Intel is accused of bribery and coercion

intel corrupt? tell us something we dont already know!

I't seems obvious that AMD started this barrage of lawsuits in order to damage Intel and improve their own sales.
However it doesn't seem like the OEM's are pleased to be "freed from Intels yoke" in this manner. At least I haven't heard of any uptake in sales at AMD since the EU's verdict in May.

They thought they were hurting the competitor but they might end up hurting their biggest customers instead. Biting the hands that feeds them.

And what about us the users? Would we really have been happier with less unreliable AMD systems we could have had back then? Is price and performance really the only things that matter? I mean Dell have said for many years they protect the customers by only selling quality products. Isn't there some truth to it? In my experience there is.

And who ends up paying for these large fines that Intel must pay? Isn't it again the little man ie. you and me?

the only people who end up paying these large fines are people who buy intel products and if you ask me, they deserve every ripoff they get.

unless they wise up to the con and stop buying overpriced, underperforming intel cack - at least then something positive will have come from the scamming chipzilla

"I't seems obvious that AMD started this barrage of lawsuits in order to damage Intel and improve their own sales."

You bet AMD did, they sued Intel for a fair shake at the market. Keep in mind that if it weren't for AMD you wouldn't be paying the prices for processors you are now and we might still be using Pentium 4's...

"At least I haven't heard of any uptake in sales at AMD since the EU's verdict in May."

And you won't. The game is still about the best tech. Right now Intel has the best tech and will continue to do better until AMD has a solid competitor in performance. Price is an all together different story. Hopefully law suits such as this will allow AMD to compete better in the low end market where thier solution is better than Intels.

"They thought they were hurting the competitor but they might end up hurting their biggest customers instead."

Their biggest customers are consumers, not PC makers. And I want more competition and choice when purchasing a computer. Competition breeds lower prices and better tech.

"And what about us the users? Would we really have been happier with less unreliable AMD systems we could have had back then? Is price and performance really the only things that matter? I mean Dell have said for many years they protect the customers by only selling quality products. Isn't there some truth to it?"

Show me one independent report stating that AMD processors are less reliable than Intel. In all honesty, I think this was a rumor started by Intel.

"And who ends up paying for these large fines that Intel must pay?"

That's the beauty of it, Intel pays all the fines. There is now way that Intel would trickle down the cost to us. If they did, that would give AMD even more of a price advantage than they already have.

cheers-

"And what about us the users? Would we really have been happier with less unreliable AMD systems we could have had back then?"

I've been very happy with my Athlon XP and Athlon64, thank you!

Technically and price wise AMD was actually on top at the time, and quite a good portion of initiated customers wanted AMD stuff. It was a big mystery why Dell refused to sell the stuff requested by their customers...

Tomas, Do you need any more inputs than provided above?

Intel my foot. Evil corporation.

Whether you like Amd or not you would be paying $400.for a low end single 32bit cpu and a small fortune for a high end.
Amd has been the innovator with 64 bit and 2 core cpu, Intel has been forced to lower prices and build faster cpu's.
In build my own boxes over the years I have always used Amd. The equivalent Intel cpu was a least 4 times the cost and slower.And it is more than obvious Intel has bullied every Oem around.

Intel has been violating law for decades and consumers are the losers as a result of Intel's illegally gotten monopoly and manipulation of the marketplace. Now it's time to fine Intel at least $500 Billion for their crimes plus all cost of litigation, to be paid to AMD for their losses.

All the machine I build were AMD and will be AMD.
I'm not going back to the dark ages of computing where a low end Pentium would cost me an ARM or a leg with a crappy Microsoft OS that's invested with bad software design and virus.

Where was it again that AMD / GloFo is just setting up a new fab?

Isn't it in the state of New York?

Uhhh, worried about yield and utilisation and sales numbers?

No worries, New York's Attorney General Andrew Cuomo will rush to the rescue.

Come on, gimme a break, this is obvious.

P.S.:
AMD has offered or even has given away 100000 CPUs for free.
Can this be considered selling under cost?

P.P.S.:
Any news from Wyoming, Alaska, Nebraska, Montana?

I were just about to order an AMD quad core CPU with 45 watts plus mobo.

Gotta rethink that now.

Fred...U dumb ass...you should rethink...

U don't need quad-core for processing your dumb thoughts. Go for single core....that might match your speed.

Rethink.....my foot.

People such as Tomas are many and as such are ones who only see that they BEST companies are those who are the Biggest such as Intel.
You have to just shake your head and wonder when the sheep or the world ( aka Tomas ) will ever ever learn.
Alas it is not his fault , he has been turned over many many years of million of dollars of marketing and simply put he will never see it any other way. To these people there exist no other better alternatives.

