AMD sues Intel (antitrust)

[Robert Myers]

No one in the automobile industry is in Intel's position, with it's
proprietary advantages. BTW, how far off-topic are you willing to go,
here?

Off-topic means I don't think the way you think? I believe I
understand your model of history, but I'd take a fair bet you don't
understand mine. What I'm proposing about the history of
microprocessors is a kind of historical determinism: it was all more or
less inevitable; and I present the automobile industry (I've also
talked about commercial jet aircraft as an example) as an illustration
of where the computer business has been and where, barring dramatic
innovation, it is headed.

Whether or not anyone in the automobile industry is in Intel's position
is beside the point. Even those who dominate industries can't do
whatever they want because there are always other ways for human beings
to spend their money.

I continue to be amazed at your objection to my rather simple point.
The presence of AMD in the market has significantly reduced the cost
of computing. I believe this to be a fact beyond dispute, so I can't
understand your issue, here.

I think you'll have to live with your amazement. What you believe is
close to a religious belief with you, and it's not worth my time to try
to dislodge that belief.

Even if true, best to delay it, right?

I don't know whether your question is rhetorical or not. The *only*
way to avert the slide into commodity status is through dramatic
technological innovation.

Leaving aside the demagogery about "free" markets, one question is: how
does technology advance. Having an IBM or an Intel accumulate capital
so it can do risky research may not be the best way, but I *know* that
having AMD and Intel in a price/tweak war sends the industry down the
same road as the automobile industry. I loathe Microsoft not so much
because of its monopolistic behavior (although I do loathe that) as for
how badly it has used the resources it has accumulated through its
illegal monopoly.

Not that I'm aware of. Do you believe what I wrote to be incorrect?

*Even* if someone is a monopolist, the price that produces the best
return on investment almost certainly isn't the highest price that
someone will pay. There is always a trade between sales volume and
price. In a mythical management school world, that curve has a
maximum. The curves with or without competition may be different, but
there is (at least theoretically) a maximum in either case.

Your argument is that the curve with competition is always lower, which
is a different point (although it is your point, and you keep
reiterating it). I'll reiterate my point: If AMD changed the selling
price of x86 processors at any particular time, it is only a detail.
There is *always* competition. In the case of the microprocessor
business, there have always been other microprocessors and there are
always other ways for people to spend their money.

The way that IBM managed its customer pricing and monopoly status is
one way to do business. It wasn't an especially smart way to do
business, and IBM paid the price. You think that everyone, given the
choice, would be as self-destructive as IBM was. I disagree.

RM

 

[chrisv]

I think you'll have to live with your amazement. What you believe is
close to a religious belief with you,

Nope. It's a fact, pretty much beyond dispute.

and it's not worth my time to try to dislodge that belief.

It would be absurd to try, yet here you are...

*Even* if someone is a monopolist, the price that produces the best
return on investment almost certainly isn't the highest price that
someone will pay.

I didn't say that was. Please re-read what I wrote.

Your argument is that the curve with competition is always lower, which
is a different point (although it is your point, and you keep
reiterating it).

It's a fact of economics.

'll reiterate my point: If AMD changed the selling
price of x86 processors at any particular time, it is only a detail.
There is *always* competition. In the case of the microprocessor
business, there have always been other microprocessors and there are
always other ways for people to spend their money.

Not true, for the x86 industry standard. If AMD wasn't there, Intel
would essentially have a monopoly.

The way that IBM managed its customer pricing and monopoly status is
one way to do business. It wasn't an especially smart way to do
business, and IBM paid the price. You think that everyone, given the
choice, would be as self-destructive as IBM was.

I think nothing of the kind.

I disagree.

With your own straw man.

 

[YKhan]

They may all be bankrupt, anyway. As Detroit discovered, selling the
same thing year after year with slightly different trim doesn't do much
to motivate buyers.

Which is exactly a perfect example why they need AMD. If they all keep
selling the same Intel boxes, then there is no product differentiation
other than casing, and everybody might as well just buy from Dell. With
AMD-based machines, they have a real product differentiator; they can
differentiate performance, power consumption, etc. In fact within the
AMD sphere there is even more ways of differentiating yourself from
other OEMs by choosing different chipsets.

