AMD Chimes In On Intel’s $1.45B Fine

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AMD’s Nigel Dessau has made a rather lengthy blog post on the subject of today’s $1.45B fine against Intel. Mr. Dessau says now that Intel’s "unfair and illegal practices" are over, the way is now paved for consumers to finally buy the processor of their choice. If what he says is correct, I guess AMD will see a noticeable increase in market share in Europe in the near future. Right?

While Intel may want you to believe this is about “discounting”, it really isn’t at all. The ruling – more than eight years in the making – is about how Intel deliberately used its monopoly profits to control a critically important industry. How it has decided what consumers are allowed to buy, and where they are allowed to buy it. How Intel severely punishes PC manufacturers, suppliers and retailers who do not play by its rules. That is what Europe is putting a stop to. We applaud them for doing so, and if you buy computers and value innovation, so should you.
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Mr. Dessau says now that Intel’s "unfair and illegal practices" are over, the way is now paved for consumers to finally buy the processor of their choice.
...
We applaud them for doing so, and if you buy computers and value innovation, so should you.
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I'm not taking sides, but it's funny hearing this from a company that sat on their asses up to and ~2 years after Intel brought Core 2 to the table.
 
Honestly I could care care even less (and yes I know people read that wrong and think I should be saying "couldn't care less" but I'm not, it's accurate) about AMD anymore. I could care less that they offer a cheaper alternative, I could care less that they bought ATI and now ATI/AMD video cards seem to be pulling the big numbers in benchmarks, I could care less that Intel got fined for what appears to me to be bullshit (the EU seems to exist solely to wreak havoc with US-based conglomerates and big companies, go figure), and so... I'll buy Intel at twice the price if necessary knowing it'll work and I'll never have issues with it.

AMD shot themselves in the foot a long time ago, and they're just gonna keep right on limping in it seems... they had a chance and they're blowing it, every other day, more and more. Comments like these from AMD personnel are just nails in the coffin to me.
 
I'm glad this is happening. Intel was shutting down amd from all the big pc manufacturers. Its was about time something was done.
 
We applaud them for doing so, and if you buy computers and value innovation, so should you.
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That's a pretty big statement from a company that hasn't shown any real "innovation" for a long time. :p
 
Your ass would be shot too if you'd been AMD. Here's a little comment I've seen in many other places, this one's from http://www.techreport.com/discussions.x/16909

"The odd thing (to me) about all this is that Intel felt no need to hide any of these practices during the time period in question. I worked for one of Intel's customers at the time and everyone in the lab knew we would not be testing, benchmarking, or in any other way considering any AMD platforms for potential products, even though Intel's products were in short supply and AMD had much better price/performance. We knew that if we were to release an AMD platform, we would be dropped to the bottom of Intel's allocation list and if we released a machine without an "Intel Inside" sticker on it, we would lose the Intel "marketing incentives" for not only our product line, but for all the product lines in our company.

This was all common knowlege. Intel had us by the nuts - we knew it, they knew it, and I'm sure AMD knew it. We would have loved to ship AMD processors to bolster the lower end of our product line, but if we had done so Intel would bave basically put us out of business.

And Intel's attitude about the whole situation was one of utter arrogance. Personally I'm glad to see them get a little education on what people will and will not tolerate. Even capitalism has rules. "

Then there's that something from a guy who ran a computer store with Intel ready to fuck them over at the first sight of AMD.


It's a miracle AMD's still around after all these years of Intel fuckery, you can tell that they've done the best with the money they've bled out after Intel started this stuff. US courts will have an easier time taking on Intel in 2010 thanks to this, unless they do a Microsoft and magically settle.
 
That's a pretty damn big fine. I wonder in these cases.. what if hypothetically Intel said FU to paying it? What could the EU do about it? Prevent them from selling Intel to all EU nations? That seems like it would piss off the citizens a little bit. Glad AMD weathered the storm however.
 
The fine should be high to discourage Intel from doing the same again. If the fine is small, Intel will surely do the same thing again since they can get hundreds millions of profit from the action.
 
* Intel gave rebates to computer manufacturer A from December 2002 to December 2005 conditional on this manufacturer purchasing exclusively Intel CPUs
* Intel gave rebates to computer manufacturer B from November 2002 to May 2005 conditional on this manufacturer purchasing no less than 95% of its CPU needs for its business desktop computers from Intel (the remaining 5% that computer manufacturer B could purchase from rival chip maker AMD was then subject to further restrictive conditions set out below)
* Intel gave rebates to computer manufacturer C from October 2002 to November 2005 conditional on this manufacturer purchasing no less than 80% of its CPU needs for its desktop and notebook computers from Intel
* Intel gave rebates to computer manufacturer D in 2007 conditional on this manufacturer purchasing its CPU needs for its notebook computers exclusively from Intel.



