AMD files antitrust case against Intel

[LSchafroth]

Finally!! Kick Intel's A$$!! They deserve it.

LS

[LSchafroth]

When your product sucks and nobody wants it, even when cheaper, lawsuits is all you have left apparently.

Good one, funny!! oh man...I can't stop.

LS

[Nilfennasion]

One difference between the PC business and soda companies is that if you dislike Coca-Cola, you can just order the burger, the fries, and drink something else (Kirk's or whatever no-name brand) instead. PC users do not generally have that option.

I have used AMD processors for a while myself. While their earlier models such as the K6-2 have had their problems, the truth is that they offer more bang for the buck than Intel does now. A good example of this would be the difference in FSBs, with Intel's remaining capped around the 800 MHz area while AMD's are rising above a gig. This makes a difference at the end of the day to how much time it does to make a disc image.

Then there is the already-cited fact that more competition means more innovation and more attempts to fill the desires of consumers. This benefits all of us. Tasks like writing letters and executing disc commands stopped becoming quicker the very second Microsoft eliminated all competition from the OS software market. Granted, the competition that is being offered now is no great shakes, but it has been proven in court that earlier Windoze versions were specifically tweaked to display incorrect error messages when run over the top of the competing DR-DOS product. Since Intel seems to be trying to pull a similar stunt, antitrust action is not only warranted, it is necessary.

[LSchafroth]

If Coke didn't have any competition, how much do you think a Coke would cost, and how do think it would taste?

Hopefully with some more competition Coke will someday taste good. So far it's only suited for cleaning the grass buildup on your lawn mower blades.

LS

[BJ_M]

drink beer

[pchan]

If Coke didn't have any competition, how much do you think a Coke would cost, and how do think it would taste?

Hopefully with some more competition Coke will someday taste good. So far it's only suited for cleaning the grass buildup on your lawn mower blades.

LS

Virgin Cola... by Sir Richard Brenson !

[ejai]

I'm an AMD man but I have tried intel in the past and prefer AMD. I think the lawsuit is necessary but I don't think it will solve anything. Both Microsoft and Intel are in the same bed and because of that they think the same.

AMD would be better served to spend money on creating great chips and lowering the price. Years ago that was what attracted most AMD users to their chips, we loved the performace as well as the price. I don't think litergation solves these types of issues, as well as affordable products can. 8)

[gadgetguy]

Finally!! Kick Intel's A$$!! They deserve it.

I'm at a loss to understand what they did to deserve an a$$ kicking. In my experience Intel has always delivered a good product at a fair price. My experience with AMD is more limited, but they have also delivered a good product at a fair price. Obviously AMD perceives wrongdoing by Intel, but I don't think that will have any impact at all to the vast majority of end users who don't even understand that there is a difference between the two. But the lawyers will increase their incomes once again.
As far as the Coke/Pepsi issue, I prefer Coke Classic for taste, but now that I have been forced to the "diet" side, taste is no longer at issue since all diets suck. I stick with Coke now for purely political reasons, Coke has a bottling plant in town and is a bigger local employer.

[cykedout]

Couple of points, but....

1. AMD is a younger company than Intel and thus wouldn't you think that some of the earlier chips that they produced that had problems are due to the fact that they were only learning HOW to develop chips, which Intel would have had years of R&D behind them at this stage. Nowadays, AMD's chips seem to have good "names" and don't seem to be perceived as "faulty" compared to past times. Isn't this because they have worked out the kinks in their R&D processes and are less prone to errors, etc., etc., etc.,

2. Because they are being shut out of many of these markets by Intel's "alleged" unfair practices, their revenue and profits is alot less, so they can't afford to:

a) put as much into R&D as Intel does -- but still seem to produce comparable or better chips than Intel -- because they don't have as much capital.

b) produce chips in greater quantities and cheaper, because Intel's monopolies guarantee that their revenue is alot lower than it should be. If competition was healthier, IMO they could produce more chips at a cheaper price.

3. The "cola" analogy discussed previously, mostly mentions that it is incentive based, but Intel seems to be doing more "threatening" in some of its markets, which to me seems to be the crux of AMD's petition. Giving bigger incentives by Intel to customers to use their chips is more like the Coke/Pepsi analogy, but threatening its partners and customers seems to me to be "unfair practices" and I'm all for AMD to slug it out with them over this.


I personally think that Intel is like a comfortable, rich living, content boxing champion and AMD is a young, up & coming, hungry contender eager to snatch its crown. Intel is kind of "refusing to take the fight" and using every tactic in its arsenal to stop the contender from getting its shot, so it's now resorting to the courts to try and sort it out.....