I did enjoy this last part of though very much.....that was funny. I mean who would expect anything less ? lol

" Not surprisingly, Intel has rejected that it has done anything wrong. It claims that no one has been hurt by its actions and said it will defend itself. µ "

The lesson is clear.

If you or a company decide to f### with the State of New York and it's citizens, New York State will eventually find you and f### you back.

The Intel part of the Wintel monopolies is starting to unravel.

How were these billions in payments put through the financial books? As discounts on processors? Another bit of crooked accounting?

Well actually I was in doubt wether Intel was "BAD" or not. That's why I asked. I simply personally have had a lot of bad experiences with AMD hardware, but I promise to buy AMD the next time. Just to see what happens. And to balance out the force.
Just calm down for heavens sake. It's just CPU's were talking about.

no one gets the benefit of "best" products when developed in a market where there are artificial barriers. intel does not develop the best products-you never get to see the alternatives as the market is not "fair" - their corrupt executives with your corrupt legislators make sure of this via traitorous special interests.

as a citizen and consumer you stand no chance as your democracy and capitalism-while great theory- has morphed into conspiratorial special government not of, by or for the people any longer.

corporations are not people, by definition, and constitutionally were never afforded representation. thus any representation usurped is treasonous.

so, given the game is fixed and you'll never get the ante get used to living with corporate crap.

After inventing the first microprocessor Intel has invented the x86 architecture and then marketed it quite successfully.

Intel gave a license to AMD, a company that was good, but nevertheless was not successfull with anything they touched.

Not in PLDs, not in FPGAs. They could not even step up with a then tiny start-up company called Xilinx even though they had an offical license.

AMD blossomed when they were allowed to manufacture Intel-compatible CPUs under license. With everything else before they failed. They did not really fail miserably, but they simply were not successful - just average, just another semiconductor company getting into and out of things. They always had good engineering and really nice poeple, but they never had any good marketing. Marketing was never in their genes.

I think that Dirk Meyer from DEC is the first good and sharp top manager AMD have.

I enjoy to see how that market, the technology and those those two combatants develop out of academic interest. For me it's almost like watching episodes of a TV sequel and that's my perspective.

For some poeple Intel / AMD is more like a religion. You can insult them buy saying something about Intel/AMD they dislike and then they become a bit Taliban for a furious moment.

The funny thing is, both companies are US American. It is the Americans who absolutely rule/dominate that market. This fact is pretty much neglected and gets never discussed. The modern world acutally ticks on a technology that is exclusively dominated by one nation. Even US haters (North Korea?) completely rely on this technology.

Ah well, lets see how things go on.

The next game is Netbooks and SmartPhones.

When will we see the first x86 SmartPhone on the market? With W7/W8 anyone?

is he in jail yet?

Just borrow the book "Inside Intel" and you will know much more about the relationship between Intel and AMD and why Intel financed AMD and "gave" them a license.
And well, the x86 architecture is a disaster compared with what could have happened if IBM had chosen Motorola instead of Intel for this other disaster called the PC running the third and greatest disaster called Windows.

For some as a religion you said.

Well remember that America used to had a striving automobile industry.
If it only wasn't for those pesky Japanese or those European cars who came with cheaper prices, innovation, quality and mileages.

Well if it wasn't for AMD
PC wouldn't be that affordable unlike now.

well to those who had forgotten about this.
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0EKF/is_n2109_v42/ai_18135525/

well seems like it's a dog eat dog world in the processors business

Brand preference has nothing to do with the charges brought against Intel. This case is about violation of law and posecution for those crimes and compensation to AMD for Intel's violation of anti-trust laws.

It's been a long time coming but the evidence shows that AMD lost billions in sales as a result of Intel's violations of law that went on for years. Now Intel should pay financially and Intel's management should see prison time for their crimes.

I happen to live in one of these crazy european countries where most people actually look up to America. I mean America really did something great for us during and after world war 2. We haven't forgotten this in spite of George Bush Jr. and his damn war. A lot of us talk about the 20th century as the "American century".
I mean most of us speak english (or whatever you call it) but not french for example. Thats how powerfull this is. Our parliament even sent soldiers to fight in Afghanistan after 9/11 just
to "pay off some of the dept to USA" as our prime minister said. They are still there in greater numbers than ever.
In many ways I feel the same way about Intel. Apparenty they do some crazy and stupid things, but where would we be without them? I really don't want to dislike them. They are too much part of the family.
It would be far easier for AMD to sell their product to me if they stopped bitching Intel all the time. They give me a splitting head-ache. Why so much hatred just to sell a damn chip?

