RSSAMD v. Intel: New Trial Set for 2009
By Scott M. Fulton, III | Published September 27, 2006, 4:35 PM
Judge Joseph Farnan ruled this afternoon that AMD may seek reconsideration for its claim that Intel's allegedly anti-competitive conduct outside the U.S. directly impacts AMD's business inside the U.S. The claim is key to AMD's case, which alleges that Intel's business practices with international partners harmed its ability to do business here.
An AMD spokesperson told BetaNews this afternoon that AMD counsel Chuck Diamond made the case that 70% of the entire microprocessor market lies outside the U.S., implying that by that preponderance, almost any corporate conduct in this market can be construed as, at least, partially "foreign conduct."
U.S. antitrust laws limit their own jurisdiction to U.S. soil, and thus take into account only a defendant's conduct that originates in the US, with certain exceptions for import businesses. AMD's foreign operations are considered export businesses by U.S. law.
Judge Farnan has set a trial date of April 27, 2009, which will mark the official start of proceedings.
"AMD continues to believe that Intel, as a global company, and its conduct, no matter where it physically takes place, inflicts real and significant harm to U.S. customers and end users in the form of higher prices and reduced innovation," AMD executive vice president for legal affairs Tom McCoy stated this afternoon. "In addition, we believe that any examination of Intel's conduct in the U.S. necessarily requires evidence of Intel's foreign conduct given that 70% of the x86 market lies outside the U.S."
A Special Master will be appointed to hear evidence of Intel's alleged foreign misconduct, and to make recommendations to the court as to the worthiness of that evidence. McCoy stated the scope of discovery -- the ability for investigators to find such evidence -- will not be limited by Judge Farnan's ruling this morning.
The judge did not overturn his opinion this morning stating that AMD's arguments about how Intel's foreign conduct impact its U.S. business, are based on several "twists and turns," the very existence of which forces the argument to fall outside the guidelines of current law, which strictly defines "direct effect."
Intel, whose public relations officials are busy working at the company's semi-annual Developers' Forum in San Francisco, have yet to release a formal statement.
Umm, is it just me or are we in 2006? This is for 2009? You think AMD and Intel is just going to drop everything they were doing just to wait for this trial? lol...
Thank god im not having to deal with that. That would be a big weight on my shoulders for years and years.
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|Let's get past the semantics here and look at the facts.
Fact Number 1
Intel, a mutlibillion dollar company, didn't even want to release it's licensing and patent information to AMD in the early 80s, which is why AMD sued Intel and won the case. Did you all forget about that? Remember the U.S. Government always wants an Option B, and AMD was trying to provide that Option, only to have Intel refuse to give out the information that the U.S. government mandated it release. That was the initial start of just how unfair Intel's business practices really are. They didn't even want AMD to be able to compete with them, so why would anyone think it's any different now?
Fact Number 2.
Intel spends literally billions of dollars a year on it's advertising campaign, which is why you see all the corporate computer manufacturers like Dell, HP, and Gateway advertising computers with Intel processors in them. Dell has just finally came around to even offer AMD based computers, but that's only because of the acquisition of Alienware.
AMD, on the other hand, spends very little on advertising, and most of their advertising is in the form of sponsorships, not on-air commercials. In other words, for a company that does not advertise, they have leaped farther than Intel had ever imagined they would. AMD relies on word of mouth advertising, and it's products, for the cost, speak for themselves.
Now even though I happened to work at AMD in 1997 and was on a team that tested K7 reliability/compatibility, I do not consider myself strictly AMD.
However, Intel's business ethics have proven to me they do not care about offering solutions that will help all humanity, all they care about is how much money they can make from their products. Unlike AMD, who as a company is striving to create an alternative that is just as powerful (if not more powerful) and cheaper than it's competitor. What about 50x15? Do you honestly think Intel would ever invest in something as extravagant? Only if they were going to make a substantial profit from it.
Fact number 3.
Intel and AMD are competing with each other, but IBM is making leaps and bounds past both of them. Why is it all three of the major gaming consoles use processors manufactured by IBM? Well, the Playstation 3 is using a Cell Broadband Engine processor, which is manufactured by a venture of Sony, Toshiba, and IBM (called STI), but the Xbox 360 and the Wii are using PowerPC based processors, manufactured by IBM.
So who's really winning in this war between Intel and AMD?
Neither company.
The only advantage that Intel has right now is Apple. And personally, I never understood why Apple decided to use Intel instead of AMD, when AMD processors are known for outperforming Intel processors in the multimedia categories. And what are the Macs known for? Multimedia Applications!
