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AMD's case against Intel thus far

Ars Technica has published an article that describes some of the possible outcomes of the antitrust lawsuit that AMD filed on Intel last year.  AMD is doing its best to try and prove that Intel did indeed prevent companies from using AMD CPUs.  If AMD successful, companies that currently only use Intel chips may begin to start using AMD products in the future.  Ars Technica reports:

This could lead to lower prices for computers, particularly those using high-end chips. However, as companies like Dell are already free to use threats of leaving the Intel roost to gain lower component prices, the savings for the consumer will probably end up being fairly modest. In the long term, however, healthy competition in the x86 processor market requires that both Intel and AMD are able to compete on a level playing field. The antitrust trial will, in theory, help make that possible.

The article also highlights some of the successes and processors AMD offered after Intel sued the company over a dozen years ago:  bringing 64-bit computing to the x86 market, K5, K6, K7, Opteron and Athlon chips.  If you're looking for some more background information about the lawsuit filed last year, please read the coverage at Ars Technica and CNET.

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Intel sued AMD?
By Regs on 4/22/2006 7:11:26 PM , Rating: 2
Did I read that right? Whoa. Now thats some healthy competition!




RE: Intel sued AMD?
By jkostans on 4/22/2006 7:24:44 PM , Rating: 2
Where have you been?


RE: Intel sued AMD?
By Zelvek on 4/22/2006 7:33:10 PM , Rating: 2
I thought it was the other way around?


RE: Intel sued AMD?
By Goty on 4/22/2006 7:43:47 PM , Rating: 2
I believe Intel sued AMD some time ago, this just an update on the antitrust suit that ws filed by AMD last year against Intel.


RE: Intel sued AMD?
By smitty3268 on 4/22/2006 7:57:06 PM , Rating: 2
Long ago, Intel sued AMD for using their x86 architecture. It ended up being settled out of court - I believe AMD agreed to pay a yearly fee and that Intel could copy for free any features that AMD created. Which is why Intel could copy AMD64 but AMD may have had difficulty if Intel had come up with it first.


RE: Intel sued AMD?
By hstewarth on 4/22/2006 8:45:42 PM , Rating: 1
I believe the agreement was over SSE/SSE2 instruction set which Intel invented.

Intel created the 8086/8088 architexture, then led to 80286 and 80386 and 80486. That is where the AMD mess came into action. AMD decided they didn't want just be second source - but actually be competitor. Intel kept there designs and Amd started theres.

Basically the AMD chips maybe different phyically designed but they support the same logical instructions that was original Intel logic. Basically this means that even the newest AM2 chips can run the same programs that ran on the orginal 80386/80486 or even 8088 that Intel created.

I believe that Intel did have 64bit extension Yamhill before AMD had but they found it was not that useful. Atleast not until memory prices go down.

This whole lawsuit stuff is really stupid. AMD is just burning bridges in hopes to change something legally so they can get more market share. Really bad business practice.


RE: Intel sued AMD?
By Goty on 4/22/2006 8:48:57 PM , Rating: 3
Getting more market share is bad business practice? Since when?


RE: Intel sued AMD?
By TomZ on 4/22/2006 9:02:19 PM , Rating: 2
Getting marketshare through lawsuits is bad business practice.


RE: Intel sued AMD?
By patentman on 4/23/2006 5:06:36 PM , Rating: 2
Actually, getting more market share is only illegal under the antitrust laws if intel did something in violation of the sherman act or the clayton act (there maybe one or two other acts, e.g. the FTC act that they might violated, but thy are not antitrust statutes per se.)

I haven;t read the case, so I am speculating, but its likely that AMD is arguing that intel 1) is a monopolist using unlawful tactics to extend its monopoly in violation of section 2 of the sherman act (note: you do not have to hav 100% of the market to be a monopoly under the sherman act); 2) is engaged in an unlawful agreement in restraint of trade (spcifically an unlawful exclusive dealing contract) in violation of section 1 of the sherman act (which means AMD will have to show that Intels agreement foreclosed at least a part of the relevant market from a significant competitor, and that the probable outcome of this agreement is to raise prices above competitive levels or otherwise injure competition (note: competition does not equal competitors). They could argue a lot of things.

But the short answer is, gaining more market share can be bad business practice if it is anticompetitive to do so.


RE: Intel sued AMD?
By Trisped on 4/24/2006 12:57:39 PM , Rating: 2
Yeah, the complaint is pretty much that Intel is using their market share to prevent competition. If you read the pdf where AMD files the case they list things such as incentives given to companies who sell a certain number of Intel chips and the number is different for each company (read discrimination). They also point out the drop in AMD chips on the market even though it is well known that their chips are better, fast, and cheaper then Intel equivalent. There is some other stuff too. It is a really easy article to read so I suggest everyone check it out.

As for Intel suing AMD as I remember that was Intel trying to gain a complete monopoly of the x86. I forget who originally developed it, IBM or Intel, but IBM owned it. In keeping with IBM business practices, they hired both Intel and AMD to supply them with chips, so both had a fair right to manufacture the processors. Intel sued them in an attempt to kick them out of the market. That is the way I remember it, correct me if I am wrong.


RE: Intel sued AMD?
By Trisped on 4/24/2006 1:21:01 PM , Rating: 2
Oh, and the 64 bit thing...
Intel had the first 64 bit processor, I think it was one of those business only processors. The problem was that it didn't work or was not completely compatible with the x86 chips. AMD went another path and made a 64 bit extension for the x86 architecture. When AMD's solution came out it basically stole the floor out from under the Intel chip because the AMD chip was compatible with most hardware and software already in the market where the Intel chip was not (sure there were some changes needed like socket enhancements and re-writing software to take advantage of the new abilities with Win XP64, but they could still run old programs in an emulation mode and most of the hardware was still usable, where Intel's was not.)
I believe the resolution was that Intel licensed AMD's 64 bit command structure so there would be one set of commands in the market instead of 2. That doesn't mean they implemented the instructions the same way, just that the commands to do the job were the same. An example would be McDonald's and Burger King. Both make hamburgers, but each do it differently.