As to messing with a good thing, yes, it's a mean business, but, if you
want to stay in the business, you have to do business with Intel (with
the exception of those in HPC who have decided to build their
architecture around AMD's architecture).

Umm, I don't know if you've been paying attention here, but this is
exactly what is being challenged here: "if you want to stay in this
business you have to do business with Intel". For example, nobody says
any of the following things:

-if you want to stay in this business, you have to deal with Seagate.
-If you have to stay in this business, you have to do business with
ATI.
-if you want to stay in this business, you have to include Linksys.
-if you gotta stay in this business, you have to buy from 3Com.
-if in this business, you gotta buy from Belkin.
-you can't be serious about this business and avoid Logitech.
-being in this business, you can't avoid Samsung.

Yet this is how the business talks about Intel -- yet another component
supplier.

If you _have_ to do business with Intel, how positive a development is
it to have AMD trumpeting things you told AMD about your relationship
with Intel? Much of that would be denied outright if there were no
paper trail, and much of it is going to be denied, anyway. That anyone
would be _pleased_ at having been put into such a position beggars the
imagination.

I'm sure most people weren't pleased with having to testify against
John Gotti either, but it needed to be done.

How do you know what would surprise me? Manipulation of public opinion
to influence the outcome of elections is the basic subject matter of
electoral politics. But what does what Carl Rove knows how to do have
to do with what AMD can succeed at?

Karl Rove was just a general in his war, his soldiers were these sorts
of PR firms. In this case, Thomas McCoy, AMD's internal corporate
lawyer, is his firm's Karl Rove.

<quote>

"None of the industry executives whom I talked to for this article
would speak for attribution; they were concerned that it would hurt
their business relationship with Intel."

Pretty telling isn't it? A group of industry executives so completely
cowed and afraid for the existence of their firms due to one component
supplier?

<snip>

"At this point, it's hard to know what will happen with this case. AMD
says it has already asked about 40 PC-makers worldwide to take steps to
preserve e-mail and other records. It apparently plans to issue
subpoenas in order to obtain documents and testimony. AMD also said in
its press conference that it is willing to discuss an out-of-court
settlement. Though AMD is seeking monetary damages, what its executives
say they most want is more transparency and fairness in the way that
Intel does business."

If nothing else, the suit will serve as free publicity for AMD as
people write articles like this one, pointing to the strength of its
products and enumerating Intel's alleged hardball tactics. One thing
is sure: AMD is not going to back down.

</snip>

So, while the industry slides into a state of dismal boredom, AMD,
which has fewer resources, will attempt a war of attrition against
Intel. In the end, there will be an out-of-court settlement.

Where do you get this "war of attrition" idea from? A war of attrition
implies picking off targets slowly one by one. The war of attrition is
the one that they're playing right now in the marketplace, and they've
been playing it for the last several years. The court case is the thing
that's going to end the war of attrition.

As for out of court settlement, it's upto AMD if they want to accept an
out of court. However AMD chose to go with a jury trial for a reason,
which is that they feel that Intel won't be able to wiggle out on
technicalities; in jury trials, the spirit of the law has to be
followed as much as the letter of the law. This puts Intel at a
disadvantage and it knows it. So I don't think AMD will be so willing
to settle out of court here. They don't want these sweetheart deals
where Intel pays out money, and doesn't have to admit a thing.

Oh, how Tom Yager loves AMD. Classic Geek.

You, nor I, nor Tom Yager has to speculate. Now that Intel must "undo
all the blockades it set up to shut AMD out of the Japanese market," we
can see how much difference it makes.

AMD has also separately sued Intel in Japan. This one is a direct
result of the JFTC ruling in March. This one is about asking for
monetary damages.

Also quite seperately, it looks like some consumer class-action
lawsuits have started against Intel. Seems to be a copycat of the AMD
anti-trust lawsuit.

MercuryNews.com | 07/01/2005 | Copycat lawsuits target Intel
http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/business/12031812.htm

Yousuf Khan

 

[Robert Myers]

Nope. It's a fact, pretty much beyond dispute.


It would be absurd to try, yet here you are...

This is really tiresome.


