Slashdot Mirror
AMD Takes Case To Public, Japan
Kez writes "Following on from Tuesday's post on AMD filing a lawsuit against Intel in the U.S., Reuters is reporting that AMD is claiming damages against Intel K.K. in Japan, over the Japan Fair Trade Commission's recommendation that Intel has violated Japan's Antimonopoloy Act. They are seeking to claim $50million in damages in the High Court and have also filed for damages in the District Court. AMD continue to throw the punches, but will they come out on top?" At the same time, Rob writes "Computer Business Review is reporting that Advanced Micro Devices yesterday ran a
full-page advertisement in several major North American newspapers urging readers to
familiarize themselves with its 48-page
complaint against Intel Corp's alleged anti-competitiveness. By taking its case to the
people in this way, AMD arguably may pique investor interest and raise its market profile.
At the same time, these antics may however lead AMD into a precarious legal position."
I hope AMD wins. Intel wants to make as much money as possible from each small innovation before giving us the next.. see : 64 bit computing
Will the other smaller chipmakers somehow benefit from this? For example, I seem to recall a story about some company or another tanking because they couldn't sell competitive chips anymore. Is this really just an AMD publicity stunt, or do they somehow hope to help the "little guys"?
I am scientifically inaccurate.
On the other hand, AMD seems to have done this fairly carefully. They haven't repeated the charges so much as called people's attention to the filings themselves. As the proceedings of the courts are a matter of public interest, that's going to be hard to challenge.
At least, it will be as long as Dr. Ruiz doesn't take Darl McBride as his role model.
[1] For an extreme example, consider SCOX.
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
AMD appears to be making a no-holds-barred appeal to the american people and the courts that Intel is bad for them (and by extension, bad for the consumer. Whether that is really true is another story). I find it hard to believe that OEM's are really happy about this. I'm pretty sure that OEM's want to keep a low profile at this point; even if they agree that Intel is using strongarm tactics they will want to wait for the case to progress before they make a stand. I think AMD is digging itself its own grave. AMD is making a stand and is not going to find many allies at its side. As the second article points out, if this suit is unsuccessful, Intel can sue for libel. If they distance themselves from the OEM's, it is very likely the suit will fail.
-everphilski-
That's the beauty of cliff-tiered rebates. The OEMs pay less for that last 5% if they don't include AMD in the mix, but the presumption is that the first 95% is going to Intel at monopoly rates regardless.
There's a reason for the fact that AMD ships 20% of the unit volume but only gets 10% of the revenues for processors, despite selling to the high end of the market where margins are normally better.
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
I wonder if this has anything to do with Apple choosing Intel. It seems that AMD are very jittery lately, just as everyone who's in the know is touting their chips as superior. I mean, who's using whose x64 implementation? What are they so worried about?
"Computer buyers pay higher prices inflated by Intel's monopoly profits."
;)
I thought consumers paid lower prices since Intel charged less to vendors with exclusive contracts?
The first is just marketdroid FUD. Intel has Always had the pricing of building new fabs priced into their product lines, that's part of why they have way more capacity than AMD -- because they price the cost of the fabs into the chips they have money to build the fabs, to build the chips, and make the profit.
Consumers are paying pretty close to fair prices, AMD tried to erode the market out from under intel, by pricing the chips at a lower profit margin, which forced intel to lower prices on it's low end. Since AMD couldn't ever erode the price below the cost of the chip, and intel's fabs were already paid for, there was no way for intel to loose on the price margin alone, so amd went after 'price/performance' make chips that are better, by actually designing them to be better. And then Intel started somwhere along there to actually Break the law, to prevent AMD from ever growing beyond it's current Fabs production capacity. Because while AMD could never beat intel in price alone, price/performance is battle that the underdog can win, especially when engineers start leaving your company because of your dirty sick marketing department... But they're playing unfair, so AMD needs governments and the people to realize that Intel is breaking the law to stifle compition, and since people are stupid, and AMD is upset, they say stupid, and untrue things. Like 'Intel is artificially inflating the price of computer parts.'