Nevertheless, all three U.S. based processor manufacturers are going to have to get beyond Aristotlean (Boolean) logic and turn to Ternary Logic, which is far more powerful in terms of creating logic than current x86 or RISC processors.
Ok, Intel is working on a processor that will use laser light to operate (so it would operate in the optical domain) but this is still based on the flow of electrons.
Laser is not based on true light.
Natural light is where it is at ladies and gentlemen!
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|"The only advantage that Intel has right now is Apple. And personally, I never understood why Apple decided to use Intel instead of AMD, when AMD processors are known for outperforming Intel processors in the multimedia categories. And what are the Macs known for? Multimedia Applications!"
Core Duo were good enough and Core 2 Duo not to far away.
Intel brought a whole plateform (processor, chipset, mobo), a brand, the capacity to deliver volume. And I guess a big discount.
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|Nevertheless, all three U.S. based processor manufacturers are going to have to get beyond Aristotlean (Boolean) logic and turn to Ternary Logic, which is far more powerful in terms of creating logic than current x86 or RISC processors.
lmao...
You just went leaps and bounds over the heads of 99% of the Betanews readers.
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|Nevertheless, all three U.S. based processor manufacturers are going to have to get beyond Aristotlean (Boolean) logic and turn to Ternary Logic, which is far more powerful in terms of creating logic than current x86 or RISC processors.
Last I heard in my electrical engineering class, ternary has always been possible, just never effective. It will always be less reliable than binary, and ternary components tend to be slower and more expensive than their binary equivalents anyway.
Now RISC on the other hand... The theory has always been that making the simple operations that everything relies on faster by trimming out the unnecessary instructions would yield the best performance. Intel and AMD have shown many times over that expanding the instruction sets can result in greater efficiency when complex tasks are done repeatedly.
So I'll I agree with you on RISC being a deadend, even though Intel and AMD's offerings are not RISC; but if trinary were really the answer, don't you think we would've been progressing to quaternary by now?
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|This is the exact problem with the court system. If a company was bleeding from the jugular like netscape was in the late 90's and it takes 3 1/2 years to start the trial what is the point? Big companies like Intel and Microsoft know a antitrust trial takes years to even get started.
They can do whatever they want in the mean time and the companies affected will be out of business by the time the trial actually happends and it will be nothing more then going through the motions with no benefit to a now defunct company. It's sad that is the way things go. The powerful companies continue to get stronger and richer. Companies that have superior products continue to lose money. Except in rare cases like AMD and Intel. Microsoft vs the rest of the windows software world will continue as is.
Be prepared for Microsoft/ intel domination to continue reaping every last bit of insane profit margins. While superior products like apple's osx, linux and Amd get the crumbs left over.
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|First of all, since when is any of those superior? But let's not get into that debate. Secondly, prices are very similar between AMD/Intel so what reaping of profits are you talking about? Yes, the trials take forver because in most cases they are bogus trials that come to life only because the companies with inferior products cannot compete in any other way. It takes superior products to get big in the first place.
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|"It takes superior products to get big in the first place."
SHOULD READ:
"It takes superior marketing and 'clever' business practices in the first place."
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|Uh .... for comperable chips there's no way prices are similar. They never have been either. Intel always bloats it's prices. AMD is a much better deal for the same thing.
It is true with either microprocessor that when there's a new release the price is high but AMD's prices drop quickly when the market saturates and demand catches on. Intel is slower with drops and prices always remainsubstantially higher than AMD's.
Without a doubt, AMD gives more bang for the buck. They don't fry as easily, either. You can have your "superior" Cadillac and it's associated repair bills.
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|Intel's pricing has always been very high. Its only after they felt AMD's grasp on the market shares, they started with some saner prices for their new set of processors.
If AMD wasn't there, How much do you think a moderate P4 or core duo processor would cost?
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|No it takes a product new to market/concept to get there. Look at what happened between apple and Microsoft in the early 80's apple innovated Microsoft stole it and had IBM to back it up. Apple's grip on the computer market was doomed form that point on. Point is apple's product was superior but Microsoft ran away with the market and all the money.
As for amd vs Intel, Amd has had superior products for years, they get a few hundred million in profit, if they do make a profit. Intel on the other hand makes billions a year, just like Microsoft. which by the way apple makes hundreds of millions per eyear, where Microsoft is making 12 billion. so there is my point.
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