My point that you were being deliberately obtuse was that you simply
repeated what you had said about monopoly pricing as an inappropriate
response to my saying that the market creates its own price discipline,
even without competition.

I assumed that you understood my point and simply chose to ignore it.
This time, just to be sure, you snipped the text you weren't responding
to so your perseveration would be even more obscure.

I didn't say that was. Please re-read what >I wrote.


It's a fact of economics.


Not true, for the x86 industry standard. If AMD wasn't there, Intel
would essentially have a monopoly.

Your original claim, which you are apparently no longer trying to
defend, was that what AMD does is to "significantly reduce the cost of
computing for everyone on the planet."

I let you slide out of "everyone on the planet" when I said that Via
was more likely to to do that than AMD when you haggled over whether
the accomplishment was past, present, or future.

Now you want the argument to be restricted not only to a particular
time, but to a particular ISA. Your original claim was the cost of
computing without qualification (although I won't hold you to times
when AMD wasn't in business). In the course of the argument, we've
moved to a particular bit of history and a particular ISA.

The reality is that AMD allowed *you* (and many who hang out here) to
buy a less expensive processor of a particular type, and you have
generalized your experience into a law of economics.

It's true: you can't always buy a clone of the exact product you want
when you want it. The ability to do that is not a definition of
competition. It's a defition of something you like for yourself and
are claiming a right to.

What would have happened if IBM had held the PC proprietary in the same
way that Apple held its boxes proprietary?

RM

 

[Robert Myers]

Robert Myers wrote:

Which is exactly a perfect example why they need AMD. If they all keep
selling the same Intel boxes, then there is no product differentiation
other than casing, and everybody might as well just buy from Dell. With
AMD-based machines, they have a real product differentiator; they can
differentiate performance, power consumption, etc. In fact within the
AMD sphere there is even more ways of differentiating yourself from
other OEMs by choosing different chipsets.

So then there was the year that Detroit really broke the bank and went
for auto bodies with *three* colors. I got a ride this week in a '62
Lincoln Continental Convertible. It amazed me how much the sytling
reminded me of my father's '60 Buick Invicta. GM/Ford...Intel/AMD.

Chipsets are not a product differentiator to save the industry from
stagnation. They are a slightly different style of trim. AMD is doing
nobody any good in terms of reviving interest in the industry. It's
all insider talk.

You almost made up for all your abusive language by flattering my
imagination in an earlier post, because, frankly, imagination is what
this industry doesn't have. It's just so lame-ass worn out on the same
old ideas that nothing really matters any more. Call me anything you
like. AMD is just more of the same.

Intel is no better? Well, they're marginally better. They've got more
money to throw around. They're unfocused, confused, arrogant, and
inept, but they'd really like to try something new.

Itanium is better for some of the problems I do, but it won't save the
world any more than Opteron will. The problem with Itanium isn't that
it's too much of a leap but that it's all ideas that were old before
the first die was laid out.

Umm, I don't know if you've been paying attention here, but this is
exactly what is being challenged here: "if you want to stay in this
business you have to do business with Intel". For example, nobody says
any of the following things:

-if you want to stay in this business, you have to deal with Seagate.

But so what? AMD claims that's only because Intel is such a mean
badass (which it probably is) and that it's all illegal (which remains
to be shown).

I'm sure most people weren't pleased with having to testify against
John Gotti either, but it needed to be done.

I'm _seriously_disturbed_ by that comparison. Or should I call it
"cheap?"

Karl Rove was just a general in his war, his soldiers were these sorts
of PR firms. In this case, Thomas McCoy, AMD's internal corporate
lawyer, is his firm's Karl Rove.

If Thomas McCoy can pull this off the way Carl Rove pulls things off,
he'll be a media star. Carl Rove, for all his vaunted smarts, didn't
invent the strategy the Bush campaign used ex nihilo, not by a long
shot. And they had (and still have) an endless supply of money.

Pretty telling isn't it? A group of industry executives so completely
cowed and afraid for the existence of their firms due to one component
supplier?

But I thought they were all so _happy_ and so _eager_ to talk.

Where do you get this "war of attrition" idea from? A war of attrition
implies picking off targets slowly one by one. The war of attrition is
the one that they're playing right now in the marketplace, and they've
been playing it for the last several years. The court case is the thing
that's going to end the war of attrition.