They are just smart enough to include all R&D and fab plant construction costs to be in the profit margin of the CPUs they sell. However that doesn't change the illegal practices intel is using to prevent competitors from gaining market share. AMD is being wronged, they're just wrong about how much they're being wronged
https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html
Well I don't know the reasoning but let's examine some facts
1. Leading Intel solutions [P4] are worse performers than the AMD32 and AMD64 [the P3 was better than the P4]. The PentiumM is a good runner but the recent AMD processors still take less power and get higher IPCs
2. AMD owns the 64-bit x86 world.
3. The future will be either x86_64 or not x86_* at all.
4. AMD processors are just as reliable and often more so as they generate less heat. Even a two year old AMD Athlon XP-M 2400+ 1.8Ghz generates comparable heat to a NEW Intel Celeron 1.4Ghz [both Presarios] and have the same battery life.
5. AMD processors cost less.
6. AMD processors are x86_* compatible.
So coupled with all these facts why would you go with Intel? I seriously doubt it has to do with a technical advantage [specially in the SMP world].
Even the advertising isn't that important as the average computer buyer doesn't really know the difference anyways [hint: Intel commercials are not educational].
So a customer given fair pricing points is probably equally likely to buy an AMD box over an Intel box.
That is, if you had two beige boxes, with identical ram, video, monitor, disk, peripherals and cost you'd probably sell 50% AMD and 50% Intel if you just let the customer pick.
Yet, intel gets more share.
If you think companies like Dell and their "Intel only" sales don't affect marketshare you're a fairly stupid fellow.
But why doesn't Dell sell AMD processors? I doubt it's for technical reasons. They're by and large equally difficult to tech-support as well [I mean really how much tech support do they give for the processor anyways?].
It can't be for pricing reasons because they both RETAIL [I know Dell probably gets discounts which is part of the anti-trust as well] differently in favour of AMD.
Could it be Dell just doesn't want to sell AMD? What does it matter? It gives their customers more choice and more product to sell.
I wonder if it could be that Intel threatens to pull the plug if they include AMD lineups... geez...
That's the whole point. anti-competition means no free market. Dell should be free to buy both AMD and Intel without penalty and let the market decide what product they want.
Right now unless Dell wants to drop their ENTIRE Intel line [which they have marketted extensively] they're totally screwed.
Personally I find it funny. I bought an Athlon X2 4200+ [dual core 2.2Ghz, 2x128KB L1, 2x512KB L2] with a new mobo, GeForce6600 PCI-E card and tax for roughly 1300$.
At the same store the cheapest dual P4 with EM64T cost 1460$ before tax [all prices in CAD].
I'm positive that on all non-DMA tasks my AMDx2 setup will smoke the P4 setup and still cost a 700$ less [the X2 cost me 742$ or so].
Why would a store selling a "gamer box" want to pack a dual-core Intel in there? It doubles the cost of the cpu and gets you a slower box [==less happy customer].
But that's EXACTLY WHAT DELL DOES!!!!
Tom
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
I'm tired of seeing these Dell commercials advertising P4's like they're some Godly device brought to us for beastly processing.
I agree with this. I live in Mexico, and I recently heard a radio commercial advertising intel, with a nationwide famous comedian doing the following dramatization:
"What? Oh no, I can't believe it! The CPU my machine came with... is not Intel! What am I gonna do? My job, my kids' homeworks, why, why!! Why it's not intel!!"
(interpret as: non-intel CPU's are a scam)
After reading several independent tech reports showing how AMD beats the crap out of intel CPU's, I feel so offended when these commercials appear. I mean, commercials should talk about how good your processor is, not how bad the competition's processors are.
This is particularly important here in Mexico City, where a great percentage of computers are custom-made, and AMD's marketshare is not that insignificant.
I have a two gripes with this:
1. Intel may well be building fab costs into their chips (I don't know one way or another), but isn't it curious that AMD has been able to steadily chip away at Intel all these years, slowly building up production capacity, all while having less expensive chips? The only reason Intel can build the fab costs into the chip (if they even do that) is because they're a monopoly, and not operating under normal rules of supply and demand - Intel sets the price, not the market.
2. At least part of the reason AMD has a tough time building up capacity is they don't have any large orders (like, say Apple) to make the investment tenable. Of course, they can't get large orders because Intel drops in with cash and pressure to keep AMD from getting large orders. Which helps keep Intel chip pricing artificially high.
So I don't see what the problem is with AMD claiming that Intel's chip prices are artificially high. In a normal free market, the consumer would be paying for the costs of the product in front of them, not the product in front of them *and* the production costs of future products as well.
