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Timeline Set for Intel/AMD Antitrust Trial

Posted by CowboyNeal on Sat Apr 22, 2006 12:49 PM
from the squaring-off dept.
Government The Courts Intel AMD News
Vitaly Friedman writes "The stage is set for the biggest tech battle in years: the antitrust lawsuit filed by AMD against rival Intel. What sort of effect is it likely to have on the industry and the consumer? From the article: 'Last year, the company filed an antitrust lawsuit against Intel, claiming that their rival had "unlawfully maintained its monopoly by engaging in a relentless, worldwide campaign to coerce customers to refrain from dealing with AMD" for more than ten years. AMD has already subpoenaed computer manufacturers, retailers, and even Microsoft to provide documentation pertaining to the case. Now, the timeline has been set for the trial of the Megayear to commence.'"
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[+] New York Launches Intel Antitrust Investigation 66 comments
Multiple users have notified us of reports that the Attorney General of New York has initiated an antitrust investigation of Intel. The EU served Intel with similar charges last July, and AMD has been battling Intel over antitrust issues for some time. Quoting the New York Times: "The subpoenas from Mr. Cuomo's office will seek internal memos, billing documents, and correspondence between Intel and its customers to determine whether the company engaged in a variety of anticompetitive practices, like penalized customers, primarily computer manufacturers, for purchasing processors from competitors or improperly paying customers to use Intel chips exclusively. Chuck Mulloy, a spokesman for Intel, said the company would comply with Mr. Cuomo's subpoena but denied any illegality."
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Timeline Set for Intel/AMD Antitrust Trial 25 Comments More /

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  • Megayear? (Score:5, Funny)

    by gEvil (beta) (945888) on Saturday April 22 2006, @12:54PM (#15181006)
    Megayear? Don't you mean Mebiyear?

  • Great.... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by ZoneGray (168419) on Saturday April 22 2006, @12:57PM (#15181022) Homepage
    Just seems strange.... Intel is the one accused of antitrust violations.... meanwhile the lawyers for the two sides get together and agree that it will take them two or three years to figure it all out.

    • Re:Great.... (Score:5, Funny)

      by smitty_one_each (243267) * on Saturday April 22 2006, @01:05PM (#15181059) Homepage Journal
      Exactly what part of "billable hours" seemed strange to you?

    • That's an easy 5-pointer (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Infonaut (96956) <infonaut@gmail.com> on Saturday April 22 2006, @01:51PM (#15181267) Homepage Journal

      Just seems strange.... Intel is the one accused of antitrust violations.... meanwhile the lawyers for the two sides get together and agree that it will take them two or three years to figure it all out.

      It's called civil procedure [wikipedia.org] and it is in place to ensure that each side gets an opportunity to bring in all relevant parties, conduct thorough discovery, and reach a decision that isn't arrived at in an arbitrary fashion. It's certainly not perfect, but if you were charged with a violation that could seriously affect your business, you'd want all the facts to be laid out on the table before a judge just arbitrarily swooped in and made a decision based on idle whim.

      Sure, lawyers make money when companies have disputes. Perhaps that's just the sad side effect of the rule of law in a complex society. The discovery process in particular takes a very long time because finding all of the pertient information in a suit involving two massive organizations, spanning a period of many years is not easy.

      Nobody wants the alternative, a society without laws, where the party that can dish out the most physical violence wins the dispute. Then again, lawyers are convenient scapegoats for all the wrongs of our society. It makes sense. After all, nobody really cares all that much for plumbers until their drain gets backed up.

      • Despite Intel's alleged transgressions, AMD is kicking Intel's butt badly in the marketplace. All that's being accomplished by this suit is to settle up between the two companies on a past dispute. AMD's value won't go up much if they win, and Intel's won't decrease much if they lose. It will have NO effect on the current or future marktetplace. In fact, Intel to this day is threatening a price war, it's just that they can't pull it off they way they used to (all they're doing is dumping $50 Celerons; w

  • Intel gets screwed either way (Score:4, Insightful)

    by the_humeister (922869) on Saturday April 22 2006, @12:57PM (#15181023)
    If they continue to do what they're allegedly doing, they might lose the case. If they relent a little, AMD its marketshare. At least the consumers win though.