Any lawsuit that isn't a candidate for summary judgment is a war of
attrition.

As for out of court settlement, it's upto AMD if they want to accept an
out of court. However AMD chose to go with a jury trial for a reason,
which is that they feel that Intel won't be able to wiggle out on
technicalities; in jury trials, the spirit of the law has to be
followed as much as the letter of the law. This puts Intel at a
disadvantage and it knows it. So I don't think AMD will be so willing
to settle out of court here. They don't want these sweetheart deals
where Intel pays out money, and doesn't have to admit a thing.

Yada, yada, yada. They're so _mean_. I see that Gates/Ballmer is
going to write a $775 million dollar consolation prize (plus $75
million in software credits) to IBM. Microsoft keeps the monopoly.

AMD has also separately sued Intel in Japan. This one is a direct
result of the JFTC ruling in March. This one is about asking for
monetary damages.

Also quite seperately, it looks like some consumer class-action
lawsuits have started against Intel. Seems to be a copycat of the AMD
anti-trust lawsuit.

Oh, I'm sure Intel will be heartbroken over a class action lawsuit.
Those of us who were smart enough to buy Intel will be getting coupons
so we can buy more... Intel. It will just be another marketing
expense.

RM

 

[Carlos Moreno]

You got time to be seriously disturbed by my rhetorical style? You
ain't payin' attention to what's goin' on in the world.

The fact that something is wrong is in no way diminished by the fact
that other things are worse.

If I hit you with a baseball bat and crush your skull because I don't
like you, would it be an acceptable argument in my defense that "c'mon,
what is this tiny insignificant incident compared to ____________"

(where you can replace the fill-in-the-blank with your preferred
choice of the atrocities that *are happening* around the world)

My reference to Mugabe's actions wasn't a defense. I was ridiculing
your use of "seriously disturbed" about a posting in a Usenet group
referring to a civil action to which neither of us is a party.

I had no reason to defend myself. I hadn't attacked you or anyone else
in any way, and now you are making a simile to crushing someone's skull
with a baseball bat.

[...]

I'm having a really hard time understanding what you're trying to
say with that "you are making a smile to crushing someone's skull"...

Since I don't know where the transformation from "simile" to "smile"
happened, I don't know whether you read my original text correctly or
not.

No, you got it right -- I skipped/overlooked the "i" in simile, and
since the phrase, with the word SMILE instead did make sense, my brain
read it and processed it that way -- a complete misinterpretation of
what you were saying.

The word I used was simile:

A figure of speech in which [...]

Yes, I actually did know the word (it is almost identical to the
equivalent word in Spanish), so I would have understood what you said,
had my brain not overlooked the "i".

Maybe it would have been better if I had just said, "Don't you think
describing yourself as 'seriously disturbed' about a comparison between
two lawsuits a little over the top?"

Well, I would have taken it with less surprise

What's happened here is that we have played one-upsmanship with
language: you described yourself as "seriously disturbed" about a
comparison I had made, I replied with an example of something I thought
would warrant being "seriously disturbed" about, and you responded with
an escalation of language that could conceivably be taken the wrong
way.

Actually, again, I wouldn't say my example was an escalation of
language; I was just trying to come up with a drastic example to
illustrate my point: you were trying to argue that my choice of
words was a bit exaggerated (when saying "seriously disturbed"), and
I interpreted it as you were trying to dismiss the importance of
something, using something worse (but unrelated) as argument.

I simply tried to come up with an example of something drastic and
quite obviously very wrong (crushing someone's skull with a baseball
bat) to argue that just because something else is worse, you can not
dismiss the fact that this something *is* very wrong.

Ok, granted, when we look back at the origin of the discussion, it
is true that comparing a discussion on a company's lawsuit with
assaulting and murdering someone is perhaps a hyperbole a little
bit too "hyperbolized"

Anyway, I'm glad you took the time to analyze and realize what the
source of our misunderstanding was, and took the time to reply to
me explaining the situation.

We are still in disagreement (perhaps not as much as initially
assesed), but at least I'm glad that we are disagreeing in reasonable
terms.