... indeed, way better. Much more thought through, more "natural".

Happend to talk to a guy who back then was close to the deal. Well, lets say, Intel was more on top of things at the customer, Motorola seemed have been a bit inattentive and a bit neglectful. And of course noboday really could forsee what turns history would take with Personal Computers. Today's world was still unthinkable.

I never could befriend myself with the Intel architecture, way too awkward.

But as of today it does not really matter any more, x86 has evolved into good architecture. SPARC is a good architecture as well, DEC Alpha was phenomenal - but they were too silly to sell and marketed their stuff. They just did not get it right although it was obvious.

Microsoft's Windows was a desaster. But the did the right things at the right time the right way - and prevailed.

I remember talking to a Siemens Research guy (back then Siemens was a really important IT player): they could have converted their Sinix etc. hands down into a Windows killer - but marketing - and management-wise they were simply utterly stupid (aristocrats) and walking the walks of IT wearing blinders. PhD, scientists, mathematicians, highly skilled experts all over the place - but still stupid in many other aspects.

They insisted doing only "serious" things and wanted to sell high priced items to government agencies, Deutsche Bahn and the industry.

So guess what: if Intel and Microsoft can thrive as they have they have done a great job and the others left on streetside are stupid and its their own fault.

Siemens and other companies as well had their chance dancing right in front of their faces shouting at them: "take me". They considered it not a reputable and respectable "serious" thing to do and continued their old, bland ways. The rest is history.

So I have come to the conclusion that those who prevailed earn my respect, because the did it right.

They have used their chances and have used their time intelligently and effectively while others where sitting still. The others stayed confined in their old world wondering what was happing.

Yes. Motorola was way better.
And it didn't help.

And these days they have difficulties to build usable mobile phones. And sold off their semiconductor division.

Unjust world?
No, I don't think so.

In the end Intel was and is better.
Even if I liked the 68x stuf much better long time ago.

Hello Inquirer Team,

whatever happened to the dispute between Intel and AMD regarding the x86 license in respect to GoFo?

Has that issue been settled silently?

Maybe worth to take a look at this.

Cheers, Fred.

Tomas - it's not about liking a company, it's about Intel violating law. They prevented AMD from selling their products to big suppliers like Dell and HP by BLACKMAILING these companies. That is ILLEGAL. That is why Intel is being prosecuted.

If Intel had allowed a free market place they would have continued to lose market share to AMD, made less profits and the prices we pay for CPUs would be cheaper - as other people have tried to explain to you.

It's time for Intel to be held accountable for their crimes. We all win if Intel is punished. They ain't going out of business, they are just getting a slap on the wrist for screwing AMD out of billions in profits.

Who are we to tell?

It's about having an opinion, having ideas and thoughts and exchanging arguements.

If we all were sitting around a table discussing this subject in real life we'd probably would have a lot of fun.

And believe me, if Intel and AMD guys happen to meet by chance privately or on an airplane they'd be much friendlier to each other then some of those fanbois in the internet.

So far noone has been able to produce any sort of evidence. A piece of paper, a contract that spells things out.

Everything so far is based on assumptions, desires, speculation, hear-say, sales people fairy tales.
(Ever met a sales person who admitted it was HIS fault that the order was lost?)

There is a thing called step pricing.
You buy more, you get a better price. You buy less, you get a higher price. Plus if you reach a certain quantity, you receive a back end bonus.

That thing has existed light years before Intel in the food/grocery industry (and many other industries). This is where Intel picked it up from. Talk to any IT distributor, read their mailing, read their catalogues: back end bonuses all over the place. (For every XXX-printer sold you get one without being charged for.)

For an OEM like Dell the calculation is very simple: in order to increase margin, buy more of one thing. Since keeping and fostering two CPU lines (and corresponding support organisations) costs a lot - it simply did not make business sense for many company to use AMD. Only small shops can afford to do that, the bigger a company is, the more unreasonable and expensive it becomes. Just flip through trade journals: supplier reduction is a big issue.

That Dell customers would have saved money if Dell had had an AMD offering: that is an urban myth.

At the end of the day Intel is a manufacturing organisation: noone beats them in manufacturing chips in volume. Whatever price AMD quotes, Intel theoratically could go below any cost-based price from AMD.

In reality Intel was setting price levels in the market that allowed AMD to survive and earn a decent margin. AMD had a terrific life like that. Only when they started to look for (pricing and legal) trouble, their profits tumbled.

