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Despite FTC Settlement, Intel Can Ship Oak Trail Without PCIe

Posted by timothy on from the bizarre-micromanagement-from-on-high dept.

MojoKid writes "When the Federal Trade Commission settled their investigation of Intel, one of the stipulations of the agreement was that Intel would continue to support the PCI Express standard for the next six years. Intel agreed to all the FTC's demands, but Intel's upcoming Oak Trail Atom platform presented something of a conundrum. Oak Trail was finalized long before the FTC and Intel began negotiating, which means Santa Clara could've been banned from shipping the platform. However, the FTC and Intel have recently jointly announced an agreement covering Oak Trail that allows Intel to sell the platform without adding PCIe support — for now."

13 of 140 comments (clear)

  1. Am I the only one who is confused... by robot256 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    ...by what the actual issue is here? And I did RTFA.

    Something about Intel pushing a new proprietary graphics bus into a new chipset...they never actually mentioned how the FTC thing got started.

    1. Re:Am I the only one who is confused... by cappp · · Score: 4, Informative
      Okay as far as I can tell

      The FTC sued Intel alleging Intel had violated Section 5 of the FTC Act.

      A little more digging brings us

      The FTC filed its complaints against Intel on Dec. 16, 2009. It charged the chip maker with illegally using its dominant position to stifle competition for decades. The complaint was filed just a month after Intel had settled antitrust and patent disputes with Advanced Micro Devices for US$1.25 billion.

      The FTC site adds that

      ").(1) Section 5 of the FTC Act prohibits "unfair methods of competition," and was amended in 1938 also to prohibit "unfair or deceptive acts or practices.

      Seems to have been part of a broader move against Intel at the time, I admit I don't remember it very clearly, but Reuters adds

      A wide range of antitrust enforcers have gone up against Intel for its controversial pricing incentives. New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo accused Intel in November of threatening computer makers and paying billions of dollars of kickbacks to maintain market supremacy. The European Commission has fined Intel 1.06 billion euros ($1.44 billion) for illegally shutting out AMD. In June 2008, South Korea fined Intel some $26 million, finding it offered rebates to PC makers in return for not buying microprocessors made by AMD. Japan's trade commission concluded in 2005 that Intel had violated the country's anti-monopoly act. The case before the FTC is "In the Matter of Intel Corporation," docket number 9341.

      Oh and that case can be found here

    2. Re:Am I the only one who is confused... by pavon · · Score: 4, Informative

      Here is a good article about the original antitrust settlement.

      Basically, Intel refuses to license it's new DMI or QPI bus protocols to NVIDIA, so they can no longer make chipsets for intel processors (like nForce). Furthermore, it has been feared that with the push towards systems on chip, that Intel would eliminate the PCI-e bus as well leaving no way for any graphic company to supply a discrete graphics chip for netbook or notebook computers.

    3. Re:Am I the only one who is confused... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

      ... I went there expecting shoe porn.

    4. Re:Am I the only one who is confused... by hairyfeet · · Score: 4, Informative

      Basically Intel locked down all I/O on many of their chips to specifically lock out Nvidia and force their lousy GPUs onto you, whether you like it or not. Considering this is the same company that bribed OEMs, rigged their compiler, and paid 1.25 billion to AMD just to keep them from digging all the skeletons in their closet? It really shouldn't be surprising.

      I was a life long Intel man, going back to the 486Dx, but after all the dirty underhanded shit they've pulled recently I've gone full AMD for my customers and myself. If you win a market because you are faster/cheaper/better? No problem with me. But rigging the market is a BIG no no in my book, and makes it worse for all of us. Just look at how many power hogging P4s are still in use, thanks partially to the fact that Intel paid off OEMs not to run the better at the time AMD chips. The regulators in the USA may not have any teeth anymore, but I can't wait to see what the EU does to them. Intel has been so nasty lately they make MSFT look like the Care Bears.

      --
      ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
    5. Re:Am I the only one who is confused... by 0123456 · · Score: 3, Interesting

      If Intel & AMD decided to offer GPUs linked by QPI & HT it would give their GPUs a big advantage with Nvidia unable to compete.