Cheers,

Carlos
--

 

[YKhan]

Chipsets are not a product differentiator to save the industry from
stagnation. They are a slightly different style of trim. AMD is doing
nobody any good in terms of reviving interest in the industry. It's
all insider talk.

The chipsets themselves aren't, but the features they bring can be. For
example, if you got an integrated graphics chipset, and you can get an
integrated graphics core in there that's almost as fast as a state of
the art graphics card, then that's a differentiating feature. I would
expect that these sorts of high-perf integrated chipsets will likely be
made by the two graphics behemoths themselves, ATI and Nvidia. You
might end up with a gamer's laptop that has as much battery life as a
thin'n'lite. You're not going to get a gamer's laptop out of Intel
integrated graphics.

Right now HP is marketing a Turion business notebook with a fingerprint
reader, which none of its Intel models have yet. Small feature
differences like these go a long way, until somebody catches up.

Various wireless manufacturers are working on ways of improving WiFi
antennas, some are coming out with greater ranges, while others are
trying to integrate WiFi, Bluetooth, and Cellular into a single radio
thus saving power over multiple independent ones. I'd expect the
telecom specialists like Broadcom, or Altera to develop these before
Intel.

You almost made up for all your abusive language by flattering my
imagination in an earlier post, because, frankly, imagination is what
this industry doesn't have. It's just so lame-ass worn out on the same
old ideas that nothing really matters any more. Call me anything you
like. AMD is just more of the same.

You're perfectly free to take my comment about your imagination
flatteringly.

Itanium is better for some of the problems I do, but it won't save the
world any more than Opteron will. The problem with Itanium isn't that
it's too much of a leap but that it's all ideas that were old before
the first die was laid out.

But it turned out more of the world was looking for something like the
Opteron than they were for something like the Itanium.

But so what? AMD claims that's only because Intel is such a mean
badass (which it probably is) and that it's all illegal (which remains
to be shown).

Well to answer the "so what" part of it. No manufacturer wants to be
held hostage by its own suppliers.

I'm _seriously_disturbed_ by that comparison. Or should I call it
"cheap?"

Should I have said Al Capone? A much more historically prominent
gangster? Would that be much more high-class?

If Thomas McCoy can pull this off the way Carl Rove pulls things off,
he'll be a media star. Carl Rove, for all his vaunted smarts, didn't
invent the strategy the Bush campaign used ex nihilo, not by a long
shot. And they had (and still have) an endless supply of money.

Well yes, Karl Rove was not the pioneer of negative political
campaigning. At best he just improved it a bit. Negative campaigning
has been around much longer than him. McCoy might be the first to bring
this technique into the business world.

But I thought they were all so _happy_ and so _eager_ to talk.

Not sure, are you reading the same articles that we are?

Any lawsuit that isn't a candidate for summary judgment is a war of
attrition.

Where do you get the idea it's not a candidate for summary judgement?
It seems like that's what AMD is aiming for.

Yada, yada, yada. They're so _mean_. I see that Gates/Ballmer is
going to write a $775 million dollar consolation prize (plus $75
million in software credits) to IBM. Microsoft keeps the monopoly.

Good for IBM. Good for Microsoft.

But any outcome of this will likely reach into the billions of dollars.
Even an out of court will reach into the billions too.

Oh, I'm sure Intel will be heartbroken over a class action lawsuit.
Those of us who were smart enough to buy Intel will be getting coupons
so we can buy more... Intel. It will just be another marketing
expense.

I'm sure Intel is a little concerned at having to fight so many wars on
so many fronts simultaneously. And I doubt that Intel's internal legal
staff is equipped to fight against the ambulance-chaser style courtroom
antics. It'll keep them busy unnecessarily.

Yousuf Khan

 

[nobody]

Like defining the future of 64-bit computing

....snip...

You missed the point. The vast majority of people who still need
computers aren't going to need and aren't going to be able to pay for
the performance that AMD and Intel are jockeying over. That's the
market Via is aiming for.

