AMD Files Antitrust Lawsuit Against Intel 790
jonathan_ingram writes "As reported on GrokLaw, AMD has just filed an antitrust lawsuit against Intel. AMD states in its press release that the complaint details "... how Intel has unlawfully maintained its monopoly in the x86 microprocessor market by engaging in worldwide coercion of customers from dealing with AMD. It identifies 38 companies that have been victims of coercion by Intel - including large scale computer-makers, small system-builders, wholesale distributors, and retailers, through seven types of illegality across three continents.""
About time... (Score:5, Insightful)
Full text of the complaint filed can be found here [amd.com] in PDF format.
Interesting read...it's high time we saw some legal action against Intel for all these shenanigans. However, I'm doubtful that this will resolve anything...in reality, Intel will probably be about as inconvinenced by this antitrust action as Microsoft was by theirs.
Forget the money (Score:2, Insightful)
AMD can't compete? More likely... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Only a good thing for Apple (and all vendors) (Score:3, Insightful)
We always seem to quickly forget their bad processors that seem to quitely fade away into non-existance.
We also seem to ignore their attempts at privacy invasion...
Patent insanity (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:No more business from AMD (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:No more business from AMD (Score:5, Insightful)
You might want to read the complaint [amd.com] before you come to such an abrupt, erroneous decision.
Unless, of course, you're just astroturfing.
Re:No more business from AMD (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:No more business from AMD (Score:5, Insightful)
A monopoly doesn't mean that a company has 100% of the market, it just means that they have an overwhelming majority such that they can exert pressures against smaller companies by threatening customers. This is not the same as Intel underpricing AMD because they have a better capacity than AMD. That is legitimate business, and a gain from having the kind of production capacity that Intel has (an economy of scale). The allegation here is that Intel is witholding incetives only for people who specifically buy AMD products, meaning that Intel is using its position in the market to limit competition by not only providing incentives to use Intel products, but to provided disincentives to use AMD products. That seems like a pretty shady deal to me. Doesn't that strike you as disgusting and abhorrent?
Re:Welcome to the new world. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:No more business from AMD (Score:4, Insightful)
Intel doesn't have a monopoly
First is the obvious point that this is irrelevant! Anti-trust laws have no requirement you have to be a monopoly to be guilty of anti-trust behaviour! Anti-trust is about trade practices that undermine competitiveness or are considered to be unfair. Intel is certainly guilty of this.
Second is if its OK for Intel to use anti-competitive behaviour why not MS? Neither have 100% market share. What percent market share does it start being wrong to use anti-competitive tactics in your mind?
I'm glad MS got busted for these EXACT SAME anti-trust practices (prefered pricing for only using their product) and I hope Intel will as well.
Re:Perhaps I'm wrong (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:AMD can't compete? More likely... (Score:5, Insightful)
Methinks, AMD hopes to turn the tide from being the niche market of gamers/power users to a gereral audience.
I just hope, for thier sake, that this all works out. I hope, for my sake, that an X2 will finally be affordable for me
Re:About Time... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Interesting (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Interesting (Score:4, Insightful)
Business or Not, Conspiracy or Not, It is Illegal (Score:5, Insightful)
"You're going to use AMD for some of your products? We're doubling the price of our chips you need for your other products, unless you reconsider.
That's extortionate, anti-competative, and illegal.
That is called BUSINESS, not CONSPIRACY. Sheesh.
So is "Papa is displeased. It's nothing personal" followed by a gunshot. The fact that it is business doesn't make it moral, ethical, or legal. In Intel's case, if AMD's assertions are shown to be true, their actions were immoral, unethical, and illegal. No one may care about the first two (which explains a great deal about the state of our society and our world, but I digress), but courts still uphold the law, by and large, most of the time, so people do care a whole hell of a lot about the latter.
On a somewhat related note.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Is there anyone who feels rebates are legit anyway? The things should be outlawed for a number of reasons.
