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ATI the latest major player to be dragged into the fray

In the seemingly never-ending AMD versus Intel anti-trust suit -- that now famous Delaware Civil Action 05-441-JJF -- Intel has fired a shot at ATI.  The Delaware court has approved a subpoena from Intel to obtain ATI documents with regard to the pending AMD-ATI merger. 

The subpoena covers, among other things, "All documents that relate to ATI's decision to be acquired by AMD, including but not limited to the transaction's strategic rationale, growth opportunities, and financial projections of the transaction's actual or potential effect on any aspect of either company's or the combined company's business performance."

Several months ago AMD filed a subpoena against Microsoft forcing the company to disclose any documents regarding "Microsoft's decision to develop software for AMD's 64-bit CPUs, and the timing and schedule for development of that software."  This was then followed by additional subpoena requests to Adobe, BEA Systems, Dell, HP, Sun Microsystems and Wal-Mart.

Intel then returned fire by also filing subpoenas against the same companies AMD had subpoenaed, but with different scope.

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Intel showing that they can't handle competition
By Targon on 9/12/2006 7:42:03 AM , Rating: 2
Let's face it, Intel is afraid of AMD.

Intel has their own GPU team, and has been pushing them for a long time now. As a result, I don't see that Intel has any rights to demand that ATI and AMD provide information about the merger. Stockholders get the information, but I havn't heard that Intel has any stock in ATI.

As long as ATI doesn't pass on any Intel trade secrets learned as a part of the ATI chipset and license agreements on supporting Intel processors, Intel doesn't have the right to ask for strategy information. Honestly, it would be like Adobe or Sun demanding that Microsoft provide this type of information every time they buy a company or product that has nothing to do with them.




By Master Kenobi (blog) on 9/12/2006 8:13:20 AM , Rating: 5
Intel is just following through with counter-suits. Standard industry practice.

Now I would have to say your overstating Intel being afraid of AMD. They actually see AMD as a market competitor now, but still a small one. You need to remember that up until the Atlon64 processor, AMD had almost no market share to be seen. Granted now they have roughly 23%, but none of that is in the corporate desktop arena, which Intel has been the crowned king of for over a decade. AMD is still competing blow for blow against Intel in the consumer arena, and lately Intel struck some nice headway with it's Core 2 Duo chips.

Now with the acquisition of ATI, AMD in the next two years should finally be able to offer a complete in house solution. This is really what needs to happen for them to start pushing up against Intel in the corporate arena. Now I'm not sure what universe your from, but in the corporate world, support is everything. HP, or Dell (the two largest corporate providers) provide complete Intel solutions, Intel motherboard, Intel Processor, Intel onboard video. From a support perspective that is what we want to see. We don't want to be mixing and matching AMD processors with whatever chipsets on whatever motherboards. In this arena where you have 10,000 machines operating all the time, when there are problems you want as standard an environment as you can get. That said, we employ 4000 Intel Pentium 4 HT desktops, and 6000 Intel Centrino laptops. We have to stock parts for four models of laptops, and two models of desktops. The drivers are almost the same across all six platforms however, and Intel and HP fully support them. What breaks one likely breaks all the others, and what fixes one will fix all others.

We have neither the time nor manpower to put into a non-unified system. If we can buy a desktop or laptop from
HP and it comes with an AMD board, AMD Integrated Gfx, and AMD processor, great. Now when there is a problem there are two places to go, AMD and HP. No dealing with ATI or nVidia, or MSI, or any other companies.

Until AMD can offer that kind of all inclusive solution, they will never be in a position to best Intel. Now with the acquisiton of ATI they should be able to do that, well they should have the capabilities atleast. So no, to your earlier statement that Intel is afraid of AMD, no that is far from true. They see them as a real tangible market competitor and have responded accordingly. But with all of the Intel architecture already in place with companies, AMD will have a long hard climb ahead of them to crack the market and get some penetration.


By FITCamaro on 9/12/2006 10:25:54 AM , Rating: 2
That is due to AMD not having a complete solution that includes the processor, chipset, IGP, and network card. With the acquisition of ATI, that has now changed. Soon AMD will be an even bigger threat to Intel since they'll be able to draw more OEMs to them. And since their IGP will be far superior to that of Intels (in graphics processing power), they'll probably be able to take more market share. All they need to do now is get out K8L so they regain the performance crown and get down to 65nm to try and regain the performance per watt crown.