      That would also kill Intel's high-end consumer products. Most high-end Intel CPUs are sold to gamers, who aren't going to be gaming on some crappy Intel integrated graphics chip.

      At least for the forseeable future, Intel need Nvidia for the mid to high-end gaming market, because they're not going to be releasing GPUs in that arena any time soon.

    6. Re:Am I the only one who is confused... by monktus · · Score: 3, Funny

      "...they make MSFT look like the Care Bears."

      Can't....type.....horrible image of Ballmer....in Care Bear outfit.

      --
      Weaseling out of things is important to learn. It's what separates us from the animals... except the weasel."
    7. Re:Am I the only one who is confused... by Rockoon · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Try instead looking at, say, a Core i5-760. 2.8GHz quad core chip for $210. Look up some performance numbers and then compare to AMD chips.

      Performance numbers based on Intel crippling compiler.

      Yeah. Even in cases where Intel's compiler isnt used for the benchmark program, many benchmarks still use libraries compiled with Intel's compiler.

      Of significance are Intels Math Kernel Library and even AMD's Core Math Library (compiled with Intels fortran compiler!)

      These libraries are extensively used in most benchmark programs.

      --
      "His name was James Damore."
  2. Don't see any other way for Intel by gman003 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I went and looked up the specs for the chip in question. It's a SoC chip, just a PCI bus is all I could find. There's no market reason for PCIe, and it really wouldn't even offer much of a benefit, since the single-core CPU is barely pushing a gigahertz. The FTC behaved pretty much reasonably in this case.

    1. Re:Don't see any other way for Intel by squizzar · · Score: 3, Interesting

      I thought that Intel wanted to break into the embedded market that contains a lot of ARM and PowerPC cores with Atom? The FPGA + Embedded processor combination is pretty common, and PCIe is the way to interface them. Hence your low power/low performance chip is bundled together with another (FPGA or ASIC) that does the heavy lifting for a specific task. Every application that requires some serious, but fixed, number crunching is appropriate for this. I do broadcast related stuff, so the things that spring to mind are video compressors, deinterlacers, etc. Why spend lots of dollars and lots of watts on a powerful CPU when you can combine a amsll core and an ASIC/FPGA and get the same result? Without PCIe no one is going to consider the Atom for these applications.

  3. more like light peak only no DVI no USB no vga by Joe+The+Dragon · · Score: 3, Insightful

    more like light peak only no DVI no USB no vga.

    also light peak only works with intel video and if you want to use your usb keyboard or mouse $30 cable or hub that needs a wall wart as light peak may not pass power.

    want Ethernet $30 cable

    want to use a ati or nvidia video chip you may need a piggy back cable to make it tie into the light peak network.

  4. Re:Human-readable analysis of the stuff by yuhong · · Score: 3, Interesting

    If Intel doesn't want a GPU on their platforms, it is trivial to abide by the letter of the law and still screw Nvidia

    During the public comment period, I submitted a comment about this and the FTC actually responded:
    http://www.ftc.gov/os/adjpro/d9341/101102intelletterbao.pdf

  5. Ya I can't imagine them not wanting it by Sycraft-fu · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Intel doesn't want nVidia making chipsets, true enough, because Intel makes chipsets. However the want expansion slots on their boards because they want people using their boards. I'm quite sure they are plenty happy with nVidia and ATi graphics cards. Heck they've included ATi's crossfire on their boards for a long time (they didn't have SLI because nVidia wouldn't license it to them). Intel has nothing that competes in that arena, and they recently revised their plan so they aren't even going to try. They want people to get those high end GPUs because people who get high end GPUs often get high end CPUs since they are gamers. Not only that, they STILL sell the Integrated GPU, since it is on chip.

    I just can't see them not wanting PCIe in their regular desktop boards. They know expansion is popular, and they also know that the people who expand the most also want the biggest CPUs.

    Now on an Atom platform? Sure makes sense. These are extremely low end systems. PCIe logic is really nothing but wasted silicon. You don't have room for PCIe expansions in there, never mind the desire for it. Those are integrated, all-in-one, low end platforms.

    However desktop and laptop? I can't see them wanting to eliminate it there.