Slashdot Mirror
EU Officials Raid Intel Offices
Eukariote writes "As part of the ongoing antitrust investigations, EU officials have raided Intel offices as well as offices of a number of IT firms manufacturing or selling computers. This follows the recent ruling by Japan's Fair Trade Commission declaring Intel's exclusionary practices illegal as well as the lawsuit filed by AMD."
Even though the wording of the last sentence in the blurb is misleading as it seems to mean that AMD's lawsuit was ruled illegal by the JFTC:
Bruce Sewell, vice president and general counsel for Intel, said: "One of the core principles of competition policy is the notion that such policies should be based on sound economics. There is a broad consensus that competition regulators should only intervene where there is evidence of harm to consumers. It is apparent the JFTC's Recommendation did not sufficiently weigh these important principles."
So, chips that *could* be faster (if companies were not using Intel compilers), less expensive, and have other better qualities (heat, size, etc), isn't good for consumers? Sorry to say Bruce, but obviously no one believes you.
Anticompetitive strongarming via financial kickbacks is probably only good for Intel's market position and the companies that are selling Intel-based machines regardless of what your and your company's spin is. Unless you can, without a shred of doubt or lies, prove otherwise, I really suggest you just shutup and comply.
Personally, I want to see Intel give back to consumers directly. Anyone who has purchased an Intel machine since AMD's introduction to the market should be given a large rebate and I'm not talking about settlements like $13.55 check or shipping mass quantities of unwanted product to schools. I don't want to see AMD get any money out of this as it will do little for the market's consumers who had to deal with the anti-competitive behavior just as much as AMD did (if not more).
Are you kiddding me? The truth is much more important than national boundaries!
And why should I care any more about people working in CA versus Canada? They have about the same impact on my economic standing.
The offices that were raided were located in Europe.
So you're saying that an EU office of Intel being raided by EU police will cause intel to move jobs away from the united states and into EU?
SearchIRC - Now with live chat directory!
"Microsoft antitrust style case in Europe" = Slap on the wrist, with some teensy, little restrictions that the prosecuted company can easily get around
Read my blog: HansMast.com
If Intel should be persectuted as a monopolist then ostensibly you view them as a monopoly. How do you reconcile this with your claim that no monopolist will lower prices? It seems to me that Intel's prices have come way down steadily for the past 10 to 15 years. It seems contradictory to me that they should be punished for behavior that you claim leads to higher prices, when all evidence points to lower prices.
What?!? Haven't you ever heard of "truth, justice, and the American Way?" It's not about jobs, or even us vs them -- it's about doing the right thing.
"He who throws mud, loses ground." - proverb
Why is Intel getting slapped so hard with anti trust when Microsoft seems to get away with it.
Intel does have competition. AMD, Sun, and IBM all make chips that compete with Intel in the server market.
MIPs, AMD, TI, and many more have chips that compete in the Embedded space.
And AMD seems to be doing a pretty good job competing in the PC market. Is anyone shocked that the Intel compiler wouldn't have "If SSE2 and Intel use SSE2 else use emulation in the code generator?" Intel is not the only compiler in the X86 market, you have VC and GCC as options. What Intel has done while nasty is no where as anti competitive as Microsoft's tactics.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
Justice should no know bounds and no borders. We are but one human race and we should act together to protect each others interests , Enough with the xenophobic talk.
This is one American corporation Vs another American Corporation it just so happens the battle field encompasses planet earth.
IF Intel are guilty , then let the company be subject to the law and let them be prosecuted and sentenced as such , if they are innocent then they are fine and will be reprised
The only things certain in war are Propaganda and Death. You can never be sure which is which though
Considering that the code is picking the worst possible mode (8-bit) for things in it's runtime lib, etc. it's not that it's "optimized" for Intel, it's de-optimized for AMD machines. Not acceptable. And, before you say anything to try to play apologist here for Intel, I will point out that they DO know that their compiler is doing this, they've been handed superior code that rocks on all x86 platforms, is 50% faster and is somewhat smaller and a hell of a lot simpler- with the understanding that they were welcome to the code with no rights reserved on it to improve the compiler. They weren't interested in fixing the situation save to improve Pentium 2/3 performance.
I have a PROBLEM with this attitude and action. To be honest, everyone should.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
That would not be a problem, if it were the case. The complaint by AMD is that Intel is specifically excluding other vendors' chips from running extension sets that are known to exist (SSE/2/3 etc.), simply because they aren't "Genuine Intel(tm)."
"Optimized" does not equate to "Disable the competition."
If it's false, AMD doesn't have a leg to stand on, and you are entirely correct. However, we don't *know* for certain at this time that what AMD claims is false, and must await the evidence.
Personally, I'm inclined to believe it, with a grain of salt. I remember certain programs running a check for a "Genuine Intel(tm)" CPU, and adjusting their performance accordingly. I believe the game Privateer II was one of those programs. While the performance delta wasn't *huge*, there was enough of a difference between the two vendors' CPUs that you could see the difference.
There may have been other reasons for the difference in performance, hence why I said "with a grain of salt." I have seen a difference where there should not be one, in a game (and other programs) where it actually gave me feedback stating that it found a Genuine Intel(tm) processor. If it hadn't very bluntly told me that it was looking for a difference, I'd be more unbiased about the whole thing (what you can't see doesn't necessarily exist, neh?).
Intel is a big boy now. It doesn't need us defending it. AMD is big enough as well that our m4d pr0pz are unnecessary. Personally, I'm interested to see what comes of this investigation, and what evidence AMD brings to the table. This will have a rather tremendous effect on the local economy (Hillsboro, OR), so I'm hoping no stone is left unturned, and that no mistakes are made by any party. I'd hate to see a judgement based on bad or missing evidence.
If the claim were just regarding the compiler, then yes. However, the compiler issue is just one instance of anti-competitive tactics.
The claim is that Intel employs illegal tactics to maintain a monopoly in the x86 market. What the raids are looking for is documentation that threats were made or odd financial deals were occurring. The compiler issue is extremely marginal in this case.
"From my cold, dead hands you damn, dirty apes!" - CH