* Interest - money bears interest, delays in recieving it means the manufacturer keeps the potential interest.
* Honoring - Many companies 'lose' 30-50% of rebates submitted.
* Tax evasion - Companies claim loses on unsold and destroyed merchandise at the before rebate price. Since rebates only allow companies to bring the price to what is competative in the market this means unfair greater values claimed at tax time.
Makes you wonder (Score:3, Insightful)
Whats really sad about most of all of this is that AMD's product out performs a large portion of Intel's products.
Yet companies like HP and Dell hold on to Intel like it was a mewling babe in need of a mothers teet.
This story , http://www.zdnet.com.au/news/hardware/0,200006170
Im reminded of Ballmer offering the germans a 90% discount on good/services if they didnt take a FOSS solution earlier this year.
Monopolies suck.
Re:Business or Not, Conspiracy or Not, It is Illeg (Score:5, Insightful)
We can still argue about whether what Intel is doing is legal or not. The argument that they are not breaking laws because the legal authority has not yet spoken is a silly one.
Re:No more business from AMD (Score:4, Insightful)
So you've chosen the company who extorts its marketshare higher, instead.
Nice.
You want Intel software to support AMD? (Score:2, Insightful)
Why should they do that? Intel develops this software for their processors as an added value for buying their processors. Nobody is preventing AMD from doing the same.
No, it's really the advertising dollars (Score:3, Insightful)
Since Dell is the only exclusiive Intel PC manufacturer, you can bet that Intel is cutting quite a few deals with them. Every once in a while, Dell makes noises about using AMD, and then they shut up. Apparently they are phishing for more $$ from Intel. I wonder if Intel's deal with Apple is a subtle warning to Dell.
Re:You want Intel software to support AMD? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:AMD and Dell (Score:3, Insightful)
Are you really that stupid? Assuming that 90% really are clueless (even though it probably isn't), then we can safely assume (notice I said safely and not soundly) that those in the 90% do not care about what chip lines are used. Dell could then switch to AMD and chop maybe $25 off and have a cheaper machine. It wouldn't matter to the end user because everything would still 'just work' but would not be cheaper. Hell, since their machines are already damn cheap they wouldn't even have to lower their prices and they can just pocket the saved money.
Of course, since Intel gives them a nice rebate, Dell probably gets the best deal with Intel right now. If the result of this lawsuit either makes Intel not give out any rebates or give them out regardless of whether Dell starts selling AMDs, then it may actually be profitable for Dell to use AMD in lower end machines to save a few bucks.
* This is just speculation and guesses but the point is that a transparent switch to AMD might save Dell a few bucks with that "90% [customer base] clueless about computer".
Re:You want Intel software to support AMD? (Score:5, Insightful)
Nowhere on the IPP package does it say that it won't use optimized code. If someone wasn't a developer like I am, they might have just thought (incorrectly) that AMD chips are slower than Intel. This is false, as when I hand write the assembly code and use SSE2 the Opteron, even at 2.2 Ghz, blows the doors off of a 3.6Ghz Pentium 4 Xeon - and that's just 32 bit instructions. I haven't finished porting my code to 64 bit, and then I suspect that it'll be even more of a massacre in AMD's favor.
Yes, image processing is more memory bound than CPU bound, but for things like jpeg compression the CPU matters. (And since the memory controller is ON the Opteron, it ends up absolutely rocking for image processing.)
Re:You want Intel software to support AMD? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Only a good thing for Apple (and all vendors) (Score:4, Insightful)
Well, I don't hold a grudge against 'em. I prefer Athlon 64's to P4's, but upto the the P4 Intel seemed to make chips that were a bit faster, if a little expensive. And I would have bought an Itanium if it had decent performance, just because it seemed like an interesting bit of engineering.
