NVidia, AMD Subpoenaed In Antitrust Investigation

mustardayonnaise writes "CNN Money is reporting that graphics chipmakers Nvidia and AMD (who recently acquired NVidia rival ATI) said Friday that they received subpoenas from the US Department of Justice as part of a probe into potential antitrust violations involving graphics processing units and cards. Each company controls about 25% of the entire graphics chip market. According to the article, Intel, who makes their own fair share of graphics chipsets, has yet to be included in the investigation."

Comments

Re:Glad the DOJ has their priorities straight

[Chris Burke]

Well since there is no mention of what is actually alleged to be the problem, I can't really say whether or not this investigation has any merit. Certainly neither company has a monopoly, so the only thing I can think of is that the DOJ suspects some kind of collusion (the 'trust' in 'anti-trust' refers to multiple organizations agreeing to lock out competitors, not just individual monopolies).

Frankly I'm not going to assume anything. Yeah, the graphics card market is competitive and NVidia and ATI have done a very nice job of leapfrogging each other over and over into the stratospheres of graphics performance, and I hope that doesn't change. However if they are using illegal business tactics to ensure it doesn't become a 3-way race, then that has to stop. Kinda like when Rambus (*spits*) turned around and sued the Dramurai, who it turned out were colluding to control prices and lock out Rambus (*spits*).

Of course I'd rather they spent their time worrying about all the other things, but I'm sure it's not an either-or proposition, and again we're operating under a dearth of facts. Though I'll admit that unlike anti-trust action against Microsoft and Intel, I'm not already aware of shady business practices on the part of these two companies that would warrant it.