Surely rural 3rd world laborers don't need the performance of Athlon
FX or Pentium EE. But neither they need the cheapness of VIA C3.
They are not only computer illiterate, they are plain illiterate
period. They don't need the gift of computers, or even monetary
donations, that will be wasted/stolen anyway before they reach
intended recipients. No amount of overhyped concerts will help,
either. What they need is the regime change. But this will never
happen because any involvement of the powers capable of it would look
too much like colonialism, i.e. _politically incorrect_. So the
corrupt self-serving regimes will stay, or get replaced by just as
corrupt new homegrown ones. And I bet, if these
Presidents/Chiefs/Supreme Mullahs/Big Kahunas/Great Bozos or some of
their cronies have taste for computers, expect these to be top of the
line brand names, with Pentium EE and all the goodies, not the humble
C3.

....snip...

 

[Yousuf Khan]

I'm sure AMD's customers will be just tickled pink to have a fishing
expedition through corporate e-mail.

Here's a list of the people being asked to testify so far:

http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=24351
http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=24350

So far Michael Dell, Kevin Rollins named in AMD subpoena. Former HPers
Michael Capellas and Carly Fiorina too. A lot of them have said they'll
cooperate voluntarily, only Toshiba so far has refused.

Yousuf Khan

 

[chrisv]

The reality is that AMD allowed *you* (and many who hang out here) to
buy a less expensive processor of a particular type, and you have
generalized your experience into a law of economics.

Wrong, as was most of what you wrote. My point was simple and
correct. Read my first post to this thread again, if you've forgotten
what it was.

 

[Nate Edel]

Wrong. They could easily, today, be charging twice the price per unit
performance, and people would be paying it, if not for AMD.

Depends on for which part of the market.

For the moderate/high performance stuff, perhaps.

VIA is producing a decent lower-performing x86 chip, and plenty of other
people could. Might not be very competitive with the Duron/Sempron line or
the low end Celerons, but it would find a market niche where Intel would
have to compete even if it meant throwing a higher-performance chip in at
the same price point.

I'm also not convinced that someone else couldn't produce a competitive
higher-end x86 chip, or that the higher prices on Intels wouldn't push more
people to Mac/PowerPC.

 

[Nate Edel]

This is where your true colors come out -- Intel blue all the way. Only
an ignorant fool would think Intel decided to reduce prices of its
processors on its own. The fact of the matter is that AMD and Cyrix
pushed down prices so drastically in the early 1990's that we wouldn't
have ever gotten to a $500 PC without them. I remember being happy to
pay /only/ $1500 for a PC-XT compatible back in 1988.

And that already had second-source Intel compatible chips from AMD (and
others, for all I remember.) Though there WERE PCs a lot cheaper around that
time... I can't successfully recall the exact year, but the single-5 1/4"
only Tandy 1000EX was close to that cheap, and around that time the Leading
Edge Model D got a CGA XT (w/ 20mb HD) for $800ish.

Intel was already a money factory prior to the advent of competition from
AMD & Cyrix. It was already comfortable being a high-price per unit
medium-volume money factory, until these two came in and forced it to
change to a medium-priced high-volume money factory.

To an extent; OTOH, it was already used to competition to some extent.

This was true as far back as Zilog, for compatible parts... dumping the DRAM
business in favor of just processors was sort of the opposite approach...
and it took most of the 80s for the PC/x86 architecture to become clearly
dominant over the 68000-series architectures - Mac first and foremost but
Amiga and Atari ST as well. Had there been an open 68k-based architecture,
things might have been very different. Ditto if IBM had successfully
prevented PC-based clones by Compaq and others.

 

[Nate Edel]

-if you want to stay in this business, you have to deal with Seagate.
-If you have to stay in this business, you have to do business with
ATI.
-if you want to stay in this business, you have to include Linksys.
-if you gotta stay in this business, you have to buy from 3Com.
-if in this business, you gotta buy from Belkin.
-you can't be serious about this business and avoid Logitech.
-being in this business, you can't avoid Samsung.

Yet this is how the business talks about Intel -- yet another component
supplier.

Well, a very big one. But it's a long way from "Nobody ever got fired for
buying big blue." (And indeed, my first full time gig was filling a vacancy
made by my new boss... who had been promoted in part because her then-boss
had spent way too much money buying PS/2s rather than inexpensive clones.)

 

[YKhan]

To an extent; OTOH, it was already used to competition to some extent.

