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

by that token

[eneville]

well, if this is happening, why isn't intel/amd being questioned about their control over pc chips?

Intel Correction

[Shadow Wrought]

Intel, who makes their own fair share of graphics chipsets, has yet to be included in the investigation.

From TFA: "To my knowledge, we haven't gotten a subpoena ourselves ... but I'm not 100 percent certain," said Intel spokesman Chuck Mulloy, adding he was checking with company lawyers to confirm.

You know, as an investor, I'd rather go with the company that has been subpoened over the one that can't quite be sure!

Re:Intel Correction

[Iamthefallen]

An Intel spokesman later followed up and said: "We're 99.999999999990437% certain we have not been subpoenaed."

priorities? WTF?

[User 956]

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.

Meanwhile, the RIAA, who has a stranglehold over the music industry, gets to drive their truckloads of money straight to the bank.

Re:priorities? WTF?

[Darth]

the RIAA is made up of companies. it exists to represent the major companies' common interests.

In the oligopoly of the music industry, the RIAA is the cartel that allows the major players to exert monopoly control on the market.

The fact that the RIAA itself is not a company should not be sufficient to protect its existance and protect its members from antitrust prosecutions.

Glad the DOJ has their priorities straight

[darkwhite]

Ah, so the DOJ is perfectly happy with multibillion-dollar competition-free contracts for "rebuilding Iraq" and blatantly monopolistic behavior by telecom providers, they think allowing Microsoft to racketeer OEMs into forcing customers to buy Windows with every machine they sell is absolutely fine, and of course they won't even dare to think about prosecuting other branches of their own government for numerous violations of the Constitution and war crimes, but when two companies, by persistently competing with each other and achieving near-perfect parity for long periods of time, create one of the most staggeringly cutthroat markets on the planet, they must of course be investigated.

Good job, DOJ!

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.

Well, it's a pretty crooked market

[91degrees]

I worked for a company that made 3D chips. We had a pretty good component. Not astoundingly fast, but a competitive mid-range component more than adequate for the current crop of games. Faster and cheaper than the GeForce 2 when that was still considered a competitive card.

So, the sales people went to various board manufacturers, and said "Do you want to buy our chip". The board manufacturers said Gosh. That's perfect for our mid-range market. We'd love to. Our sales people went home happy. nVidia's sales people said "Do you want us to keep selling you our chips?" The board manufacturers sid "Yes, of course we do". nVidia said "well, don't buy chips from that other upstart company".

Apart from the huge board manufacturers who would be able to seriously dent nVidia's sales, none of them were interested in us any more.