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AMD Subpoenas Skype

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Wed Mar 01, 2006 04:29 PM
from the who-didn't-see-this-coming dept.
AMD The Courts
I_am_Rambi writes "AMD has issued a subpoena to Skype in the battle of the anti-trust case against Intel. From the article: 'AMD is now focusing on a feature in Skype 2.0 that enables the ability to make 10-person conference calls only with Intel dual-core processors. Users with AMD dual-core chips or single-core chips are restricted to hosting five-person conference calls because only Intel's chips offer the performance necessary to host the 10-way call, according to Skype. [...] Skype's software is using a function called "GetCPUID" to permit 10-way conference calls only when that function detects an Intel dual-core processor on start-up.'"

Related Stories

[+] Intel and Skype Exclude AMD 492 comments
Raenex writes "CNET is reporting that Intel and Skype have signed an exclusive deal that would cap the number of conference call members on all but Intel architecture. Skype will only offer 10-way conference calls on specific Intel chips while other chips, including all AMD chips, will only offer 5-way conference calls. From the article: 'Though few would argue that a niche feature like that is going to be a deal breaker for most PC buyers, the importance of the Skype-Intel alliance goes well beyond VoIP conferencing. Indeed, it's the latest, and certainly most prominent, example of Intel's new take on marketing: Lock in software partners as well as the PC makers.'"
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  • Do we have evidence that Intel coerced... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by mrhandstand (233183) on Wednesday March 01 2006, @04:33PM (#14830504) Journal
    Skype into this relationship? Why is this not a perfectly acceptable competitive advantage offered to a partner?

    Not trolling...whats the skinny on this issue?

    • Re:Do we have evidence that Intel coerced... (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Azarael (896715) on Wednesday March 01 2006, @04:39PM (#14830562) Homepage
      IANAL, but I would guess that that is one of the things that AMD is looking to find out with their Subpoena. I think either Intel or Skype would be hard pressed to provide a valid reason why the limit is put in place. Imagine if the publisher a game certified by nVidia decided to limit the maximum resolution possible on ATI cards.
      [ Parent ]
    • Let's say you go down to your local store and buy a bag of Doritos.
      Now let's say you go buy a 2 Liter of Coka Cola. Unbeknownst to you, the seasoning in the doritos reacts violently with Coke and produces sulfer, thus making you spew out the contents in y
      • Depends who put it there. If Doritos put it there, hey, its Doritos product, and it is a free market. The consumer will decide whether they want to consume doritos with an alternate beverage or consume another chip.

        If however Pepsi had some say in the de

        • Re:Depends (Score:2)

          by shawb (16347)
          PepsiCo owns Frito-Lay, who makes Doritos. I assume this is what the GrandParent was talking about.

      • Re:Do we have evidence that Intel coerced... (Score:4, Funny)

        by shawnce (146129) on Wednesday March 01 2006, @04:52PM (#14830691) Homepage
        Dear Kookus,

        We at Pepsi Co. are looking to employ talented, capable, and visionary individuals like yourself. If you are interested in an exciting career with us please reply so we can setup a first round of interviews.

        Sincerely,

        The Man
        Pepsi Co.
        [ Parent ]
    • I guess that's probably why they're subpoenaing them (i.e. to answer that exact question). It's very hard to see what's in this for Skype though. It's hard to claim it is a "business partnership" if it is one-way, and AMD can't get in on the action. Dis

    • Skype into this relationship? Why is this not a perfectly acceptable competitive advantage offered to a partner?

      If Intel is shown to be a monopoly then this is pretty clearly trying to build an artificial barrier to entry and concievably runs afoul a nu

          • Re:Do we have evidence that Intel coerced... (Score:5, Insightful)

            by Grishnakh (216268) on Wednesday March 01 2006, @05:37PM (#14831054) Homepage
            There's a big difference between Microsoft and Intel: there is no drop-in replacement for Microsoft software. While MS is clearly a monopoly with 90-95% of the OS market, the competitors (Linux, MacOS) aren't really drop-in replacements. MacOS only runs on Macs, and runs entirely different application software. Linux will run on the same hardware, but again doesn't run the same software (WINE sometimes works, but that's not very robust).

            So when MS gets in a little trouble, there's still no big danger to them because there's no competitor out there selling drop-in replacements for their software with 100% compatibility.

            Intel, OTOH, faces a significant threat from AMD. AMD's chips are better designed, and produce better performance while consuming less power. And with this, AMD's chips run all the same software that Intel's do, so there's nothing technical that locks you into one company over the other. The only big problem AMD has is that they don't have the fab capacity to match Intel's. Also, Intel's stock has been doing quite poorly for the past few years. While revenue has been at record levels, the stock price keeps stagnating. AMD's stock, OTOH, has been doing great.