If the the next generation of chips are any good, I'll buy one. It's certainly enouraging that they are making x64 chips now, even though Amd invented it. And moving towards shorter pipelines. I think they still have strengths compared to Amd, even if they are bit behind in fps per buck- their chipsets tend to be more polished than the Athlon ones from Via/Nvidia etc.
You mean like the unique ID? Net cards have always had had a unique ID, and hence so do most PC's. Anyhow, like AMD they're a company - they just make what sells. I won't buy there stuff it violated my privacy, but I certainly wouldn't hold it against them if they produced something better in the future.
They're not evil, just amoral and greedy.
Re:AMD and Dell (Score:2, Insightful)
I am convinced more than ever that deals are being worked on right now between Sun and Dell.
Re:You want Intel software to support AMD? (Score:2, Insightful)
Market thinks this is a joke (Score:2, Insightful)
AMD has never had the business acumen necessary to take advantage of the opportunities it has had access to. Its 30 years of flat stock performance make it almost look like a scam; a shell company designed to sucker investors to pump the price occasionally and pay off the principals who know they won't be reinvesting that value.
But you know the engineers there don't want it that way. Why they haven't revolted and thrown out the (mis)management is a mystery.
Maybe they should.
Meanwhile, Intel does nothing but produce its product. Usually it's superior. For 2000-2004, it wasn't. AMD failed to capitalize on that opportunity, and are now crying that simple competition is unfair.
If I were an AMD shareholder, I wouldn't be cheering this suit; I'd be embarassed to show my portfolio to anyone.
Re:You want Intel software to support AMD? (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Interesting (Score:5, Insightful)
Much of the late-90's dotcom boom was predicated on the 1996 PSLR Act. This act was Clinton's ONLY Veto, over a Republican Congress, and they overrode him on it. This law opened the floodgates for corporate accounting fraud and corruption on an unprecedented scale, and only a very few of the criminals were ever caught or punished, including Enron, Worldcom, Citibank, Krispy Kreme, Arthur Anderson, Veritas, AOL, etc. etc. ad nauseum. The ones who were punished were given very minor slaps on the wrist, as a token gesture during a very brief era of symbolic regulatory tightening that began in late 2001, and ended recently with the appointment of Cox as SEC head.
Cox was the criminal bastard who WROTE the PSLR Act. So the brief era of symbolic regulatory tightening on oversight of corporate accounting practices has ended. It is now open season on shareholders, and especially consumers. I predict that this AMD action will go about as far as Netscapes complaint against Microsoft. A long, drawn out, and profitably-entertaining courtroom drama, AMD will falter and die, somewhere along the way, and in the end, a slap on the wrist for Intel.
Some of the folks who support this kind of wild-west business climate simply have a loyalty to their rich crony-capitalist buddies. Others have a more nationalistic ideology (They're an American company, we have to protect them so they can compete internationally - look what's happened to Boeing, they're effectively a jumbo-jet monopoly, but they're getting their asses handed to them by Airbus). In the end, companies like Intel, or Boeing, end up with no competition - and of course, it makes them still weaker. You think the Chrysler bail-out by the government had nothing to do with their eventual buy-out by Daimler? Corporate Welfare, whether by direct bailout, deregulation, or preferential treatment, or even special tax breaks, breeds nothing but dependent Corporate Welfare Queens. ONLY competition, in a fair, intelligently regulated marketplace, will breed excellence.
Re:Interesting (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:You want Intel software to support AMD? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:No more business from AMD (Score:3, Insightful)
However, according to this law:
17045. The secret payment or allowance of rebates, refunds, commissions, or unearned discounts, whether in the form of money or otherwise, or secretly extending to certain purchasers special services or privileges not extended to all purchasers purchasing upon like terms and conditions, to the injury of a competitor and where such payment or allowance tends to destroy competition, is unlawful.
What intel is accused of doing, as in paying under the table or threaten to do anything if someone buy/sell AMD product. It is illegal.