RE: Intel sued AMD?
By Samus on 4/22/2006 8:58:16 PM , Rating: 5
hstewarth, practically everything you said is false. in other words you're full of shit.

to begin with, and i'm not going to waste much time on your comments, but Intel sued AMD and Cyrix over MMX licensing.

source: http://www.computerworld.com/printthis/1997/0,4814...

secondly, if you truely believe intel plays fair, you need to open your eyes. its about as common sense as 9/11 being a government coverup.

third, intel directly copied x86-64, which they had the right to do for the same reason amd can copy everything intel does. they license to eachother.


RE: Intel sued AMD?
By hstewarth on 4/23/06, Rating: 0
RE: Intel sued AMD?
By Viditor on 4/23/2006 1:59:46 PM , Rating: 2
Intel and AMD both began with Fairchild Semiconductors. In the late 60's, three unhappy employees from Fairchild left the company to strike out on their own...they were Jerry Sanders III, Bob Noyce, and Gordon Moore. Noyce and Moore founded Intel in 1968, and Sanders founded AMD in 1969.
In 1971, Intel introduced the world's first CPU...the Intel 4004.
The first "Personal Computer" (kit) was the SCELBI in 1974 and used the Intel 8008...
The first successful PC was the Altair 8800 (made by MITS) at the end of 1974, which used the Intel 8008 and the 8080...this was followed in 1976 by the Altair 680b which used the Motorola 6800 CPU. The first IBM PC (5100) was also in 1975, but the price tag was 4 times that of the Altair and it didn't do so well at this point.

Now that the history is out of the way, I must say it's fairly irrelevant...while I appreciate the fact that Henry Ford invented the assembly line, I still think my BMW is a better car...:)


RE: Intel sued AMD?
By Targon on 4/22/2006 9:20:12 PM , Rating: 2
Yamhill was the rumored chip that would add 64 bit extensions to Intel's chips I believe, but Intel refused to admit they were working on it until they had it ready.

Intel didn't want the AMD64 instruction set to catch on, so they didn't admit they were working to add the new instructions to their own processors. Once Intel was ready, they called AMD64 their own instruction set and called it the EM64T instruction set.

Now, while Intel may have had the right to add the AMD64 instruction set to their chips, I wonder how much right they had(and have) to claim it's THEIR instruction set. They can only claim it's their own implementation, but AMD came up with the new instructions.


RE: Intel sued AMD?
By Viditor on 4/22/2006 10:06:59 PM , Rating: 2
quote:
Yamhill was the rumored chip that would add 64 bit extensions to Intel's chips I believe, but Intel refused to admit they were working on it until they had it ready

Yamhill began around the time that AMD64 did (late 1990's), but Intel cancelled work on it before it was anywhere near complete and spent their money on Netburst and Itanium instead.
Remember that at that time, the industry did whatever Intel told it to do (memory standards, bus standards, etc...). By changing the standard to IA64 (Itanium) on all chips (as they were intending to do), they could basically cut AMD out of the CPU business altogether (IA-64 isn't part of the cross-licensing deal). Even when AMD64 was announced (Yamhill was dead by then and the AMD64 design was ~2 years old), Intel believed that servers would never use it and that desktops wouldn't want it. Opteron sales convinced them that they were WAY wrong so they quickly reverse-engineered AMD64 and 2 years later included it in their own designs.


RE: Intel sued AMD?
By NullSubroutine on 4/23/2006 3:31:51 AM , Rating: 2
i dont believe that they reversed engineered it, they probably got a licence for it (i think with some sort of a techonology trade, perhaps like sse3)

the 64bit extentions really wasnt the main reason for the amd-64. the original x86 instruction set had errors and flaws that have been worked around since its inception. amd fixed those errors and then also added 64 bit to compliment the future x86.


RE: Intel sued AMD?
By Viditor on 4/23/2006 12:08:53 PM , Rating: 2
quote:
i dont believe that they reversed engineered it, they probably got a licence for it

They did both...reverse-engineering taught them how, and the license made it legal for them to do so. The one thing that ISN'T in the license (AMD64 is actually freely available through the x86-64 consortium) and that Intel isn't allowed to do is create cHT (Coherent HT) links. These are the links that lead directly to the CPU cache and are different than those used by the HT controllers. These are why Intel must use CSI rather than HT for cache coherency...


RE: Intel sued AMD?
By Viditor on 4/22/2006 9:45:12 PM , Rating: 5
quote:
I believe the agreement was over SSE/SSE2 instruction set which Intel invented


No...AMD was a vendor of x86 chips for Intel and had a license to produce them. After a few years, they began making their own design and Intel tried to sue them for patent infringement and retroactively nullify their license (AMD also counter-sued Intel).
The case was settled out of court with a full cross-licensing deal between Intel and AMD many years ago.
quote:
I believe that Intel did have 64bit extension Yamhill before AMD had but they found it was not that useful.

No...never happened.
quote:
AMD is just burning bridges in hopes to change something legally so they can get more market share

What bridges are they burning? There isn't a single company that they've subpoenaed that wouldn't be ecstatic with to equal companies that compete rather than a single monopoly to deal with. They all know that AMD is perfectly correct to do so, and they all would have done the same damn thing...excellent move on AMD's part.


RE: Intel sued AMD?
By hstewarth on 4/23/06, Rating: 0