That's my 2c worth, anyway....

[BJ_M]

AMD are the same age - they were founded only 6 months apart ... AMD is younger slightly by those 6 months (intel 1968, amd 1969) .. Hardly up and coming company

AMD was producing IC's before Intel was in reality ..

R&D at AMD is higher % wise of sales . But Intel is a MUCH larger company ...

[smearbrick1]

Once again... if this was such a problem for the hardware manufacturers, why didn't file the suit?

Anyone?

[SCDVD]

AMD are the same age - they were founded only 6 months apart ... AMD is younger slightly by those 6 months (intel 1968, amd 1969) .. Hardly up and coming company

AMD was producing IC's before Intel was in reality ..

R&D at AMD is higher % wise of sales . But Intel is a MUCH larger company ...

That's correct. So, um, let's see. Since Intel did a better job of managing the growth of their company and became a mean old big company, the courts should fix it and take care of mean old Intel, is that right? It's up to AMD to chart its growth plans. If they blew it and can't fix their problems, may they rest in peace. Or they can do some heavy product and development planning and float a big stock offering and/or borrow money to fund those plans. If they can't muster to the occasion, any court action would only prolong their misery.

I worked for a company in the 1970's who decided to sue IBM. The company was successful and growing at a very healthy rate. They developed and sold large flat bed plotters and Mainframe disc storage products. Many of these products were sold to corporate users of IBM Mainframe computers. But the misguided management of the company thought that if they sued IBM, it would make it easier to sell more products to IBM Mainframe users. The first thing they did was reappropriate ALL of the R&D budget and use that money to hire a huge, high priced litigation team to sue IBM. They didn't realize it, but that was the day a very successful company died. They wound up losing the lawsuit and also found themselves without any new and competitive products because they had squandered their R&D money and gave it to a bunch of lawyers. The company died; May it rest in Peace.

People also like to talk about mean old Microsoft. But they never start at chapter 1 when they do their whining. The initial dominant leader in personal computer operating systems was a company called Digital Research. Their operating system was called CPM. At that time, if you made a personal computer, in all likelihood it ran CPM. When IBM was planning the introduction of their PC, they were planning to use CPM. But Digital Research in their pig headed incompetence blew it badly and infuriated IBM. It just so happened that a kid, who was trying to peddle a Basic Interpreter to IBM, heard about this and convinced IBM to use DOS instead. This kids name was Bill Gates. So if Digital Research had not killed their own business and were still around in some form today, do those of you in the "Intel and Microsoft are Mean" crowd think they should sue mean old Microsoft and get their business back that they squandered by their own incompetence? I would like to see more OS competition but only if it is accomplished by a company that is smart enough to do it better and tough enough to execute an effective business plan.

[pchan]

I used to work for one of these companies as an engineer. Boy.. the law suit in the early 90s was hilarious... each kept claiming victory... but it was really stalemate. The lawyers were getting rich... filty rich.

I can bet with my last $, AMD would be doing exactly the same way as Intel if they have 85% market share. It's basically corporate greed. I really wich that the market share is 50-50, then consumer will benefit with value for money and innovative products.

[thecoalman]

Since Intel did a better job of managing the growth of their company and became a mean old big company, the courts should fix it and take care of mean old Intel, is that right?

The major points in the article point to Intel using there dominance to deny AMD the ability to compete at all. Penalizing a company because they are using a competitors product is not a fair practice and if that is in fact true AMD will win this suit.

*According to industry reports, and as confirmed by the JFTC in Japan, Intel has paid Dell and Toshiba huge sums not to do business with AMD.

That is not a competitive practice. That amounts to bribery.

[BJ_M]

AMD Takes Case To Public and Japan now

Reuters is reporting that AMD is claiming damages against Intel K.K. in Japan, over the Japan Fair Trade Commission's recommendation that Intel has violated Japan's Antimonopoloy Act. They are seeking to claim $50million in damages in the High Court and have also filed for damages in the District Court. AMD continue to throw the punches, but will they come out on top?" At the same time, Rob writes "Computer Business Review is reporting that Advanced Micro Devices yesterday ran a full-page advertisement in several major North American newspapers urging readers to familiarize themselves with its 48-page complaint against Intel Corp's alleged anti-competitiveness. By taking its case to the people in this way, AMD arguably may pique investor interest and raise its market profile. At the same time, these antics may however lead AMD into a precarious legal position."