Re:You want Intel software to support AMD? (Score:2, Insightful)
AMD's complaint: "We can't sell as cheap as Intel" (Score:2, Insightful)
AMD's basic problem is that they basically wish they could become Intel, and think the way to do that is to mimic Intel's sales strategies - which they can never do as well as Intel because they don't have the manufacturing volume and low costs to back it up. "Business 101" could tell them how to compete in this situation, but their leadership's ego(s) keep them from doing it consistently.
Re:About time... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:About time... (Score:2, Insightful)
You don't think your grandma can operate a Mac? I bet she could. So there *is* another alternative.
Re:About time... (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:I'm not kidding (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:About time... (Score:4, Insightful)
Intel has a large market share, but what they do not have is a monopoly. From what I can tell, Intel has taken measures to ensure that AMD is always a viable alternative, therefore antitrust laws do not comply.
If they try to play hardball with Dell, Dell always has the power to say, "screw you Intel, we will not do any business with you whatsoever". They can choose AMD. If Intel is not selling to Dell below cost, and they are not abusing a monopoly status that they don't have.
Intel has much, much better margins than AMD due to their significant process technology advantages and a more focused feature list (i.e. they are willing to take a few percent performance hit to save lots of $$ and yield -- something that underdog AMD cannot afford to do). Taking advantage of these margins to preserve their market share is exactly what a free market is. If they were prevented from doing this, then what would be the point of innovation, of cost reduction, and of technology shrinks, etc???
Re:About time... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:I'm not kidding (Score:2, Insightful)
Yeah, you can get it anywhere, EXCEPT from the biggest vendor of PCs in the world: DELL. So while joe-schmoe, I want to buy a Dell computer cause it's simple to do, browses around the DELL website, he's not being offered the option of having an AMD processor is his box.
The real question is: Would Dell sell AMD boxes if they were not at risk of being charged more by Intel? Considering the amount of volume they do, the cost of changing their assembly lines to have processor/motherboard swaps is negligable. It would probably make them more money in the end because they could sell cheaper computers and thus more volume.
To continue the beauty pageant analogy. Intel isn't locking out AMD by pouring acid on AMD's body or flattening AMD's tires. Intel is boning the judges and the contest administrators to prevent AMD from entering the door.
If Intel's product is truly of value and has intrinsic worth then Intel would not need to prevent its competitors from displaying their wares. The prize bull at the country fair doesn't get to be the prize bull by having no competition. You need your crappy competitors present so that your benefits can be highlighted to the consumer. The problem is, AMD isn't crappy. Right now, AMD is the prize bull. It's Intel that is worried about appearing crappy next to AMD.
Whether you flatten your opponents tires or you prevent them from even entering the market place doesn't matter. You've prevented the consumer from having a real choice in the matter. That is what is unfair about the situation. The people buying Dell computers don't have an option to put AMD in their boxes. I think Dell would sell AMD computers if Intel wouldn't change their pricing scheme.
I decide not to carry a product because I don't like, say, the terms, the pricing, or even the sales person. Does that make ME a bad person? No.
You're right here. But this isn't the situation we're talking about. If Dell doesn't like the terms with AMD, then they can choose not to sell AMD. However the terms with AMD are being influenced by Intel and thus it's not a pure relationship between Dell and AMD. This is the whole point. Intel is influencing business transactions between other companies. Philosophically, I think the transaction should go through or not go through based on the merits of the transaction by itself, not based on whether this transaction will cause other transactions to become more expensive.
Intel clearly does not want the general consumer to have easy access to a choice in processors.
Re:About Time... (Score:2, Insightful)
Same thing applies here. "You get whatever chips are left over after the wholesalers I like are taken care of, and at a significantly higher price because you work with my competitor", is BS.
Free market is supposed to mean everyone is free to compete in the market, not you are free to do whatever you like in, or to, the market. That's why things like the Sherman, Clayton, and Robinson-Patman acts were passed. The last is the most germaine to the pricing issues.