I'm not an AMD fanboy though. I plan to buy a C2D system in the next few weeks. I go with whoevers faster at the time.


By Master Kenobi (blog) on 9/12/2006 11:13:47 AM , Rating: 4
I stated that with the merger AMD has the capability. You also need to remember that the entire concept of a unified AMD platform is still on the drawing board at this point. Do not make false or wild acusations about who will have the superior IGP, Platform, or even Marketshare.

I stated the present situation, and what AMD would need to do. You stated 5 things.
quote:
That is due to AMD not having a complete solution that includes the processor, chipset, IGP, and network card.

Thank you for underlining my previous post.
quote:
Soon AMD will be an even bigger threat to Intel since they'll be able to draw more OEMs to them.

They already have their hand in all of the major OEM cookie jar's. They can't draw any more than what already exists.
quote:
And since their IGP will be far superior to that of Intels (in graphics processing power), they'll probably be able to take more market share.

I would like to see supporting facts of a futuristic AMD IGP that performs superior to Intel's. As of right now this is still on the drawing board. This is just wild speculation at this point. Also IGP power does not correlate well in a corporate environment, they just don't care the way a home user might.
quote:
All they need to do now is get out K8L so they regain the performance crown and get down to 65nm to try and regain the performance per watt crown.

K8L has yet been produced, tested, or benchmarked. It may not regain them any performance crown, its all wild speculation at this point what K8L will actually deliver. As for 65nm, they are already using that process, and the chips should be on sale by the end of October, however this has of writing this not earned them the performance per watt crown.


By kamel5547 on 9/12/2006 12:21:15 PM , Rating: 4
quote:
I would like to see supporting facts of a futuristic AMD IGP that performs superior to Intel's.


Um... ATI already has IGP's that outperform Intel's (Xpress series)... its not futuristic its just a matter of integrating that into a single soluton. I'll admit getting the entire platform together may take some time but I have no doubt that the IGP from ATI will be superior unless Intel puts a focus on that part of their solution.

That being said I don't care about IGP's at work, you either need a video card (rarely, maybe 5-8% of users) or you don't, as long as it outputs well enough that the user doesn't complain its good enough.


By dgingeri on 9/12/2006 12:41:52 PM , Rating: 2
quote:
I would like to see supporting facts of a futuristic AMD IGP that performs superior to Intel's. As of right now this is still on the drawing board. This is just wild speculation at this point. Also IGP power does not correlate well in a corporate environment, they just don't care the way a home user might.


That part is simple, the current ATI IGP's are clearly superior to Intel's. All AMD has to do is slap their logo on it and it's superior to Intel's IGP's by about 3 generations. Intel's IGP can't even compete with nVidia's TNT2.

quote:
They already have their hand in all of the major OEM cookie jar's. They can't draw any more than what already exists.


That's wrong since AMD does not have, currently, any Dell desktop system, with or without an IGP, or any Toshiba system. There are other manufacturers out there that don't use AMD, but I don't really have time to look them up. Sure, a Dell deal is pending, but it's still not in place.

quote:
K8L has yet been produced, tested, or benchmarked. It may not regain them any performance crown, its all wild speculation at this point what K8L will actually deliver. As for 65nm, they are already using that process, and the chips should be on sale by the end of October, however this has of writing this not earned them the performance per watt crown.


True that. I haven't even seen any evidence that the K8L has any performance improvement to it at all. The only aspect of the K8L that I have seen that shows any improvement over the current K8 design is that it is quad core capable. I haven't seen much of an improvement in most things for dual core processors (that doesn't mean that they aren't coming) let alone for quad core. I don't think quad core will have any advantage. AMD needs to redesign the whole thing to catch up with Intel, which will take a couple years to do, just as Intel did with the Core2Duo.

The Athlon was superior to the P3 when it first came out. The only reason AMD didn't grab market share then was because Intel told the motherboard makers that they wouldn't receive 440BX chipsets if they produced AMD motherboards. The Athlon was superior in performance and power usage until the P3 was moved to PC133 and integrated cache. Then the P4 came out, and AMD bested that right from the start. The reason? The Intel chips had either only 1 true execution pipeline to AMD's 2 (P3) or a longer pipeline with the same restriction (P4).

