Intel Fires Back At FTC In Antitrust Suit

adeelarshad82 writes "Intel has responded to the Federal Trade Commission's antitrust investigation, unsurprisingly challenging the FTC's allegations as well as criticizing the agency for what the company calls an attempt 'to turn Intel into a public utility.' The motion is a response to the FTC's December announcement of a lawsuit brought by the FTC, accusing Intel of anti-competitive practices. Intel also goes on to provide a paragraph-by-paragraph rebuttal of the FTC's complaint and proposed remedy, although most of the company's response seems designed to promote the impression that those that failed, failed on their own."

I don't quite get it...

[i_ate_god]

I could have sworn that at one time, the Athlon was king of the world, then the Core 2 Duo's came out and Intel was king of the world since because AMD hasn't made a superior CPU.

Is Intel supposed to purposefully degrade the quality of their product? What is it that they did that has the FTC crying foul?

Re:I don't quite get it...

[archer, the]

Also, there were rumors that if a motherboard manufacturer was thinking of making new AMD boards, Intel allegedly would hint that the manufacturer might face a shortage of Intel chipsets.

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/early-athlon-motherboard-review,123-2.html?xtmc=athlon_boards_chipset_shortage_taipei&xtcr=2 [tomshardware.com]

Re:I don't quite get it...

[cheesybagel]

AMD could not manage to sell their processors for more money, because Intel basically used their cash reserves and market power to undermine AMD. Intel basically threatened manufacturers that would buy AMD that they would suddenly start paying much more expensive prices, than Intel exclusive manufacturers. This caused AMD to lose a lot of customers. It was claimed AMD got its first major OEM win (Compaq) by essentially giving its processors away for free. If AMD had sold its processors for more, they could have had the money to build new fabs, or have more design teams. You have to remember AMD has like one CPU design team, and one shrink team, while Intel has at least 2 designs teams, and separate shrink teams. So Intel can afford to fail more when designing CPUs while AMD has to get everything right.

Re:The general problem Intel has

[Locke2005]

ARM is a CPU designer, not a CPU manufacturer. I probably should have restricted my statement to x86 compatible [wikipedia.org] or PC CPUs; there is room for more than three embedded CPU manufacturers. If we're talking about companies that actually have the fabs to compete with Intel, we're talking AMD, IBM, and TSMC. Possibly also UMC, Fujitsu, and National Semiconductor. So you are correct, about 7 companies, not 3. With multi-billion dollar barriers to entry, the high-end semiconductor industry does look a lot like a natural monopoly, even though, as you point out, it technically is not.