FTC Introduces New Orders For Intel; No Bundling 155
eldavojohn writes "Today a decision was handed down (PDF) from the FTC that underlined new guidelines for Intel in the highly anticipated investigation. Biggest result: the practices Intel employed, like bundling prices to get manufacturers like Dell to block sales of competitors' chips, must stop. No word yet on whether or not Intel will face monetary fines from the FTC like they did in Europe over the same monopolistic practices."
Re:So what does it mean for us? (Score:5, Insightful)
This order just prevents them from trimming PCIe so as to make their GPU the only thing with a fast enough connection to the CPU that it isn't a total joke.
Non-issue. Intel will just re-word their contracts (Score:1, Insightful)
The agency said Intel forced computer makers into exclusive deals and blocked rivals from making their chips work with Intel’s.
Forced? How'd they do that? Giving a customer a good deal doesn't mean they are forced into doing business. Intel showed a profit, so they weren't exactly dumping chips either. I think it's a good thing Intel "blocked rivals" from making compatible chips. While Intel was busy screwing up Itanium, AMD came out with a good 64-bit technology, which Intel is now using. That saved us all from having to switch to Itanium (thanks, AMD!)
How will this change? Intel knows how many systems Dell, HP and others ship. They don't have to sign exclusive deals, but they can sign "volume sales" deals. Where does the huge discount kick in? At X units (where X is just about what your total sales forecast is).
Re:Non-issue. Intel will just re-word their contra (Score:5, Insightful)
You obviously aren't familiar with the business practices that led to this ruling. Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs) like dell, hp, acer, lenovo, etc. get wholesale prices negotiated directly with Intel. It was suggested that if one of these OEMs was rumored to be in talks to offer an AMD proc system Intel would send a rep to advise them that they could no longer offer them preferred OEM pricing and the OEM would need to find a third party supplier to purchase their Intel chips in the future. Basically making the OEM buy their chips at retail prices. If you are looking at 20-30% increase in the cost of your primary component in an already tight margin product or shuttle your plans it's not hard to make that decision.
You also probably weren't aware of just how right your statement about the Itanium vs x64 was either. The Itanium was Intel's attempt to lock AMD out of the "clone" market because AMD didn't have a cross license to use the Itanium architecture. If the Itanium had succeeded there would no longer be a choice of processor for Intel based systems. Fortunately the Pentium 4 was a dog and ran very hot and consumed massive amounts of electricity. AMD meanwhile didn't rest on their laurels and came up with the x64 extensions which gave new life to the x86 line. Developers liked the x64 extensions because they didn't have to rewrite their code from scratch so it caught on quickly and Intel eventually licensed the x64 extensions from AMD.
FTC (Score:5, Insightful)
If that's really the case, why aren't you putting a stop to carrier lock-in for cellphones? Some of those agreements are WAY more anti-competitive than any Intel contract ever was.
Re:So what does it mean for us? (Score:3, Insightful)
really? whats competative at the $300 point with AMD Phenom II X6 1090T from Intel?
The benchmarks I've seen show even an i5 being competitive with a Phenom II X6, let alone an i7. And if you're really looking for the best possible mult-threaded performance -- which is the only reason for buying a 6-core CPU -- why would you settle for second best?
Do you seriously think that AMD would be selling their top of the range CPUs for $300 if they didn't have to in order to compete with Intel's?
Re:Non-issue. Intel will just re-word their contra (Score:3, Insightful)
From TFA:
The agency said Intel forced computer makers into exclusive deals and blocked rivals from making their chips work with Intel’s.
Forced? How'd they do that?
Easy: Let's say Dell sells 50 million machine a year, and they are using 100% Intel chips. AMD wants to supply some of their business, and makes a bid to sell Dell as many processors as they can make (let's say 20 million). Dell wants to take the deal, and buy the remaining 30 million processors from Intel, but Intel informs them that if they do any business with AMD, Intel no longer supply processors for them (or will supply them at a much higher price than previously). Dell, faced with the choice of losing a supplier they must have to be in business, makes the only logical choice and doesn't buy from AMD.
On to your second point:
I think it's a good thing Intel "blocked rivals" from making compatible chips. While Intel was busy screwing up Itanium, AMD came out with a good 64-bit technology, which Intel is now using. That saved us all from having to switch to Itanium (thanks, AMD!)
"Blocking rivals from making compatible chips" isn't at issue here. Everyone does that; the x86 cross-licensing deal between Intel and AMD is unique among the industry. No one is saying that AMD should have been allowed to make an Itanium clone.
How will this change? Intel knows how many systems Dell, HP and others ship. They don't have to sign exclusive deals, but they can sign "volume sales" deals. Where does the huge discount kick in? At X units (where X is just about what your total sales forecast is).
Volume sales deals aren't illegal. Making your volume sales deal contingent on not doing business with a rival? That's a different story. In the example above, Intel would still be able to tell Dell that they would get a discount if they purchased 50 million processors, but AMD still must be allowed to say, "Hey Dell, we think you can sell 10 million extra units if you build machines around our processors". However, I don't know if the details of the FTC judgement would restrict this sort of volume deal for the duration of the supervisory period.
Re:Non-issue. Intel will just re-word their contra (Score:3, Insightful)
The point being that X should be the same for all the customers
There is no statutory or regulatory rules that says you can't give certain customers better prices. Companies do it all the time and face no legal issues by doing so.
If it is not it only means that they are making you pay Intel because you sell many AMDs.
If one was selling so many AMDs why would they care about losing their deal with Intel? If it was really as lucrative to sell AMD chips as people like to claim it would have been everyone would have just been exclusively using or heavily selling on AMD chips.
Re:So what does it mean for us? (Score:2, Insightful)
Other than, of course, the fact that an intel GPU comes on the die of every intel CPU sold, atoms excepted(for now).
BULLSHIT. Intel do seem to be planning to go down that road but right now the only intel chips with a GPU on the cpu are the dual core i series chips and the pine trail atoms.
The quad-core and 6-core nahelm chips don't have any support for shared memory graphics at all afaict so you have to combine them with a graphics card/chip that has it's own memory (which most likely for a desktop means a nvidia or ATI card).
The older core 2 stuff uses a conventional FSB setup with any shared memory graphics being up to the chipset.
Sandy bridge will apparently be brining in on-die graphics to all intels mainstream chips.
Re:sandy bridge, AMD APUs (Score:3, Insightful)
It makes absolutely no difference to AMD because they haven't been investigated for anti trust issues and currently have such a low percentage of the overall market for PC chips that they are unlikely to ever get investigated.
The rules change for the abusive monopolists, not for their illegally stifled competitors