It wasn't until the Athlon64 that AMD was able to truely pulled ahead, using many of the same tricks as the original Athlon (triple pipeline with one dedicated to memory addressing) and a slightly more efficient design. That was what made Intel start redesigning their processors, not the stalling clock rates of the Prescott. The longer pipeline tricks Intel has been using have been proven to improve the clock rate in the latest Cedar Mill design, but it doesn't really get them improved performance. Sure, they could be selling 5GHz chips right now and still be making money, but they knew that the Athlon64 would still be outperforming them at half the clock rate.

Intel updated their mobile chip, configured it for dual core, and then introduced it as a new desktop chip, which is the only thing that allowed them to pull ahead. They got scared into actually doing something right.

AMD can counter, likely with the K10 design, but they'll have to work hard at it. They will come up with something, but just like the original K6, they need get it out on time. With the K6, if they had introduced it on time, would have been a great competitor for the P2, but they didn't get it out until over a year late, making it poor competition for the brand new P3.

I hope they will get it out on time, since that is the only thing that will keep Intel from stalling like they did with the original P4. Intel went the easy route, and I am working on a 5 year old PC because of it. If they had actually worked on a design that worked, we would still be on the rate thattakes us higher, instead of stalling the entire PC industry for 3 years.

and btw, I'm not a Pro-AMD fanboy, I'm for innovation and competition, which was stalled by Intel's tactics. I owned 3 Cyrix processors: a 5x86 at 120Mhz, a 6x86 at 120Mhz, and a 6x86MX at 150Mhz. They were the best available at the time for the price. Quite frankly, I was a fan of the Nx586 that NextGen put out back in the day. it was a good design to compete with the original Pentium. The only problem was that they didn't have the production capability to get it to market. If they hadn't been shut out of the production market, things would look a lot different now. It's a good thing that AMD bought them out. they were a good engineering team that produced good designs. The Pentium chips out to compete with them cost over twice as much for the same performance.

I'm for putting forward your best effort and letting the best man win, not carrying marbles to trip us the competition when they start to get close. Competition benefits us all with better products at cheaper prices, which has been the case over this last year. I am, however, anti-Intel because of their past tactics. They will have to significantly reform their tactics in order to earn my trust back after the Rambus and P4 debacles.


By finalfan on 9/12/2006 3:14:58 PM , Rating: 2
quote:
Intel's IGP can't even compete with nVidia's TNT2.


You are kidding, right? Even the one Intel embeded in Timna CPU in 2000 can beat TNT2. I can play AOE3 smoothly on my laptop using Intel IGP. Can I do it with a TNT2?


By buleybVT on 9/12/2006 8:52:57 AM , Rating: 2
Actually, Intel's investment division does own stock in AMD, and has for years, old news.


By Phynaz on 9/12/2006 9:35:42 AM , Rating: 2
quote:
Let's face it, Intel is afraid of AMD.


ANY company should be afraid of it's competition.


Is this still going?
By splines on 9/12/2006 4:26:42 AM , Rating: 2
Considering that most tier-ones are now starting to build AMD into their product lines, this all seems a bit yesterday's news. I was I was cashing the lawyers paychecks right about now.

We all know Intel offered massive cost incentives to Dell, et al to go with underperforming parts, but with AMD at something like 25% of the market it seems a bit foolish and 'Well, yeah, you're still being anti-competitive'; especially considering their penetration is pretty impressive compared to the market five years ago.




RE: Is this still going?
By ET on 9/12/2006 4:54:27 AM , Rating: 2
We all know Intel offered massive cost incentives to Dell, et al to go with underperforming parts

Now that I think of it, Dell is very consistent about this. When AMD was the better performer, they didn't sell it. Now that Intel holds the performance crown, they're starting to sell AMD.


RE: Is this still going?
By slunkius on 9/12/2006 6:22:53 AM , Rating: 2
AFAIK the fact that intel is less anticompetitive now does not make intel's actions in the past legit


RE: Is this still going?
By Griswold on 9/12/2006 12:13:47 PM , Rating: 4
What kind of logic is that?

Maybe they (AMD) are (partly) where they are now because of the pressure they put on intel and its partners with these actions?

Besides that, since when should we let corporations (or people) get away with wrong doings of the past just because they have been forced to losen their grip on the industry for various reasons?

These horsecrap comments keep coming back, time and time again... why is that?