[smearbrick1]

Since Intel did a better job of managing the growth of their company and became a mean old big company, the courts should fix it and take care of mean old Intel, is that right?

The major points in the article point to Intel using there dominance to deny AMD the ability to compete at all. Penalizing a company because they are using a competitors product is not a fair practice and if that is in fact true AMD will win this suit.

*According to industry reports, and as confirmed by the JFTC in Japan, Intel has paid Dell and Toshiba huge sums not to do business with AMD.

That is not a competitive practice. That amounts to bribery.

Didn't we cover this earlier in the post? Soda companies do this kind of thing all of the time to promote their product in places like schools and other organizations. I'm sure it all boils down to contractual obligations or which both parties entered into freely. I don't imagine the Intel guys are holding guns to the head of Michael Dell and forcing him to use their processors and become the largest computer manufacturer in the world at the same time. It just doesn't seem like it hurt anyone other than AMD. If they had a product that could compete (in the beginning. Now they are very competitive) and could produce in the quantities the industry demanded, they wouldn't be in this pickle. (pardon the food reference) Which I don't see as much of a problem. They have their niche in the marketplace. Be happy you have that. Look at Apple, they seem to be thrilled with their 5% marketshare in the personal computer community.

[SCDVD]

Since Intel did a better job of managing the growth of their company and became a mean old big company, the courts should fix it and take care of mean old Intel, is that right?

The major points in the article point to Intel using there dominance to deny AMD the ability to compete at all. Penalizing a company because they are using a competitors product is not a fair practice and if that is in fact true AMD will win this suit.

*According to industry reports, and as confirmed by the JFTC in Japan, Intel has paid Dell and Toshiba huge sums not to do business with AMD.

That is not a competitive practice. That amounts to bribery.

My point is not to suggest that monopolistic practices are fine and dandy. AMD has a very well written sad story about how they have been so bad done by. My point is this: Why now? They should have acted more aggressively and effectively with their brains fully engaged long before now. I am not sanctioning Intel's actions (as stated by AMD), I am simply saying that AMD could have taken a number of much better timed actions to deal with this long ago. Their founder, Jerry Sanders, was a long-standing, self anointed icon in Silicon Valley. He should have handled this differently at a much earlier stage in all of this. They can't expect to simply take the position, "Look how pitiful and bad-done by we are". There is more to it than that.

An example could be used with copyright law for example. To maintain a valid copyright, one must show diligence in protecting and defending a copyright or else it can be considered abandoned in a court. You can't expect to do nothing to protect a copyright and then spin a sad story twenty years later about your "injured" copyright. AMD very much has itself to blame in this situation. They started blowing it on the installment plan twenty years ago. A company must diligently and COMPETENTLY defend itself on an ongoing basis in their business, and do so in real time. It isn't enough to sleep at the wheel and when the nap is over spin a sad story. The Board of Directors at AMD should be asking a very serious question - "Why did we get to this point Jerry, et al? If Jerry Sanders had spent a little less time being Mr. Slick and more time being a serious minded businessman, this mess would not have unfolded to start with. My question to each point in AMD's sad story / lawsuit is - Why didn't you take effective and competent action then. (Key word - competent) The world already has too many professional victims.

[thecoalman]

Didn't we cover this earlier in the post? Soda companies do this kind of thing all of the time to promote their product in places like schools and other organizations. .

This is not the same as offering a company incentives for buying your product exclusively:

*Then-Compaq CEO Michael Capellas said in 2000 that because of the volume of business given to AMD, Intel withheld delivery of critical server chips. Saying "he had a gun to his head," he told AMD he had to stop buying.

*According to Gateway executives, their company has paid a high price for even its limited AMD dealings. They claim that Intel has "beaten them into 'guacamole'" in retaliation.

*Establishing and enforcing quotas among key retailers such as Best Buy and Circuit City, effectively requiring them to stock overwhelmingly or exclusively, Intel computers, artificially limiting consumer choice;

[Nilfennasion]

What those of us who complain about the big bad Microsoft and Intel monopolies are complaining about is not the mistakes of other companies. In a balanced market, a company pays the cost of doing its own business. That's the nature of the game. But microprocessors and software have never been a balanced market by any stretch of the imagination. Given how essential they have become in our ability to do business from day to day, anything that encourages more competition instead of less should be done. Literally anything.