            As AMD grows and gains fab capacity, they're able to keep taking from Intel's dwindling marketshare. In the face of this threat, Intel is countering not by investing in engineering and improving their products, but by making a big new marketing campaign (notice their new logo?), and attempting more slimy, underhanded deals like this thing with Skype. All in all, it doesn't bode well for Intel.
            [ Parent ]
            • I read that already, that was in one of the linked sources. I was wondering, did you actually see a rep from either company claim that AMD chips are incapable of hosting a conference call of 10 people? I believe you that it would be false if they did claim
    • Imagine if Intel paid Apple/Microsoft to artificially limit the performance of the next Mac OSX/MS Vista unless the computer is running the new Intel CPU.

      Why is this not a perfectly acceptable competitive advantage offered to a partner?
    • I think there is a blurry line drawn in the sand where fair business practice is separated from monopolistic and unfair business practice. AMD thinks
      Skype is walking the line or may have crossed over it. But I'm just some guy and thats just what I think.
    • Skype into this relationship? Why is this not a perfectly acceptable competitive advantage offered to a partner?

      You are right, Anti-competitive practices are perfectly acceptible in a free market. If, I want to bundle my stereo system with a certain type
    • Why is this not a perfectly acceptable competitive advantage offered to a partner?

      It is...... Except if your a monopoly, monopolies have to follow different rules. Intel has yet to be declared a monopoly (or to have violated anti-trust in some way), but th
    • Intel abusing market power to (re)cement a monopoly, maybe? Deliberate hindering of competitors through shady deals with third parties? Punishing consumers by artificially limiting what they can do just because they didn't buy from the right vendor?

    • Because it's pointless? (Score:3, Insightful)

      by BobPaul (710574) *
      From the article:
      A Skype executive declined to comment earlier this month when asked whether the company had tested the performance of its software on both Intel's and AMD's dual-core chips. An Intel representative confirmed that there are no instructions
  • As multiple people pointed out, there was no way that this was going to slip through. http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/02/13/20152 3 6/ [slashdot.org] Intel isn't helping their legal cause when they are waving a red flag waving 'we are anti-competative'.

  • Heh. (Score:2)

    by failure-man (870605)
    And I thought the Intel compiler ignoring features of AMD chips when it knows full well how to use them was brazen . . . . . . .

    • Re:Heh. (Score:2)

      by Lehk228 (705449)
      not supporting or optimizing for your competitors is just fine, going out of your way to disrupt or disable their products is not.
  • I wonder how easy would it be to set up an environment variable for "GetCPUID" and have it return a different CPU-ID to the program? If that is possible, I'd like to know how and set my computer to return and INTEL CPU. Once done, I'd like try Skype out wi
    • But then your computer would fall over in a steaming heap as software attempted to use Intel specific instructions.

      I think it's probably easier to just patch the ID test in software that uses it.
    • That's basically how VM Ware works on Windows. It runs the code, but traps privileged instructions and handles them it's self (I realize this is a rough description). Using the same methods I don't see why you couldn't trap a CPUID instruction.

      That said,

      • But a user fo skype could patch the client such that the jmp if uses based on that turns from a condition branch to a unconditional branch. That would break the "functionality".
  • about processor speed it could simply have a list of processor minimums that it checked against. Or allow the user to set the parameter much the way video clips let you pick "Broadband" or "56k modem".

  • That's a pretty flimsy excuse... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Weaselmancer (533834) on Wednesday March 01 2006, @04:37PM (#14830541)

    ...only Intel's chips offer the performance necessary to host the 10-way call, according to Skype.

    And every other piece of software on the shelf just has the requirements written on the box, and it's up to the user to make sure your system is up to spec. But for some reason, Skype, and only Skype, has to check your CPU's make. Not clockspeed, not memory, not cache or storage space but cpu manufacturer to run.

    They're gonna get nailed on this one. Hard. And they deserve it.

    • They're gonna get nailed on this one. Hard. And they deserve it.

      Well, AMD is certainly gonna try. And I wonder what the hell Intel is up to. From the outside, it appears that they handed AMD some massive smoking-gun evidence for their lawsuit, in exch

  • Next Target? (Score:3, Funny)

    by aftk2 (556992) on Wednesday March 01 2006, @04:38PM (#14830551) Homepage Journal
    Apple, for failing to include AMD processors in their offerings, upon their switch to x86.
    • I think that's a different case. That decision could easily have been based on the chipsets available for Intel that included the Trusted Computing (or whatever the name is) features they desired. Also, isn't the switch also to do with the performance-per-

  • That took longer then I thought (Score:3, Insightful)

    by SmallFurryCreature (593017) on Wednesday March 01 2006, @04:39PM (#14830556) Journal
    Gee, artificially limiting your product to work best with a company under constant scrutiny for being an unfair monopoly. Doesn't skype have any lawyers?