Re:About time... (Score:4, Insightful)
"Monopoly" is the wrong word. It's actually "anti-competitive practices". The financial health of the plaintiff is irrelevant. You don't have to wait until all competitors are driven out of the market to file suit. Also, said practices don't even have to be effective to be illegal.
Title? (Score:2, Insightful)
As for the lawsuit, from what I've read so far, AMD has a point. It's a boat with some leaks, but it's afloat. Let them bash it out. We all know who will win (whoever sticks their hands in the pockets of those in power). This, as usual, is big-money politics in the legal system. The outcome of this will have little to do with the actual facts.
Re:Only a good thing for Apple (and all vendors) (Score:3, Insightful)
Well, first of all, Opteron is not Athlon 64. There are lots of affordable, high-quality Athlon 64 motherboards (my personal favorite is an MSI board with the Radeon Xpress 200 chipset - $89, and it has decent onboard graphics).
And second of all, if you're running Xeon, you probably want lots of memory. And if you want lots of memory, you'll soon learn that large DDR2 modules required by Intel's platform are considerably more expensive than large DDR modules.
Re:About time... (Score:3, Insightful)
The problem is that "anti-competitive" if an arbitrary label, and the laws are even more vague. A company has an obligation to its stockholders to do everything legally possible to make money. The question is, where does the "legal" line get drawn? Many companies, unsurprisingly, have a hard time knowing where that limit is.
Re:About time... (Score:3, Insightful)
No, competing is, by definition, competitive. Being anti-competitive is using methods that subvert the free market to reduce competion.
Everything you do is an attempt to convince the consumer to buy your product and not your competitors.
And this is market competition. Anti-competitive practices tend to be things that limit the consumer's choice in the matter, rather than offering a better choice.
Re:No more business from AMD (Score:4, Insightful)
This is in fact exactly the opposite of what I am saying. I stated above that there cases when the customers' choices are limited, such as when Wal-Mart comes in and drives down prices, that are beneficial to the customer. But in the case of AMD and Intel, it is a very different situation. Instead of Intel gaining market share by having a better product, it is using its position in the market to muscle AMD out. It is not doing this with a better product, but rather by threatening the middle man who stands between Intel and the consumer. That is the allegation, and that is what is illegal. In no way is the government punishing Intel for being successful. If Intel receives punishment, it will be for using its success to create an unfair marketplace.
This is a case of the government punishing Intel for being too successful, and handing money/customers/business to AMD because they are less efficient/cannot compete
I'm not saying AMD deserves handouts any more than I'm saying Intel deserves to be punished. In fact, AMD won't get any 'handouts' regardless of the outcome of this case. In fact, Intel is perfectly welcome to give price breaks for people who buy a lot of Intel products. Intel is perfectly welcome to underprice AMD. What Intel cannot do is give specific price breaks to people who do not sell AMD products. Don't you see the difference? It's when Intel mandates what the vendors do regarding Intel's competitors' products that they cross into illegal territory, and that is when the consumer loses.
This has nothing to do with the US Government taking pity on smaller companies and just taking property from Intel. I have no idea where you got that idea. This is about whether or not Intel is manipulating the market by changing their prices for different people based on whether or not those people do business with AMD.
I am in no way saying that the US Government is going to help companies out with financial handouts. Where are these handout ideas coming from? This is antitrust litigation, not grants. And what do AMDs CEOs have to do with this? We're talking about whether or not Intel is illegally influencing the market. AMD might be doing poorly because of their CEOs, but that has nothing to do with this debate, because we're talking about whether or not Intel is doing something illegal.