AMD's action to attempt to make the public aware of Intel's actions may lead to increased awareness for AMD's brand, but brand awareness is definitely not the same thing as an actual "brand".
A brand is essentially how a company is perceived by the public, and if a brand does not have a good image, awareness will only lead to a speedy death. Starbucks, Apple, Harley Davidson and Google have excellent brands which contribute to the factors that make them successful. Dell built trust with customers and created a good image for themselves and now they are producing the most computers out of all the computer manufacturers in North America.
I didn't read the article, but what AMD has to do is decrease public trust in Intel and increase public trust in their brand, which may be difficult for them to do.
AMD does have other product lines but the most profitable is flash. They just spun that business off. Sounds like they are trying to protect it from the possible liability from this stunt.
.sig?
Just my $.02
Psst. Hey buddy, can you spare a
First, the Apple card is irrellevant. That is more a function of Jobs continuing to limit what is a pretty easily portable OS to ONE architecture and I don't mean the CPU, I mean the motherboard and BIOS. If Jobs would finally get it through his head that Microsoft continuously kick's Apple's arse for, among other reasons, the fact that Apple refuses to position themselves as a software/OS company and tries to straddle the line, which Microsoft has carefully tried to avoid doing since forever. OSX is a good product and it is that which should be driving them. They'd go a lot farther if they went over to the PC hardware side with it. Imagine OSX on a quad 64 bit dual core Opteron SMP board. You can do it with Linux, Windows, BSD, etc. Not OSX because Jobs can never admit he has ever been short of perfectly omnisciently right.
Second, AMD is in no danger of having a sizeable portion of their market taken by Intel and instead AMD has been making inroads into Intel's area with server class CPU offerings and the mobo makers have been making boards for them right along. For instance, that quad 64 bit dual core Opteron SMP board I mentioned above. I'd gladly buy one of these... if I won the lottery.
Third, yes, Intel should NOT be strong-arming anyone and they deserve to be rebuked by the courts for it, but it should be a criminal anti-trust slap and not a civil court slap as it looks more like vindictiveness and victimhood whinyness. "Look at us at AMD not getting enough of Intel's market because Intel is daring to defend themselves through unfair practices! Someone punish Intel for us so we can eat more of the market share!" Yes, I know that this administration isn't likely to do it, and a liberal Democrat administration would do it for politics sake so there's no real morally neutral enforcing the law angle there, sadly. Ideally, we'd need a business-friendly Republican administration to say, "okay, this is just wrong and you need to be called on the carpet for it." I ain't holding my breath so I guess civil court is the only recourse, again, sadly.
AMD already has the paranoid (and hypocritical) anti-corporate geek brigades behind it and has for a long time now. FUD based nonsense hate of Intel for ruling the market of a chipset they pioneered in the first place? Perfectly acceptable. Love of AMD despite them being also a big company? Perfectly acceptable. (Reminds me of the Google thing despite their lack of Linux support) I take all this with a grain of salt. On the merits, I find just the tactics bother me, not that they are actually trying to defend their market share. If AMD had pull themselves, I have ZERO doubt they'd do it themselves.
I'd be happiest if both of them combined all their instruction sets and promulgated a new baseline X86 instruction set. If NEC, Motorola, etc all made compatible chips and the mobo makers made boards for them, it would be better for the consumers' bottom line. Adhering to standards though would be the single most important thing so as not to fark the users and cause all sorts of unavoidable code forking. I don't need sixteen different Windows and Linux builds per type of either, ie, I don't need sixteen different FC4 builds due to processor differences...
If my grammar and spelling are off, I am [distracted/tired/careless] (take your pick)
How about if his competitor has 80% of the market and threatens major supliers if they use the competitors products?
Intel apply things like retroactive incentives (ie we'll give you money back later if you have been good). From one article where they nailed HP: "When AMD succeeded in getting on the HP retail roadmap for mobile computers, and its products sold well, Intel responded by withholding HP's fourth quarter 2004 rebate check and refusing to waive HP's failure to achieve its targeted rebate goal; it allowed HP to make up the shortfall in succeeding quarters by promising Intel at least 90% of HP's mainstream retail business."
Also, the Clayton Antitrust Act includes "sales on the condition that the buyer not deal with the seller's competitors. (Section 3)". AMD can quite easily claim that Intel is enforcing vendor lock-in, another major part of anti-trust law.
