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Intel and AMD Settle Antitrust, Patent Lawsuits
Kohenkatz writes "Intel has agreed to pay $1.25 billion to AMD. In return, AMD will drop its lawsuits about patent and antitrust complaints. The two companies released this joint statement: 'While the relationship between the two companies has been difficult in the past, this agreement ends the legal disputes and enables the companies to focus all of our efforts on product innovation and development.' The press release also says, 'Under terms of the agreement, AMD and Intel obtain patent rights from a new 5-year cross license agreement,' and that 'Intel and AMD will give up any claims of breach from the previous license agreement.'"
Seriously, this number seems low to me. The pending suits against Intel alleged that for a decade Intel conspired to freeze AMD out of the market. Intel poisoned nearly all of AMD's potential customers. Surely that cost AMD a lot more than just a billion or so dollars in lost revenue.
but we still have to worry about intel bullying manufacturers like dell into using intel only. the dropping the lawsuit, 5 year no fire period is good though...
This is independant of action that the US government would take against Intel.
Similar to how OJ was found not guilty in criminal court, but did end up paying restitution in civil court.
Out of modpoints but really liked a post? 1BDkF6TtmmeZ3yqXbz9yhdYVqRYnwFoXDj
is to get its shit together Fab-wise. They've been leading Intel for nearly 10 years in developing or deploying new tech and architecture
but Chipzilla has always been able to keep abreast because of their fabrication prowess.
Now that Intel's Nehalem architecture has all of the elements that AMD has been delivering with the Athlon and its descendants,
they're back to being the budget brand.
Pain is merely failure leaving the body
The European Commission has set an example by fining Intel 1.45B. No US court was likely to award much more than that. AMD can make much better use of the cash now, rather than a few years down the line. And Intel can do without being continuously accused of cheating. Rest assured that the agreement has included quite a few provisions regarding dirty play in the future, but don't expect those to be made public.
This still doesn't resolve a major problem in the chip industry and that is that these two companies have a duopoly on x86 and x86-64 chip designs due to patents. I'm not a patent lawyer, but I really don't see how Intel can possibly patent an instruction set (the implementation thereof, sure, but the instructions themselves?). Until these companies are forced to license to third-parties, we'll still see a real lack of competition.
Jumped in a little late, here you go.
Q: So what does this mean ... in terms of ... ownership
Um uh, um uh. We have a obviously very important relationship with Abu Dhabi, global foundries is part of the vision of AMD, great thing for industry and us ... we will be implementing the agreements
the key thing here is that for AMD and for global foundries, this addresses anybody's concerns about robustness and entitlement
AMD the product company is well-poised to move ahead on its strategy in order to serve the market and be a key buzzword blah blah blah
the new patent cross-license between AMD and intel does give AMD broad rights
no longer requires global foundries to be structured as a subsidiary of AMD
Q: intel has agreed to provide business practice provisions
think of it in terms of marketplace and customer access ... in the compiler business, compilers will not unfairly/artificially impair the performance of our products, we're never looking for any help, just not unfairly... intel has an obligation not to do things simply designed to hurt us
ability for multinational OEMs and key channel partners to have "freedom of action" and choice to differentiate offerings between AMD and intel
respect to specific practices and ground rules, the agreement... totally transparent about this, the agreement will be totally public as quickly as we can achieve that
the key points are for us that intel will not be able to condition doing business with them on not doing business with us, that's one way I would put it. they can't use inducements in order to force exclusive dealing, delay customers from using our products, delaying companies from delaying advertising... withholding benefits from OEMs
blah blah lots of repetition of buzzwords like 'ecosystem' and 'productitivity gains'
Q: global foundries separation timeline
clearly gives AMD, global foundries, and atek flexibility esp. in light of acquisition of charter, and does pave the way for merger of charter and global foundries, but no announcemnet being made, no timeline
Q: ?
We are trying to reset the relationship between AMD and intel. That relationship has been intense, emotional, and at times acrimonious for ... all too many years. The one thing that I would say that is a touchstone principle ... we are going to be fierce competitors in a free and open marketplace, we are going to be mutually respectful, we want to put this behind us... healthy, normal relationship that competitors do. you will see in the agreement fought-out procedures by which we will build relationship and trust and try to resolve our differences without spilling into the courts, into the public affairs domain. this is a start and both parties intend this agreement to be an opportunity to pivot the relationship and go forward in a very classy way.
Q: Is this only x86? No graphics etc?
I uh, um, uh, that's a complicated answer but I think the general answer to your question is yes. The suits ... have pertained to x86 processors and platforms,
there's two parts to the agreement, one is antitrust, the other is patent cross-license, broad, covers "all productS"
let me put it this way... it is an important feature of our agreement ... that we have resolved ALL disputes. on the IP side, amd and intel have had patent peace with each other since 1976. design freedom to innovate, great contributors to patent portfolio... we have now the flexibility with rights under IP agreement for full use of foundries.
Q: is the cash being deployed towards reducing debt
you now understand why we were not more specific in yesterday's meeting on debt restructuring
Q: What happens to the cases around the world, what is your expectation
the regulatory investigations etc are conducted by sovereign governments ... so the regulators will do what they are
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
"Intel patents lawsuits"
I don't understand US law but if intel have done something worthy of an antitrust suit isn't it down to the DOJ to go after them?
Or was this some sort of civil antitrust suit?
The answers to your questions are in order: Yes and Yes.
If the DOJ thinks that Intel has done something worthy of an antitrust suit they can go after them (and the DOJ has been investigating Intel, so they still may). However, a non government entity can also bring an antitrust suit (although they have to demonstrate that they are in some way directly impacted by this behavior).
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
Not if the Bush/Obama administration tells DoJ not to. Look at the pattern for the last 9 years and there's little reason to expect DoJ getting involved. As far as I can tell, these days the DoJ's main purpose in computers and communication industries seems to be to fight FOIA requests, keep cases out of courts, etc.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
According to Newegg:
AMD Phenom II X4 965 Black Edition Deneb 3.4GHz Socket AM3 125W Quad-Core Processor $199.99
Intel Core i7-975 Extreme Edition Bloomfield 3.33GHz LGA 1366 130W Quad-Core Processor $999.99
So I'll grant you that Intel's flagship i7 is faster than AMD's flagship Phenom II, but the Phenom has a slightly LOWER TDP and is 1/5 of the cost of the i7. Is the i7 4-5 times faster?
For those who bought AMD early enough, stock price jumped ~20% today. Not bad :-)
Don't forget that 1.25 billion represents a significant portion of AMD's capitalization and far surpasses the cumulated
earnings of the last few years.
They did get soft indeed, particularly around the Pentium 4 / Itanium era. Actually neither of those seemed to sound obviously bad ideas at the time but they utterly failed to deliver on the promised benefits :-( AIUI the Pentium M processor was actually pretty close to the Pentium III design, which many people seem to have approved of.
At least the stuff learnt from Pentium 4 (arguably even Itanium) systems hasn't been completely lost, since hyperthreading and EFI (for instance) are both seeing use in other products.
It's been really good seeing the Pentium M -> Core -> Core 2 -> Core i7 development, being a kind of return to form for the company. Only trouble is that I *really* don't want them to become so good that they kill off the companies that are keeping them on their toes. I don't want to see them go soft again!