Intel Receives FTC Subpoena, Slaps AMD

[Ephebus]

Well, I've been with AMD since the Athlon XP, and during the last 2 years I've purchased inferior processors from them for no other reason than to support a company that I admired. But another issue - support related - made me decide that my next processor will be an Intel. Disregard by a company's support staff toward customers is something I just won't accept. In this specific case, AMD has an utility called AMD Power Monitor, which shows the speed and load of each processor core. Of course, there are lots of third-party similar utilities, but I happen to like this one. But then, the last 4 versions of the utility wouldn't show the correct clocks when the processor is overclocked. At every new version release, I would contact AMD's support and get the reply that "they would look into it", till after the latest release and my subsequent contact, someone from AMD's support said it worked OK under his Vista system. I replied saying that a huge number of people - including me - wouldn't touch Vista with a ten-foot pole, and then got no further replies from AMD. So, AMD, go support Vista, make your stuff XP-incompatible, and fare thee well.

 

[Ephebus]

(forum showed an error page after I submitted the message and then showed the message 3 times)

 

[saljr]

What I can't believe is when Intel fan boys say this is not true or Intel has done nothing wrong. LOL LOL LOL. Proof is in the pudding.

The FTC's two-year investigation had been considered "informal" until that point, and Intel, which is already fighting antitrust charges in the European Union and was fined this week by antitrust regulators in South Korea, said it had been cooperating.

By opening a formal investigation, Intel said, the FTC will be able to get access to documents revealing Intel's communications with certain customers -- documents Intel couldn't voluntarily provide because of a protective order that is part of a sweeping antitrust lawsuit AMD filed in 2005 that isn't expected to go to trial until 2010. AMD don't give up.

 

[Guest]

From everything I've read, this goes back to when the Pentium-4s & Athlon 64s were top of the market. It unfortunately takes this long sometimes for government to react. I personally wouldn't be surprised if this is true considering there's a lot of companies out there that cheat knowing that often the smaller competitor goes out of business before they can even win the trial.

I personally hope AMD survives to put out more good products. Otherwise Intel may end up to be another Microsoft which would be extremely bad.

 

[JPForums]

"this industry is fiercely competitive and working is compelling" and that the market will reward companies when they "perform and execute." If "they falter and under-perform the market responds accordingly," the manufacturer noted.

Does anyone else here think this was a dangerous statement to make. Now if AMD can prove that they were performing and executing, Intel's own words dictate that the market should have rewarded them.

People who don't know the case, should be aware that AMD has been pursuing this course for a while. It started when their A64 architecture wasn't getting the market share they deemed it deserved. It also references practices in the day of the original Athlon (effectively equal to the P3) and the 386 line.

There is no question that Intel is hard working. I know a few people at Intel who worked on the new divider architecture in Conroe. In fact, that simple fact is part of the reason they are in this situation. They expect just as much from their marketing and legal teams as they do from their engineers.

In today's market, we can look back and say that Intel's practices were questionable at best. Intel effectively admits this when they don't deny their practices, but rather contend that they were legal. The real question, as Intel contends, is whether or not these practices were illegal or even questionable years back.

most fast foods only offer pepsi products only or coca cola products only, and do so because they receive heavy discounts on the coke. How is this different then what Intel chose to do with its Pentium 4?

This is the crux of the matter. If Intel can prove that there was no reasonable expectation for them to practice otherwise at the time, then they might win this case. If, however, it is found that their practices are not inline with other industry practices at the time or that there was a reasonable expectation that Intel should have acted otherwise, then they could loose. There is an unsubstantiated (as far as I know) rumor that Intel threatened to cut off their supply all together to certain companies if they decided to start selling AMD. If this is true, then the damage done may be greater than any reward AMD sees.

INTEL is an honorable company. AMD is not. AMD has been untruthful to customers and shareholders much of their history.

I'll skip the question on Intel's honor for now. I don't know about what AMD may have done to their shareholders, but I can comment a little on the inner workings at AMD and their customer relations. While the number of people I personally know who work at AMD totals to one, she and her friends claim that it is also a very hardworking company (at least at the engineering level). They'd really have to be to make up for the differences in resources. I'll look to Lucas Art Studios an example of a rather large customer that is now die hard AMD. Lucas initially approached Intel to build a distributed computing system for real-time special effects editing for movies. Skipping the details on Intel's part, they ended up getting it built by AMD. Long story short, Lucas stated that, due to customer relations with AMD, that they'd stick with AMD even if Intel took the performance crown.

The most dishonorable thing I know of that AMD did, was imply that they could fill a larger demand than they actually could. Though this could've bee a miscommunication between the fab house and customer relations, it is equally likely that AMD expected to have more money and consequently more fabrication capacity on their hands. Their is no reason to overbook on purpose as it would both alienate customers and lock AMD into a particular price when large demand and a small supply would raise the value of the processor. In such situations, it makes more sense to kindly inform customers that they can't get more processors at the previous price as demand has exceeded the supply. Intel has also run into supply issues in the past. For instance, before the AMD/ATI merger, they bought chipsets from ATI and distributed them to customers in place of their own to alleviate their chipset shortage.

The Phenom TLB error was properly documented and a bios level workaround was made shortly their after. Further, it was determined that only a small number of cases would be affected even without the workaround. Errata is normal in the industry and only rarely makes it to public eyes. Intel had a similar issue with the floating point divider in the Pentium. It had the potential to affect any program that used fdiv and no workaround could be made. Another less serious issue was found with the float to int unit in the PII. It was found by a third party and consequently wasn't in Intel's errata documents. The point is, AMD's handling of the Phenom TLB error was to industry standards. It wouldn't have gotten the publicity it did if it weren't for the high expectations for Phenom at launch.

Unfortunately for AMD, even if they win, they amount of money they are likely to net won't be anywhere near enough to make up for what they've lost. Because of their money woes, they've lost many high profile executives and more importantly, many talented engineers that will be hard to replace. Assuming they can replace all of those with equivalent talent, it will still take time to get into the flow of things. Further, they've already lost a lot of time in R&D due to lack of funds. Even with a huge fine, Intel may end up ahead. If Intel wins, then AMD will be further in the hole with lawyer fees.

What AMD does have going for it is they seem to have gone the right direction with their architecture. With more R&D, they may even be able to refine it to the point of competitiveness. Their new micro-architecture is supposed to very different from Phenom, though. I just hope it's not a move in the wrong direction.