  • Timeline (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Metabolife (961249) on Saturday April 22 2006, @12:59PM (#15181033)
    The trial is set to take place in 2008, don't know why this wansn't mentioned in the summary. It's hard to predict an outcome in this case. Was Intel simply using normal business sense when they tried to retain their power? It's not illegal to have a monopoly, but when you start harming the consumer things change. Did the large discounts Intel offered its customers to stay Intel harm the consumer or help? I'm sure many smaller businesses benefited from buying a certain number of (similarly priced to AMD) Intel chips to gain a discount. Isn't that creating more competition in the end? This case could set a precedent for what constitutes illegal practices by a larger company.

    • Re:Timeline (Score:4, Insightful)

      by gEvil (beta) (945888) on Saturday April 22 2006, @01:16PM (#15181106)
      This case could set a precedent for what constitutes illegal practices by a larger company.
      Since the case only starts in 2008, this is largely dependent on who is elected president that year. If we end up with another pro-business administration, this case probably won't have any effect whatsoever. If we end up with a more consumer-friendly administration, then yes, this could be a precedent-setting case. Of course, this all assumes that Intel is found guilty, which isn't a particularly wise assumption to make at this stage.
      • You're assuming that someone "pro-business" will favor an Intel monopoly, while someone who isn't "pro-business" will favor a level playing field on which AMD (and others) can fairly compete with Intel. So here we are, in a time and place where business is supposed to be capitalist and capitalism is supposed to both thrive on and require free competition, yet it seems like a reasonable thing (to at least some of us) to say that the "pro-business" course is actually the one where competition is stifled and m
  • Come watch at the Court of the Mega-arena as two eternal rivals are pitted against each other in the legal battle of the century! </voice style="monster_truck">

    Will AMD take revenge upon Intel? Will Intel be crushed under years of litigation from AMD? Watch for the exciting conclusion next time on, "The Processors." <soap_opera>

  • Great News (Score:5, Insightful)

    by egarland (120202) on Saturday April 22 2006, @01:30PM (#15181180)
    It's pretty obvious from the current Dell situation that Intel has tried to keep AMD out and that's illegal.

    Anti-competitive behavior hurts everyone. It hurts the customers, the economy, competitors and eventually erodes the competitive spirit of the company engaging in it.

    Anti-competitive behavior seems to be running rampant these days and its important that Intel get in trouble for it. If they get away with it sends a signal to the business community that it's ok, everyone can do it. If they get meaningfully punished it will send a signal to businesses to clean up their acts and play fair.

    The capitalist economic system requires fair competition to work properly. The computers and electronics industries have gone far away from fair competition and everything needs a real shake up.

  • I'll be interesting to see outcome (Score:4, Interesting)

    by drpimp (900837) on Saturday April 22 2006, @01:45PM (#15181240) Journal
    Speaking of Dell (Dintel) and them aquiring AlienWare (AMDware), and rumored they will still be using AMD cpus this begs the question. Will Intel pressure them to convert AlienWare purchases to Intel chips in due time? On the other hand, about market share, consider that Intel puts out so many, and so catchy ads on TV that no wonder they have such a huge market share. Unless I am blind I have not seen an AMD commercial. Just goes to show so many commercials for Intel, even if I did see an AMD commercial at some point, obviously it did stick into memory!

  • Question for the hardware techies (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Starker_Kull (896770) on Saturday April 22 2006, @02:05PM (#15181322)
    Is there really that much of a difference between using an Intel chip and an AMD chip? I know you need different motherboards and chipsets, but isn't that about it? As far as I understand, there is no difference in the applications, other hardware, etc. So the only thing you would have to maintain (as a boxmaker) is another set of motherboard specs and the BIOSes for them, and in exchange you get (today) better performing chips for the wattage. The fact that a massive organization like Dell has not done so leads me to think that Intel has been doing some arm-twisting.

    OTOH, with Apple, which likes working with as small a set of hardware combinations as possible, I can see why they would only want to maintain one microprocessor family, motherboard chipset, etc.

    So hard would it really be (financially, organizationally) for a Dell, Gateway or Apple to add the AMD chip to its lineup? Anyone have any concrete knowledge about this?

    • Re:Question for the hardware techies (Score:5, Informative)

      by Courageous (228506) on Saturday April 22 2006, @02:14PM (#15181365)
      Is there really that much of a difference between using an Intel chip and an AMD chip?