This is from last month...
By Viditor on 9/12/06, Rating: 0
RE: This is from last month...
By AmbroseAthan on 9/12/2006 9:18:51 AM , Rating: 2
So for those of us who were not aware of this on August 11, should Dailytech not repost the story?

It gets really annoying to read the comments complaining about the timing of an article at Dailytech. Not everything is posted the instant it happens, but it is still news.


RE: This is from last month...
By Loc13 on 9/12/2006 9:44:17 AM , Rating: 2
Did you find this piece of news elsewhere? If not, this is still news.


RE: This is from last month...
By Viditor on 9/12/2006 9:41:25 PM , Rating: 2
RE: This is from last month...
By Viditor on 9/12/2006 9:48:22 PM , Rating: 2
BTW, I didn't post what I did in order to criticize DT. When I read the headline, I thought that Intel had filed another subpoena...
I also thought it might have something to do with the other news from the 11th...
http://money.cnn.com/2006/09/11/news/international...

"EU widens Intel antitrust probe"

"The European Commission has widened an antitrust review of Intel to see if it convinced an electronics retailer to exclude rival Advanced Micro Devices, a Commission spokesman said Monday"


Angrypants
By Ralph The Magician on 9/12/06, Rating: 0
RE: Angrypants
By Desslok on 9/12/2006 5:51:32 AM , Rating: 4
Seeing how Intel is one of the largest producers of IGP's I HIGHLY doubt that.


RE: Angrypants
By Strunf on 9/12/2006 8:53:50 AM , Rating: 2
Like if the ATI IGP really counted ...


The easy way to get information
By othercents on 9/12/2006 10:37:09 AM , Rating: 2
This is just the easy way for Intel to get information about the merger. There might be a smoking gun in there that could stop the merger. Does this have anything to do with the anti-trust suit? Not really, just freedom to look at all of the AMD/ATI documents and make a strategic plan of attack based on what AMD and ATI are trying to do.

If you owned a business wouldn't you want to know your competition's 5 year or even 10+ year plan? Then you would be able to plan ahead and undercut your competition.

Other




IGP
By rushfan2006 on 9/12/2006 11:26:36 AM , Rating: 2
LOL gotta love acronyms....in this forum IGP is thrown about left and right, and its only from the context of the article that I know what you mean. However, otherwise the only IGP I go by in the world of IT is the routing protocol, Interior Gateway Protocol.

All these damn acronyms....lol





Just standard tactics that's all
By JNo on 9/13/2006 8:31:21 PM , Rating: 2
Um, you guys need to realise that while the case is ongoing, this provides intel a perfect opportunity to request some documents that are not necessarily wholly relevant to the case but that nevertheless provide great insight into their main competitor, its strategy and projections... documents that are even from the competitor and so reveal its true opinions. Intel isn't doing this because it's a 'sneaky bully' but simply because it can and would be dumb not to use this opportunity to gain intelligence on the 'enemy' in terms of business tactics. I'm an AMD fanboy normally but this is just common sense on the part of intel. Any company would do the same in this situation - it's almost quite amusing, like giving them the finger. Standard operating procedure, that's all.




Strategic Advantage
By Hydrofirex on 9/12/06, Rating: -1
RE: Strategic Advantage
By Master Kenobi (blog) on 9/12/2006 11:19:07 AM , Rating: 2
Welcome to corporate America, do anything and everything to get an edge on the competition. Intel isn't the first to do this, not by a long shot. They won't be the last either.


RE: Strategic Advantage
By mindless1 on 9/12/2006 8:57:19 PM , Rating: 2
I'd call it pathetic before "slick".

It would be different if Intel were struggling to survive, though still rather ridiculous to claim then need context for the merger.


RE: Strategic Advantage
By Helbore on 9/13/2006 1:21:16 PM , Rating: 2
I dont think its a matter of Intel thinking there is foul play going on. If there were, this lawsuit would not be the place for it. They would file a new one.

This lawsuit sees Intel in the defending role, so they would be looking to prove that they are not guilty of holding a monopoly over AMD. My thoughts are that Intel are trying to prove that AMD are, in fact, a business with a rapidly increasing market share. After all, if AMD were being scuppered by Intel, why would ATI want to merge with them? The line of denfence will probably be to show that ATI conducted an analysis of AMD's profits and marketshare and decided it was a good financial opportunity to merge with them, therefore proving that Intel are not crushing AMD.

I'm not saying I agree with that line of thought, only that this is probably what Intel are after trying tp prove.


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