As a me-too and second source AMD is set to 15-20% market share whilst enjoying absolute growth since the cake keeps growing. They are set for this for good, this is a known effect covered in many text books.

The only way out of that for AMD is true innovation and not just taking advantage of gaps in Intel's strategy.

True innovation means: the AMD offerings must differ from those of Intel in such a way that they are not immidiately comparable any more. And this is where AMD has really bad company genes: everything fully and truely "invented here" they tried to establish on their own on the market was not successful. Not really.

By the way, Intel is just about to do what I described above. If you read between the lines, they are working on ways to innovate their offerings in a way that will make them un-comparable to those of AMD. An x86 license then won't be of much help for AMD any more, unless: Intel in their wisdom will grant them AMD another license. Which is somehow likely to happen, I guess.

So from my point of view, it is utterly stupid of AMD to sue Intel (indirectly). I just spurs Intel to set themselves apart from AMD much quicker. And then AMD will be left alone, trying to establish their own technology on the market.

For AMD it would be much wiser to accept their me-too 20% marketshare role whilst establishing a market of their own where they are the orignial innovaters and thus can dominate.

Just my two Euro cents of course.

Let's see how things evolve.

Has no one here read the actual complaint that was filed? http://www.scribd.com/doc/22112342/Nyag-v-Intel-Complaint-Final
Read any part of Section 4 where it details some of the communication between Intel and Dell, HP and IBM which set up the shady deals.

The Athlon came out in 1999 and mopped the floor with Intel Till C2D came out in 2006.

If Intel hadn't been armtwisting everyone to stay away from Intel AMD's marketshare would have skyrocketed and their revinue stream would have been such that it could stay even with intel on Technology.

If you go back even farther you would run into the Intel x86 compilers that ignored the AMD and Cyrix chips which could do MMX. I'm sure Intel also screwed with SSE in that reguard.

The tech gap today is a direct result of the lost revinue from Intel's meddling. I can't count the number of companies that signed with AMD then broke it off when Intel pulled their retroactive rebates, Jacked up their prices and offered a cash incentive to not use the AMD Athlon's.

All you Intel Fanboys need to take off your Blinders. Intel has been trying to keep AMD nothing more than a Token anti monopoly gimmick for years, Even when AMD had a better Product for 6 years Intel spent cash to Block AMD from getting into homes.

Intel Makes me Sick. I'v been AMD since my first processor, a 486 DX2/50. I have never had Stability problems other than the MMX fiasco which was caused by Intel. AMD needs recompensation from Intel. It would be fair no matter how harsh it was.

Yes I can see the Typo. Intel Briubed companies to stay away from AMD

There is nothing wrong with any AMD CPU.

Most of the problems people have had with AMD is because of crappy BIOS code and slow chipsets, and cheap motherboards like which idiots buy and wonder why they suck - answer: shit quality capacitors, mainly.

And nobody can deny that the Athlon kicked Intel for a long time until Core 2.

I always buy AMD for one reason: Price.

The Phenom II X4 965BE costs $349.65 here and the Intel i7 965 Extreme is $1,956.38

Now read this:
http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/charts/2009-desktop-cpu-charts/GTA-IV-1.0.3,1402.html

Now if you bought the Intel you just paid $1606.73 for an extra 0.7 FPS increase.

I hope you feel proud

The licensing spat over Glo_Fo was simply just intel rattling their legal chains and nothing more, it was never settled because it never went anywhere.

intel threatened AMD by stating they would pull their x86 license, AMD fired right back threatening to pull intels AMD64 licensing. intel wisely sat down and STFU...

Just read the whole "NYAG_v_Intel_COMPLAINT_FINAL.pdf" doc.... Oh My god, Intel runs their business like the mafia!

@suemenow:

Agreed!
Not only does the EU findings doc show the sunlight on Intel's evil deeds, it also documents the many instances _where Intel tried to hide their behaviour._ Why? Because Intel knew what they were doing was illegal and abuse of monopoly power.

Intel's rebuttals to the findings are also included. AND THEY ARE PITIFUL.

No one in their right mind could read this document from start to finish and conclude Intel is not guilty of serious illegal and abusive tactics to maintain their market share.

It's going to be quite interesting to see how Dell disguised the Judas money on their quarterly financial reports.

Oh... and by the way, because of their ongoing worldwide criminal tactics, you couldn't pay me to take one of their machines....unlike Michael Dell.

£949 billion in May !
What a fine.