Yes, Intel had a lot of competition at one time. Now it's down to a few
very specialized competitors (AMD, of course, in processors; Broadcom
in communications; Nvidia and ATI in graphics and chipsets).

I think Intel had decided some time ago that it wanted no more
competition ever again.

This was true as far back as Zilog, for compatible parts... dumping the DRAM
business in favor of just processors was sort of the opposite approach...
and it took most of the 80s for the PC/x86 architecture to become clearly
dominant over the 68000-series architectures - Mac first and foremost but
Amiga and Atari ST as well. Had there been an open 68k-based architecture,
things might have been very different. Ditto if IBM had successfully
prevented PC-based clones by Compaq and others.

The Macintosh killed the 68K series. It was the biggest 68K user base,
and if they had opened up their architecture for cloning the 68K might
still be around today. IBM could've also easily killed the 8086
architecture if it had prevented its own clones.

Yousuf Khan

 

[Robert Myers]

Nate Edel wrote:

Yes, Intel had a lot of competition at one time. Now it's down to a few
very specialized competitors (AMD, of course, in processors; Broadcom
in communications; Nvidia and ATI in graphics and chipsets).

I think Intel had decided some time ago that it wanted no more
competition ever again.

This is all kind of funny, in a way. Intel has been pushed around by
events as much as anyone else.

The idea that Intel didn't want any competition at all just isn't
right. They *need* competition so that they don't operate under the
restrictions under which a monopoly operates.

What Intel wants is control over its own destiny. That's fairly
reasonable, except that companies never really get control over their
own destiny, because markets move in ways that no one can predict and
that no one can control.

Can anyone think of a company trying to move a market, as in the case
of Itanium, that actually succeeded? The closest I can think of is IBM
and System/360.

RM

 

[Nate Edel]

I think Intel had decided some time ago that it wanted no more
competition ever again.

I'm sure you're right; fortunately, so far their actions in doing so have
tended to invite more of it.

 

[YKhan]

What is kind of funny is that you still don't believe that Intel is
already a monopoly. US antitrust laws only require you to have 40%
marketshare to be considered a monopoly. Intel is well above the limit.


All of this talk about it wanting to control its own destiny is great
for psychoanalysis classes, but it's simply irrelevant. Intel is a
monopoly and it is going to be brought under control now.

Yousuf Khan

 

[Robert Myers]

What is kind of funny is that you still don't believe that Intel is
already a monopoly. US antitrust laws only require you to have 40%
marketshare to be considered a monopoly. Intel is well above the limit.

Care to provide a citation for that assertion?

All of this talk about it wanting to control its own destiny is great
for psychoanalysis classes, but it's simply irrelevant.

Does that kind of attempt to devalue the opinions others work at a
place like IBM?

Intel is a monopoly and it is going to be brought under control now.

If you move to the US and decide to run for public office, I'll be sure
to keep track of what you're up to. Until then...

RM

 

[YKhan]

I'm sure you're right; fortunately, so far their actions in doing so have
tended to invite more of it.

Competition never goes away. No matter how many companies Intel has
handily defeated in the past, it will eventually come up against one or
several that will be much more determined than all others that came
before to defeat it. Intel has brought this upon itself -- although
it's been careful to avoid leaving a paper trail as much as possible,
it's been too greedy with preserving its marketshare: trying too hard
to keep AMD marketshare below 20% or 10% in some cases, the evidence
was too compelling, if it had tried to keep it at 30% or 40% in some
markets, then the evidence would be inconclusive.

Today, the European Union raided Intel's premises, just like the
Japanese before it. These things are happening now because it's now too
late to even deny wrong-doing anymore, there is too much evidence
that's accumulated.

ARNnet | EC raids Intel, PC makers in competition inquiry
http://www.arnnet.com.au/index.php/id;1980938111;fp;8;fpid;0

Yousuf Khan

 

[YKhan]

Care to provide a citation for that assertion?

Yup:

"According to Roland Vogl, Executive Director for the Stanford Program
in Law at Stanford University, AMD carries the burden of proof. 'First,
AMD has to prove that Intel actually has monopoly power, which would be
40 percent in the US - that should be a non-issue here.'"
http://www.tomshardware.com/business/20050712/index-02.html

Yousuf Khan