[inuyasha]

AMD is a late comer to CPU manufacturing, and I think it has done an excellent job by focusing on creating a competitive product at a lower price than its competitor, in order to survive. This is a healthy / supposed way to run a business, as many of us will agree -- win your market share by offering something better and cheaper. We consumers like to see that.
AMD's chips have started out to be less than perfect but we see steady improvement over the years and until recently, with the introduction of AMD64, it started to outperform Intel's chips in many of the popular benchmarks. It began to put some real pressure on Intel. The hype surrounding the success of the better AMD chips is going to attract consumer's interest which in time, will likely translate into an increased demand for the AMD chips and Intel knows that unless they could come up with something better in a short time, their market share will suffer as AMD's grows. The effect may be seen in just a few years' time. Intel needs to act fast.

Instead of ramping up their R&D effort (which does not guarantee result), Intel "MIGHT* feel the need to pull on something that would give them a surer bet. Since 80% of the cpus that computer manufacturers need are supplied by Intel, the price that Intel asks for its cpus have an impact on the bottom line of those companies. Worse, if it decides not to sell them any, it is equivalent to a death penalty to the company. Well, you may argue, one can always turn to AMD. But being much smaller in scale, can AMD totally satisfy the sudden increase in demand? Will the majority of the consumers at large see the products with AMD chips as less of a quality because the name AMD is not as famous as the better known Intel? And how would that affect the sale? For many of the manufacturers, the choice is obvious. They don't want to make the big brother angry. They have to take care of their own bottom lines. For Intel, such a tactic would only work if AMD is still small, so the timing is like now or never.

The soft drink analogy used on previous posts does not mirror the heavy monopolitic cpu market. It would never work if Pepsi threatened you to stop carrying Cokes by saying "hay man, no more Coke's stuff, or else I will charge you twice as much as you paid last month, or if I am really ticked off, I don't sell you my stuff no more, and you are scrxwed". But are you? Tons of other soft drink companies would be just too happy to help you to make up the difference, and offer you incentives to do so at the same time!
It is totally different in the cpu market, not until AMD splits half of the market with Intel.

If you were the CEO of AMD, with an arguably better product than Intel's on hand, but still seeing your market share being chipped away gradually by monopoly tactics rather than fair competition on product quality, would you see any light at the end of the tunnel? AMD would just fold up if the unfairness continued. Sadly, going to court is the only way out for this relatively small chip maker.

I am no favor to either Intel or AMD's products, but as an end user, I would like to see chip manufacturers win my business by offering me better quality products at a lower price. As a society, fair competition needs to be guarded at all wills otherwise we all lose.

[lordsmurf]

When litigation happens, buyers lose. The costs are passed.

[inuyasha]

True. We all pay.
We will pay even more if competition ceased to exist. Monopoly = just name your price!

[lordsmurf]

But that's not an issue. There is not a "monopoly" here. There is competition, it's just not equal. It never is, somebody always dominates a market to a degree.

Even MS isnt a monopoly, you can use Linux or get a Mac (and many other uncommon choices in OS/hardware is out there too).

This is all about suing their way into a bigger market share. I don't see any of this "gun to head" stuff, and if it existed, I would think the companies would file joint suits (Dell, Gateway, Compaq, etc) and not the competitor.

Something here stinks. And it's not all Intel.

[thecoalman]

But that's not an issue. There is not a "monopoly" here. There is competition, it's just not equal. It never is, somebody always dominates a market to a degree.

That's true but if Intel is employing these tactics alleged in the suit and continue to use them at some point AMD will have no business at all even if they had a cheaper , superior product. This may be good for us the consumers at this point but in the future if there is no AMD Intel will be able to sell their product for whatever they want. I see it everyday in the business I'm in, there's no competition because of number of reasons. No competition equals a standard product at an inflated price. It comes down to this is the product and this is the price, take it or leave it.

Even MS isn't a monopoly, you can use Linux or get a Mac (and many other uncommon choices in OS/hardware is out there too).

I'll disagree with that too, look what they did Netscape. It was great for the consumer in the beginning because they were getting a product with the same features for free. Once Netscape went away what have seen new from IE? When you look at MS I think you have to look at the whole picture. They are not trying to monopolize the OS market but the consumer software market as a whole. What happened to Netscape is a prime example and I see the same thing continuing. I'm sure your aware that MS just released a BETA version of their new image editing application, that's a very sophisticated image editing application that can compete with products such as Paint Shop and the like. Then there's MS Movie Maker, these two fields that a consumer is going to want. I wouldn't be surprised if in the future you see an updated version of MM capable of doing DVD's and the image editing app included in Windows. Great for the average consumer now because they are getting "free" software but what's the price in the future?