East Coast Brewers
AMD should be spending their money on campaign contributions, not newspaper ads, if they want to get results. Though it may be they've already considered that and discovered they can't outbid Intel in influence dollars. Perhaps they should fund the Democrats, get in while their stock is low in hopes that it will rise in 2006.
Loose lips lose spit.
I work for a medium sized OEM in the southeast USA... Intel pushes us hard to keep AMD off the shelf, but we still sell quite a few (20%+) AMD systems, because those that use them know that they are typically superior products. AMD offers little in the marketing arena, as opposed to Intel's mammoth marketing fund, but still the AMD line grows daily. I don't think that the "down with Intel!!!" crowd has it right, but I won't run Intel gear on my systems either...there has to be balance between innovation and speed, speed and reliability, reliability and cost. Intel needs to rethink it's 80's era IBMesque strategy.
And Intel remains on top by the virtue of their products alone...? If both companies relied on just the quality of their products, the market percentages would definately be different.
In my opinion, AMD is doing this because Microsoft is behind them, pushing this action, and promising ongoing support.
This is just one more step in Microsoft's ongoing promotion of AMD, and FUDing of Intel -- a process that has been going on for a few years now. The original trigger for Microsoft's courting of AMD may have been this:
ZDNet: Intel courts Linux developers with Itanium specs
Of course, Microsoft has threatened to do it before, as described in the DOJ Findings of Fact:
> In February 1997, one of Intel's competitors, called AMD, solicited support from Microsoft for its "3DX" technology, which provided sophisticated multimedia support for games. Microsoft's Allchin asked Gates whether Microsoft should support 3DX, despite the fact that Intel would oppose it. Gates responded: "If Intel has a real problem with us supporting this then they will have to stop supporting Java Multimedia the way they are. I would gladly give up supporting this if they would back off from their work on JAVA which is terrible for Intel."
Also note this quote:
> Near the end of March, Allchin sent another message to Gates and Maritz. In it he wrote, "I am positive that we must do a direct attack on Sun (and probably Oracle). . . . Between ourselves and our partners, we can certainly hurt their (certainly Sun's) revenue base. . . . We need to get Intel to help us. Today, they are not."
This second quote, along with the SCO case, shows a pattern of Microsoft coercing its partners into attacking its enemies. Microsoft involvement would also explain why AMD would take this action now, despite the risks.
As those who have been following the action know, Intel has not been playing Microsoft's game for some time now. Microsoft's inability to support new technologies within a reasonable time frame has been holding Intel back, and Intel knows it.
The situation is as follows:
1. Microsoft knows that Intel had a lot more to do with the PC's success than Microsoft did. Intel continuously improved their product, and reduced prices, while Microsoft barely managed to keep up, making poor copies of other companies' software, years late. Microsoft is afraid, correctly, that Intel still has the power to move the industry forward, with Microsoft unable to follow.
2. With the growing acceptance of Linux, Intel no longer has to hold back, while Microsoft catches up (as, for example, when an entire decade passed between the introduction of the 80386, and Microsoft's eventual use of its memory management capabilities). Intel can now move forward with things like 64-bit, multi-core, and parallel CPUs, with the necessary operating system support in place to allow Intel to sell their products. But that OS is going to be Linux, because Microsoft can't improve Windows fast enough to keep up.
3. Intel has made it clear that they are no longer going to be held back by Windows. When Microsoft could not make Windows run efficiently on a 64-bit CPU, it was AMD, not Intel, that compromised their design, and wasted 64-bit CPU real estate in order to add the 32-bit support to overcome Microsoft's weaknesses.
4. In order to stop Linux, Microsoft is trying to decommoditize PC hardware, with hidden interface specs (as described in the Halloween document). NVidia and ATI have gone along with Microsoft, cutting back on their help for Open Source driver developerment (instead, during this embrace stage, providing closed source drivers, and increasingly complex interfaces). AMD has also gone along, for example, when AMD gave Microsoft the necessary information to fix the AMD "Processor Bug," but Linux developers were left out in the cold, until they figured out the problem for themselves. Meanwhile, Intel has comtinued to keep their specs open, even going so far as to release a series of platform specs just for Linux.
5. Intel is now cooperating with Apple, a company that just recently broke out from under Microsoft's thumb. With the availabi