreso by looking at the current C
Re:Monopoly? (Score:1)
Re:Monopoly? (Score:1)
Re:Monopoly? (Score:2, Insightful)
This may be true, but that doesn't make it right. There is a difference between being competitive and being anti-competitive. It may be sort of a gray line, but that doesn't make all actions ethical or legal.
Some things are competitive: better products, better prices, better advertising
Some things are anti-competitive: pressure on your suppliers fo
Re:Monopoly? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Monopoly? (Score:2)
I remeber the add with the fab workers in diffrent color suits and how they were selling dolls of them at comp USA.
I remeber the multiple adds with the Blueman group.
I remeber hundreds of adds for laptops which had the phrase "with a genuine intel inside..."
however... I never seen a AMD add on TV. I never seen a oh look we made this computer with an AMD add.
So having 20% of the market with no addvertizin
Re:Monopoly? (Score:2)
To get on-topic though, you're right. I can think of a number of Intel adverts, and of course any advert for a PC with an Intel CPU has that (fucking annoying) jingle at least once, but I don't recall any AMD ads at all. The closest I've come is when I was at JavaUK06 recently, when Sun's VP of marketing banged on about how great their new AMD-based
Re:Monopoly? (Score:2)
Re:Monopoly? (Score:2)
I have been with AMD since they were known for being very hot running cpus, and never had any problems with them that wasn't directly related to me abusing the CPU (ie. dropping a heatsink on the core because I had greasy hands), probably never gonna buy me an Intel *jingle* because AMD shows they are good.
Re:Monopoly? (Score:2)
So they're depriving us of nekkid girls now too? Ooo, they're just asking for it!
IBM (Score:2)
So AMD have a lot of good supporters. If Dell get in there I would imagine that the volumes and marketshare could increase.
Re:Monopoly? (Score:1)
The article says AMD has 20% market share, not 50%. Oops. Still, the fact that AMD was able to wrest 20% of the market away from Intel seems to imply that Intel doesn't have monopoly power, and whatever power Intel has is steadily eroding. I don't think an antitrust suit is justified.
Re:Monopoly? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Monopoly? (Score:3, Interesting)
Think a little bit man!
What if AMD's chips were better than Intel's in every conceivable aspect (price, preformance, power dissipation, etc) and they can only manage a 20% market share? Doesn't that scream that's there's an ar
Re:Monopoly? (Score:3, Insightful)
No. Inferior products win all the time. Oh, and on a totally unrelated note, Intel markets their brand. There are Intel commercials on TV. From a mass-market (i.e. not well informed) perspective, how can AMD be seen as anything other than a cheap knock-o
Re:Monopoly? (Score:2)
You're missing the point.
My argument is that having a 20% is not anything even close to proof that your competitors aren't doing anything illegal.
Brand marketing, color schemes and whatever else you want to throw at me fall under the portion of my previous post etc.
What it comes down to is that 20% marketshare does not prove that the other guy isn't forcing people int
Re:Monopoly? (Score:3, Insightful)
Sure- there is an artificial constraint at play here, but that constraint is AMD's lack of foresight to invest in manufacturing technology and capacity like Intel has. Quite simple, AMD lacks the ability to fill the kind of volume and low defect rates that th
Re:Monopoly? (Score:5, Insightful)
Intel's argument is:
(1) AMD sells every CPU it can possibly make
(2) AMD only has capacity for ~20% of the market
(3) The fact that AMD can't make profits on these CPUs is AMD's problem, not Intel's.
Eh (Score:3, Interesting)
AMD doesn't have to prove that Intel's tactics caused damages, merely that Intel has "unlawfully maintained its monopoly by engaging in a relentless, worldwide campaign to coerce customers to refrain from dealing with AMD".
Proving damages and proving illegal behavior are two separate things. Even behavior that wasn't successful in thwarting AMD could still be ruled illegal under anti-trust laws.
If AMD wins, they may get damages
Re:Monopoly? (Score:1)
I'm not joking, no U
Re:Monopoly? (Score:1)
does Wal-Mart really have 25% of the US retail market? No, it has 8.9%
Re:Monopoly? (Score:1)
Also, remember that it's British based companies only that can be prosecuted under the law, meaning that international companies are pretty much exempt (which is a kick in the arse really isn't it).
You can find more info here [wikipedia.org], it's not much but it's the best info there is online, it appears.
Re:Monopoly? (Score:2)
It does seem a a bit of a cop-out from AMD... perhaps at the most there should be a charge of "attempted abuse of monopoly power"
Re:Monopoly? (Score:2)
Call me crazy, but that doesn't really sound like Intel has monopoly power.
Then what explains the following:
Re:Monopoly? (Score:2)
I think there's a bit more to it than that really. It appears that AMD couldn't supply Dell with enough processors to make it worth while for Dell to push AMD. I don't know whether the same's true of Apple too, but I'd say that "probably" would be a good guess.
Re:Monopoly? (Score:2)
Re:Advertisment? (Score:1)
I've always found that really strange, it's not as though someone would willingly want to advertise another company during their 30 second commercial. Or is it the fact that because the manufacturer is using Intels name, i.e. using Intel to sell their product, that they are obliged by contract to do this...
I don't know if it's the same siu
Re:Advertisment? (Score:2)
I remember this because there was some discussion a while back about whether Apple would buy into the Intel Inside campaign in order to get the discounts on chips for it's Mactel li
Re:Advertisment? (Score:1)