Intel is absolutely a monopolistic company. They don't have a total monopoly, but they have enough market share that they can influence the market in these ways. This isn't like econ class where someone either is or isn't a monopoly. It's not like Intel is just moving across the street from AMD. Intel is perfectly welcome to compete in AMDs markets. The issues is if Intel tells its vendors they can either receive price breaks or they can sell AMD products. I think you are still thinking of this too much as a retail thing. Take Petsmart for example. Petsmart moving next to Petco is fine. What would be unfair is if Iams told both companies that they would receive a 10% rebate as long as they didn't sell Kibbles and Bits. Doesn't that seem shady? It has no effect on the consumer except to say that they will no longer have the option of buying Kibbles and Bits.
How will it hurt the consumers? I would argue that allowing AMD into the market at Dell would create more performance pressure for both companies. What is stopping Intel from producing poorer quality chips for Dell right now, since they have no other competition? It has been shown in many benchmarks that AMD is just as strong if not stronger in performance, but they still don't appear in Dells.
I see this as lose-lose the way things exist right now. If Intel weren't creating this pressure, and there will still no AMD chips in Dells, then I would absolutely agree that AMD is an inferior product.
Re:You want Intel software to support AMD? (Score:1, Insightful)
It's not about Intel allowing AMD to use their software, it's about Intel *illegally* preventing them from doing so. You have to take this action into context; when combined with all of the other bullshit Intel has done, it becomes obvious that they are engaging in unfair business practices -- specifically, unfair competition and abuse of their monopoly.
Re:You want Intel software to support AMD? (Score:1, Insightful)
(a) IPP is not free. It costs $199 per developer, which is cheap, but not free.
(b) Whether you believe Intel is fucking AMD or not, they are fucking their paying customers, who, having paid for the library, can reasonably expect it to function on any compatible hardware. These customers are having the value of their own products damaged, because their product, which they have paid Intel good money to increase the performance of, will run suboptimally on their own customers' systems if their customers have decided to use AMD.
This is the key point: it's not Intel's software that's being broken. It's other people's software that is being broken by Intel. And if you think that is a good thing, all I can say is you're out of your fucking mind.
OK So...... (Score:3, Insightful)
Having said that, I don't think I've used an Intel chip in a PC that I've specced for about 4 years but I find it hard to shed any tears.
Re:About time... (Score:2, Insightful)
Honestly Apple is better suited with a company that can produce the processor and motherboard.
Re:About time... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:About time... (Score:1, Insightful)
- you don't run your own business
- believe in strong arm tactics
and pretty much just like to settle with options within your own price point.
Intel is able to spend millions on marketing because they find illegal ways to guarantee revenue streams so that they can continue running silly ads to people like you and keep you in the dark. Their strong arm tactics are also reminiscent of Visa/Mastercards methods of strong arming banks so that other credit lines like Novus and AMEX have a much tougher time providing cheaper lines of credit.
AMD did run marketing campaigns while Intel ran their stupid Bunny-men commercials, but I'm willing to bet you like little bunny men more than messages that actually advertise features, like 3DNow.
So yes, the one thing we agree on is that anti-competitive legislation is designed to protect consumers. But that's almost a crystal clear given that only idiots don't see the point. What's harder to see is when people start pulling the wool over your eyes!! Don't start pulling legal or business rhetoric unless you actually know what you're talking about.
Now maybe if you tried to remember those days, than I'll believe in your silly remark...
Re:About time... (Score:3, Insightful)
Their chipset is another story. But in all reality you can't argue that anymore either. Because the AMD chipset is built into the processor core.
The only thing you can really argue is that Intel provides a device hub which provides the logic for onboard devices like ethernet and video. AMD does not but instead outsources it to nVidia. Not that I blame them to leave device design up to a 3rd party who specializes in sound and video controllers (and I might add, the industry leaderin it)
So yea, Intel does provide the device hub which routes all its onboard devices.. But honestly, is that really the reason? Somehow the "intel provides the whole platform" is really just a bunch of FUD when looked at analytically. They produce a very (VERY!) minor portion of a system that AMD does not. Significantly important (and expensive) then most other major components of a system.