Slashdot Mirror
Timeline Set for Intel/AMD Antitrust Trial
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? Don't you mean Mebiyear?
This guy's the limit!
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.
If they continue to do what they're allegedly doing, they might lose the case. If they relent a little, AMD its marketshare. At least the consumers win though.
The trial is set to take place in 2008, don't know why this wansn't mentioned in the summary. It's hard to predict an outcome in this case. Was Intel simply using normal business sense when they tried to retain their power? It's not illegal to have a monopoly, but when you start harming the consumer things change. Did the large discounts Intel offered its customers to stay Intel harm the consumer or help? I'm sure many smaller businesses benefited from buying a certain number of (similarly priced to AMD) Intel chips to gain a discount. Isn't that creating more competition in the end? This case could set a precedent for what constitutes illegal practices by a larger company.
According to this article, they've only recently hit 20%. That's a long way from 50%. It's certainly a respectable number, but Intel could easily keep them at bay by employing illegal tactics.
This guy's the limit!
Come watch at the Court of the Mega-arena as two eternal rivals are pitted against each other in the legal battle of the century!
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>
// file: mice.h
#include "frickin_lasers.h"
A megayear is a million years.
I even linked to Wikipedia so give me my Karma whoring points.
I'll probably be modded down for this...
It's pretty obvious from the current Dell situation that Intel has tried to keep AMD out and that's illegal.
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.
set softtabstop=4 shiftwidth=4 expandtab nocp worlddomination
That still doesn't prove that Intel didn't have a monopoly, or that they illegally tried to maintain it. Just that if all that is true, they were unsucessful at it, which is entirely possible.
I've always pictured the color of OS zealotry as a sort of bright flamingo pinkish hue
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.
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 artificial constraint placed on the market somehow?
I'm not necessarily saying this is the case, but stating that someone reached a 20% market share therefore their competitors couldn't possibly be doing anything illegal is just silly.
Life is too short to proofread.
Speaking of Dell (Dintel) and them aquiring AlienWare (AMDware), and rumored they will still be using AMD cpus this begs the question. Will Intel pressure them to convert AlienWare purchases to Intel chips in due time? On the other hand, about market share, consider that Intel puts out so many, and so catchy ads on TV that no wonder they have such a huge market share. Unless I am blind I have not seen an AMD commercial. Just goes to show so many commercials for Intel, even if I did see an AMD commercial at some point, obviously it did stick into memory!
-- Brought to you by Carl's JR
AMD has had about 20% of the CPU market for 10 years now, so nothing is eroding. Their problem is that it has been the worst 20% (least profitable consumer segmenet for the most part, alhtough that's changing).
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.
Whenever I hear the word 'Innovation', I reach for my pistol.
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 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.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
Is there really that much of a difference between using an Intel chip and an AMD chip? I know you need different motherboards and chipsets, but isn't that about it? As far as I understand, there is no difference in the applications, other hardware, etc. So the only thing you would have to maintain (as a boxmaker) is another set of motherboard specs and the BIOSes for them, and in exchange you get (today) better performing chips for the wattage. The fact that a massive organization like Dell has not done so leads me to think that Intel has been doing some arm-twisting.
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?
"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 artificial constraint placed on the market somehow?"
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-off?
So, no, it doesn't scream "artificial constraint". That doesn't mean it isn't there, but that rationale alone doesn't float the boat.
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
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 for more favorable conditions, favors to your customers in exchange for exclusive business
There are cases when things in either category can be switched. For instance lowering your prices until you put someone out of business because you have deeper pockets and then raising prices after the business has shut down. Or there are cases where a business promises to be sole source and provide you a discount because of volume sales.
I expect anti-competitive behaviour because businesses exist to make money, but if you do not draw a line anywhere, the strong will get stronger and the weak will get weaker.
I personally don't think we have done enough to keep businesses in check, but I don't care enought to do anything about, besides writing this post.
From the limited pieces of info I've seen, the case seems to focus on pricing.
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.
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 artificial constraint placed on the market somehow?
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 the large OEM suppliers like Dell and HP require from their suppliers.
You might recall 5 or 6 years ago when AMD proudly announced that they had partnered with UMC to manufacture their chips, and AMD's CEO declared that now "AMD will not need to expend billions and billions of dollars on incremental production facilities to achieve our market share objectives." Of course that partnership ended up falling through, and now AMD CEO Hector Ruiz has publicly stated that AMD is capacity constrained- they are selling every chip that they can make. Manufacturing capacity doesn't just magically appear- it takes a lot of time and a huge amount of money- neither of which AMD is spent enough of.
AMD's position in the market today is a direct result of the poor decisions they have been making for years now. You cannot blame Intel for that.
"The defense of freedom requires the advance of freedom" - George W Bush
You're assuming that someone "pro-business" will favor an Intel monopoly, while someone who isn't "pro-business" will favor a level playing field on which AMD (and others) can fairly compete with Intel. So here we are, in a time and place where business is supposed to be capitalist and capitalism is supposed to both thrive on and require free competition, yet it seems like a reasonable thing (to at least some of us) to say that the "pro-business" course is actually the one where competition is stifled and monopoly imposed - even though every business person who does not currently enjoy a monopoly (that is, most of us) will tell you that monopolies are very bad things indeed.
Pro-monopoly, when pushed far enough, is indifferentiable from communism. You thought we'd gotten rid of that, right?
"with their freedom lost all virtue lose" - Milton
Those are very good points, but they are not a defense against monopoly behavior.
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 as one of the remedies, depending on what the Judge thinks is appropriate.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
My views, no flames please, lol
.NET than AMD based ones do. You may cry that the compiler is optimised for Intel, but am I, as a developer bothered? No.
:-)
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
Merlin --- We're an autonomous collective... Help, Help, I'm being oppressed!!