    Then again it says a lot about skype that they even put in a hard limit in their software. Since hardware is improving all the time this will make your software quickly fall behind. It is like those software installers that check the platform string and refuse to install if it doesn't match their list. So you have to hack the game to work install on w2k3 (MS greatest gaming platform ever, would want it in a server room but runs games perfectly).

    Even if intel launches some 6hgz chip skype would still be limited to 10 callers. Even if you run it on a super computer, skype would still be limited by 10 callers.

    Oh well, pretty much everyone here on slashdot predicted this would end up in court.

    Limiting your online product to a segment of the market. Oh yeah, the bubble is back with a vengenance. Does their website insist you run IE as well?

  • I wonder if the reaction would still be the same if it was AMD that was chosen by Skype for the 10-way call feature.

    • I wonder if the reaction would still be the same if it was AMD that was chosen by Skype for the 10-way call feature.

      I'm sure Intel would respond in similalr fassion. But the geek-public public wouldn't mind as much, heck some would probably be cheering th
      • AS opposed to those angels* the run AMD.

        Of course, I've been reading slashdot for so long, I remember when all the jokes were at AMD's expense.

        *by angels, I mean lying bastards who have released chips knowing full well applications with a wide user base wo
  • After all, Intel has strong-armed virtually all the major PC manufacturers to feature Intel chips or face their wrath.

    Threats such as retroactively withdrawing rebates and removing future discounts on chip purchases have ensured that the major PC manufact

  • I wonder what the Mac users think about Macs now having Monopolistic Intel making the most important hardware component in their ideal computers.

    I'm obviously not a mac user. But I know that the Mac users made heavy use of evil monopoly mentality to sto
  • Skype should be ashamed of themselves. If anything, they should simply check CPU usage and warn against adding more callers when there isn't sufficient horsepower left in the tank for a good connection. To claim, however, that only Intel dual cores have
  • ... whether AMD's lawyers hibernate during the winter? That might explain why this took so long, I have been waiting for this to happen since that deal was announced.

  • iChat can do 10-way audio using a G3 (Score:5, Interesting)

    by cuijian (110696) * on Wednesday March 01 2006, @05:02PM (#14830785)
    If Skype really needs extra horsepower for a 10-way audio conference it is impressively lame.

    I understand the real time encoding and decoding required for multiperson video is processor intensive but audio streams should be pretty light weight. iChat AV can support 10-way audio conferencing using the now ancient G3 processor. http://www.apple.com/ichat/ [apple.com]
    • iChat AV can support 10-way audio conferencing using the now ancient G3 processor.

      Not quite. Someone using a G3 can participate in a 10-way conference, but the more intensive task of mixing those 10 audio streams requires (according to the very page you l

  • I've said this before (Score:4, Funny)

    by m50d (797211) on Wednesday March 01 2006, @05:36PM (#14831051) Homepage Journal
    AMD should set their CPUID to "GenuineIntel". It's for interoperability grounds - Intel have shown they will use it to try and damage the performance of programs on AMD machines - so there shouldn't be any trademark issue, and it would stop this kind of crap once and for all.

  • Ignore Skype, go Camfrog (Score:3, Informative)

    by Khyber (864651) <khyberkitsune@gmail.com> on Wednesday March 01 2006, @06:32PM (#14831435) Journal
    Processor usage for video/audio in a one-on-one convo in Skype ~85%

    Processor usage in a camfrog chat room handling up to 100 camera streams (101 including your own video stream) and a dedicated audio stream (half-duplex) ~30%

    Bear in mind that my Pentium 4 was one of the FIRST ever released, with a shameful 256KB of L2 cache (as opposed to the 512KB or 1 Meg in current-gen P4 processors.)

    So, I call bullshit on Skype. They just don't have a clue about optimization and streamlined code. I see their program getting larger and larger with each update. Camfrog gets smaller. Camfrog used to be 4 megs, now it's 3.4 megs, and they're improving with each version as well. I paid my $50 for the ability to view 100 cameras at the same time (depending upon my internet pipeline, of course) and I'll testify that while Camfrog has no conference call features (AS OF YET,) it far pounds Skype into the dirt, video, audio, and general speed. Skype starts lagging after a while, Camfrog has yet to really do that unless I'm running many other programs at the same time, but it does manage to keep up.

    *Uninstalls Skype from his computer*

      • Re:Ignore Skype, go Camfrog (Score:3, Informative)

        by Khyber (864651)
        VMWare, hell even WINE will run camfrog under Linux or OSX. You may not see the speeds, yet, but it does indeed work. Go read on the forums on camfrog (if you can stand to read about useless complaints and find the decent topics)
    • If this was the case I'm sure it would have been in the release notes or FAQ page. What happened here (I believe) was Skype and Intel had a press release that stated that you could only have 10 user calls with the awesome power of Intel hardware.
      • But, having the right to do it doesn't mean they SHOULD do it. It's not entirely wrong, but it's also not appropriate.
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