This is all about suing their way into a bigger market share. I don't see any of this "gun to head" stuff, and if it existed, I would think the companies would file joint suits (Dell, Gateway, Compaq, etc) and not the competitor.

We are dealing with what is in the article so we really don't know the whole story but if these allegations are true they do indeed have a gun to their heads and highlights why it's a bad thing. If Intel is threatening their business for using AMD chips what do you think their reaction would be if they were sued for it. There going to sell computers whether they have Intel or AMD chips in them, it's hardly worth it for them to rock to boat.

[inuyasha]

If what AMD claimed about Intel's black mailing stuff is true, then AMD will be driven out of business pretty soon , when the major computer builders stop buying from AMD. If AMD's market share drops to a certain level, it will not make enough money to survive. The days of monopoly will come.
Computer manufacturers, as stated in my previous post, rely heavily on Intel to supply them the chip so they can have products to make and to sell. No chips = no products = no profits = closing the shop. If they sued Intel, and even won, what good would that do to them? They still need to buy cpus from Intel since Intel cpus are still mainstream (popular by the general public, for now anyway) and they risk Intel jacking up the price on them, or worse not selling them. This could mean a 70-80% drop in revenue if computer building is all these companies do. It's not yet a monopoly, but Intel's influence on the computer building industry is not any less, and it could potentially abuse this position to drive AMD out of business.
Of course, Intel would not be so stupid to put it in black and white explicitly to ask computer builders not to deal with AMD in order to get chips from Intel, but in this dirty coporate world, CEOs just know the side ways and tricks to make people comply to what they want, without leaving a trace for you to catch. Incentive programs, preferential customer discounts, special contractual terms etc just to name a few, are "normal" business toos that could be used to hide unethical secret dealings.

I feel that AMD would not make this whole thing up in order to gain market share. I don't see how it can by suing. I think it just wants Intel to play fair.

Well it's all allegations as yet, we will see how it all play out.

[DGinnetty]

Even if AMD's claims are not true, they could be doing all this just to fire off a huge PR campaign.

By suing Intel, they might get the cable news stations to cover the story, getting their company out in the public eye. That kind of coverage would be VERY expensive if they were to purchase that time outright in the form of commercials.

I guess we will all know soon enough if there is validity to their claim.

Dan Ginnetty

[lacywest]

If Coke didn't have any competition, how much do you think a Coke would cost, and how do think it would taste?

Hopefully with some more competition Coke will someday taste good. So far it's only suited for cleaning the grass buildup on your lawn mower blades.

LS

I drink Cherry CocaCola, Mt Dew, CocaCola, and when I'm worried about my weight ... Diet Dr. Pepper .... but most of the ... I will drink at least two can sodas of Mt. Dew per night ... I work graveyards.

CPU wize ... my Dell 5150 laptop has a Intel 2.8 Ghz chip in it.
But my main computer at home ... its the AMD 64bit 3500 ... 2.2 GHZ chip
for my girlfriend I installed the AMD Barton 2800 XP ... 2.0 GHZ chip

I recently bought three AMD 64bit 3500 chips on Ebay.

I also have an extra AMD 64bit 3000 ... 1.8 GHZ chip ... laying around waiting to be installed in a computer I will build for a lady friend who helped me move from my apartment to my girlfriend's house

I told her I will pay her by building a really good computer for her. At the moment she is using a MSI mobo with a AMD 1800 XP cpu ... 1.6 GHZ chip in it.

So ... yes ... I like AMD CPUs

[Paul_G]

AMD CPUs are good value for money. Intel CPUs are just too damn expensive.

[SatStorm]

To tell the truth, the situation outside USA is more balanced between AMD / Intel.
Dell - like PCs (fixed) in Europe (except UK) are not mainstream and overal the ones who build their own PCs, usually choose AMD. The ones (older) that buy "ready offers" (older technology PCs) are go with Intel ones. In the matter of fact, I don' t remember offers with AMD PCs ....

Many companies, when they go to buy PCs, they buy the cheaper offers. And those are always Intel ones...

I don' t really know: I often feel that the "Power" European users, the ones that upgrade and follow the technology with exitment, are mostly on the AMD side. The users that don't care, buy Intel ones. Those are much more so that may explain why the Intel share is big worldwide.
In a way, it is a suprise that AMD has a 30% share or so worldwide!

On the other hand, I never met an AMD user not active with technology one way or other. Usually, the AMD user is more informed about technology and use it for more things (example: entertainment)

[inuyasha]

On the other hand, I never met an AMD user not active with technology one way or other. Usually, the AMD user is more informed about technology and use it for more things

I like that