      Yes. However, it has more to do with the integrated IO fabric (hypertransport) than it does with the aspects of the chip that you consider traditional duties of a chip. The AMD solution is highly differentiated from Intel in this way, although the impact to single-CPU system purchasers is minimal. AMD becomes truly distinct as a platform solution at CPU counts > 2. In this market, Intel really is being hurt by AMD right now.

      C//
      • Exactly. You don't have to know anything at all to instantly feel the massive performance difference that AMD provides over Intel on a dual CPU system. On a dual-CPU AMD Opteron we saw nearly a 100% improvement on a CPU-bound multi-threaded app (nature of the app is that it accesses roughly 1G memory in a fairly regular pattern). On Intel dual Xeons we measured only 27% improvement.

        On a non-multithreaded app the two boxes are neck and neck. The above figures are for Opteron 32 bit vs. Xeon 32 bit.

        Plus, I

  • The case seems to be based on pricing (Score:5, Informative)

    by twfry (266215) on Saturday April 22 2006, @03:21PM (#15181635)
    From the limited pieces of info I've seen, the case seems to focus on pricing.

    Basically Intel had capacity to supply over 90% of the market. They would price the first 80% of the chips high and then use "volume discounts" for the last 10% of chips sold, taking them from 80% to 90% market share. Normally this is legal.

    However, the end result was that the "volume discounts" priced the chips between 80% and 90% market share at below the cost to produce them.

    In order for AMD to get more than 10% market share, they had to compete with Intel on this 80% to 90% market share area. But since Intel priced these below cost to manufacture, AMD could not compete.

    From what I've seen Intel could be in serious trouble if this holds up because AMD could claim damages on the revenues of 10% market share over 10 years.

    • Re:Monopoly? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by gEvil (beta) (945888) on Saturday April 22 2006, @01:21PM (#15181128)
      According to this article, [arstechnica.com] they've only recently hit 20%. That's a long way from 50%. It's certainly a respectable number, but Intel could easily keep them at bay by employing illegal tactics.
      • The article says AMD has 20% market share, not 50%. Oops. Still, the fact that AMD was able to wrest 20% of the market away from Intel seems to imply that Intel doesn't have monopoly power, and whatever power Intel has is steadily eroding. I don't think an antitrust suit is justified.

        Think a little bit man!

        What if AMD's chips were better than Intel's in every conceivable aspect (price, preformance, power dissipation, etc) and they can only manage a 20% market share? Doesn't that scream that's there's an ar
        • "What if AMD's chips were better than Intel's in every conceivable aspect (price, preformance, power dissipation, etc) and they can only manage a 20% market share? Doesn't that scream that's there's an artificial constraint placed on the market somehow?"

          No. Inferior products win all the time. Oh, and on a totally unrelated note, Intel markets their brand. There are Intel commercials on TV. From a mass-market (i.e. not well informed) perspective, how can AMD be seen as anything other than a cheap knock-o
        • What if AMD's chips were better than Intel's in every conceivable aspect (price, preformance, power dissipation, etc) and they can only manage a 20% market share? Doesn't that scream that's there's an artificial constraint placed on the market somehow?

          Sure- there is an artificial constraint at play here, but that constraint is AMD's lack of foresight to invest in manufacturing technology and capacity like Intel has. Quite simple, AMD lacks the ability to fill the kind of volume and low defect rates that th

      • Re:Monopoly? (Score:5, Insightful)

        by NutscrapeSucks (446616) on Saturday April 22 2006, @01:48PM (#15181258)
        AMD has had about 20% of the CPU market for 10 years now, so nothing is eroding. Their problem is that it has been the worst 20% (least profitable consumer segmenet for the most part, alhtough that's changing).

        Intel's argument is:
        (1) AMD sells every CPU it can possibly make
        (2) AMD only has capacity for ~20% of the market
        (3) The fact that AMD can't make profits on these CPUs is AMD's problem, not Intel's.

        • Eh (Score:3, Interesting)

          by TubeSteak (669689)
          Those are very good points, but they are not a defense against monopoly behavior.

          AMD doesn't have to prove that Intel's tactics caused damages, merely that Intel has "unlawfully maintained its monopoly by engaging in a relentless, worldwide campaign to coerce customers to refrain from dealing with AMD".

          Proving damages and proving illegal behavior are two separate things. Even behavior that wasn't successful in thwarting AMD could still be ruled illegal under anti-trust laws.

          If AMD wins, they may get damages

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