Another opinion on Intel vs AMD/ATI products quality.
I have a 3.5 years old Dell laptop with Intel Core Duo cpu and AMD (ATI) Mobility X1400 video card. No problems whatsoever with the CPU but the video card gives me headaches: video on external monitor is shaky.
I've been using Intel cpus and mbs for years (built my own boxes) - never had any reliability issues with them.

thats as may be, but you have always paid over the odds for average performance when you could have paid less for more performance!

agent24's post demonstrates it up eloquently

intel are not interested in giving customers value for money, they want to sell them as little as possible for as much money as possible

yet another reason why they should be boycotted

"[I]ntel [is] not interested in giving customers value for money, they want to sell them as little as possible for as much money as possible"

And what company isn't? Certainly AMD has the same goals. You'd be naive to believe anything else about any company, big, small, monopoly, startup or whatever.

Don't think that AMD is a "good" guy either. They're interested in maintaining high prices as much as Intel or anyone else. In fact, when AMD was high on the hog, and Intel was doing poorly, they specifically stated that they would maintain the higher prices as they did not need to fight a price war at the time. It was Intel that helped drop those prices!

The only good guy is "competition." Two gladiators fighting endlessly so you get your ticket's money's worth at the show. Only root on the losing competitor if it means the two will achieve parity again.

What I want from AMD is for them to be, again, a performance competitor so that Intel can't sell their chips at the $600 mark for mainstream processors, like in the late 1990s. Credits to AMD for changing the scene, but their initial Phenom debacle really set them back a year or two. It's great that AMD can sell the "platform" and sell their chips marginally competitively at the lowest end. However, I'd like to see them aim higher, not just settle for the remains and feces of the market.

I bought that laptop for <$1.5K using some promotion (list price was $2K).
I was hoping to keep it for at least 5 years. The cpu (Intel Core Duo 2GHz) is very fast for my needs - no problems with Vista Ultimate. But because of the video card problems (X1400 - manufactured by AMD/ATI) I'll have to buy a new laptop soon. Btw, I had the video card replaced under warranty, but it didn't help at all - so it must be design problem.

Who cares about your laptop with an ATI chip in it?, that has nothing to do with this INQ article, please keep your replies on topic!

One thing is for sure, what Intel did hurt everyone BUT Intel. AMD, OEMs, You, Me, we all lost!!

Who knows what sort of chips AMD could of had out today if AMD actually had a fair chance to sell their goods and made money, for all you know (Intel pumpers) a top of the line i7 might only be $299 today instead of $999. Competition only works if everyone plays fair, Intel did not!

For Intel to say they did nothing wrong is about as funny as... My dog ate my homework, LOL!

People who had AMD/ATI problems.
I can also say most people also having the same problems with nvidia too.

you need to shop around mate.

i gave £570 for an amd dual core zm-80 lappy with ati HD3650 graphcs and 4gb ram.

it runs sweetly and plays modern games not in high detail but medium with good fps.

i think your issue is intel hardware conflicting with ati hardware (ati is amd). i found the same issue trying to get a 7950gx2 to work on an ati chipset motherboard. fussy buggers at times...

I bought that laptop more than 3 years ago - in May 2006.
I think issues I'm having now: result of poor design/manufacturing quality of AMD (ATI) X1400.
Interesting that another Dell laptop: one with integrated graphics (Intel GMA950) doesn't have any issues with same external monitor.

I'm sure that iNTEL will immediately stop doing what it is not doing, even though there was nothing wrong with what they weren't doing.

So what if I owned a computer company... and honestly felt that 1 CPU was the best... and I wanted to use it exclusively... and I wanted to pay whatever amount I needed to.

That's illegal?

nope but is illegal to bribe someone not to allow me to make a choice.
back then i could not find a laptop with a amd cpu until hp released ZV6000 line with AMD64 cpu witch wiped the floor with any intel based laptop.
guess intel bribed all big manufacturers into not releasing amd based laptops and i could not buy a amd whatever amount i was prepared to pay

Well bd, let's consider that ATi Radeon X1400 shall we? Please notice that I didn't say AMD, but ATi. That is because 3.5 years ago, AMD AND ATI WERE SEPARATE YOU COMPUTER ILLITERATE PUKE!

How can you blame AMD for something that ATi was responsible for that directly led to AMD buying them out? Yes, ATi had crappy hardware nobody denies that. They couldn't survive against nVidia and so AMD bought them. You know initially I was pissed because I'm Canadian and so is ATi but you know what? Since AMD bought them, ATi has risen to be on almost equal footing with nVidia. Without AMD, the beloved Canadian marque of ATi would no longer have existed. Go read a book and learn something.