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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."
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.
Good for them. Intel's actions are exactly what anti-monopoly laws were passed to suppress.
Please, AMD do not use this in some SCO-like attempt to pump your stock price. Instead, advertise your products. Let the courts decide whether or not Intel has had an unfair advantage. Mud slinging just makes you look like you are hiding something.
UNIX/Linux Consulting
We need both AMD and Intel in order for innovation and lower prices to remain. If AMD destroys Intel we'll just trade one alleged monopoly for another.
UNIX/Linux Consulting
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,
In the complaint filed by AMD you will see that Intel KK actually DOES ADMIT that on several occasions complaints brought under the JFTC were actually true. This is NOT SCO-like tactics. It is demonstrable fact.
Call me old fashioned, but I like a dump to be as memorable as it is devastating - Bender
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.
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)
Does anyone (especially the Intel haters) remember when AMD's CEO Sanders testified at the Microsoft antitrust trial -- in favor of Microsoft? Even though Microsoft was accused of many of the same things that AMD now charges Intel with, such as bullying suppliers? I guess it's OK to abuse a monopoly position, but only if you add support for someone's processor in your OS.
I wonder if that courtroom appearance will come back to haunt AMD.