Lol, these sound like TERRIBLE and UNFAIR business practices. Good thing they don't have bullshit legislation like this in the US yet.
 
xdivenx said:
* Intel gave rebates to computer manufacturer A from December 2002 to December 2005 conditional on this manufacturer purchasing exclusively Intel CPUs
* Intel gave rebates to computer manufacturer B from November 2002 to May 2005 conditional on this manufacturer purchasing no less than 95% of its CPU needs for its business desktop computers from Intel (the remaining 5% that computer manufacturer B could purchase from rival chip maker AMD was then subject to further restrictive conditions set out below)
* Intel gave rebates to computer manufacturer C from October 2002 to November 2005 conditional on this manufacturer purchasing no less than 80% of its CPU needs for its desktop and notebook computers from Intel
* Intel gave rebates to computer manufacturer D in 2007 conditional on this manufacturer purchasing its CPU needs for its notebook computers exclusively from Intel.



Lol, these sound like TERRIBLE and UNFAIR business practices. Good thing they don't have bullshit legislation like this in the US yet.
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Yeah, honestly I don't see how those are any different from giving discounts for bulk purchases. The more the company buys from Intel, the better deal they got. How is that in any way unfair? AMD could/should have done the same thing. Too bad they didn't have the better tech to offer.
 
Joe Average said:
Honestly I could care care even less (and yes I know people read that wrong and think I should be saying "couldn't care less" but I'm not, it's accurate) about AMD anymore. I could care less that they offer a cheaper alternative, I could care less that they bought ATI and now ATI/AMD video cards seem to be pulling the big numbers in benchmarks, I could care less that Intel got fined for what appears to me to be bullshit (the EU seems to exist solely to wreak havoc with US-based conglomerates and big companies, go figure), and so... I'll buy Intel at twice the price if necessary knowing it'll work and I'll never have issues with it.

AMD shot themselves in the foot a long time ago, and they're just gonna keep right on limping in it seems... they had a chance and they're blowing it, every other day, more and more. Comments like these from AMD personnel are just nails in the coffin to me.
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Dude! Just buy a cheap and fast CPU. CPU's don't matter anymore. That's old school... Spend the coin on the video card.
 
Joe Average said:
Honestly I could care care even less (and yes I know people read that wrong and think I should be saying "couldn't care less" but I'm not, it's accurate) about AMD anymore. I could care less that they offer a cheaper alternative, I could care less that they bought ATI and now ATI/AMD video cards seem to be pulling the big numbers in benchmarks, I could care less that Intel got fined for what appears to me to be bullshit (the EU seems to exist solely to wreak havoc with US-based conglomerates and big companies, go figure)
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so you at least care on some level?

cute sentiments i guess..

me personally, i couldn't care less about the EU and their continual pillaging of successful US companies to pad their bottom line...

now if that fine were to be given to AMD.... i'd be a little more supportive, but they are keeping it for themselves .... so fuck the EU....
 
rflcptr said:
lawlzors. That depends on the application.
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No doubt. But it might be safe to assume that most [H]'ers are primarily interested in gaming performance.

It "used" to be that overclockers prided themselves on purchasing the cheapest CPU's and o/c'ing the crap out of them with the help of good (Abit) motherboards. Remember the 300A (I got 504mhz) or The P3 600 (I got 866mhz) It was kinda like a "stick it to the man" (Intel) for raping us on prices...because there was no competition.

I game on an AMD Athlon 64 X2 5400+ Black Edition that O/C's solid at 3.3 ghz (stock is 2.8 ghz) on a Gigabyte 780G mobo. It rocks and I did it all for about $150 to my door.

Roots!

Fuk Intel...
 
When you look at when this occurred, (2002-2005), it does looks bad. They prevented AMD from competing during what could be considered AMD's golden age. The era when AMD's socket 754, 939 and 940 processors were dominating the P4 and Xenon in performance, generally ran cooler, and had x86-64 support while Intel's 64bit non Itanium, offerings were slim til near the very end of the P4 series and the beginning of the Core series.

When the above is taken into account, I have no difficulty figuring out why AMD was pissed. The lost profits they could have earned, the money they might have had to put into R&D that were cock blocked through what appears to be less than legal means. I would be pissed if I were them. My product is better, but the big system builders can only buy token numbers because of exclusivity deals with Intel that may not have been legal.

I do not agree with the size of the fine, or that the ones most hurt by this, AMD, will likely not see any of it. But, I do believe Intel was wrong and should have been taken to task. I do think justice would have been much better served in civil court though.
 
Whether or not AMD sees a market share increase may by and large be determined by how actual vendors handle the news and the results. If vendors continue to stock and promote high numbers of Intel equipment because they want to, AMD might not be able to make any significant market moves. If vendors actually start stocking, and promoting, AMD kit alongside Intel kit, and promote it accurately, AMD's marketshare will probably go up.

One of the points made in AMD's blog, and it's one I bang on everytime I get a chance, is much more expensive Intel kit is for the same performance. Now, right now, if I want the ultimate performance, period, in x86 hardware, I would be buying Intel.

However, if I'm on a budget... what exactly could I get? Right now, Intel and AMD are roughly about the same on Instructions per clock speed, so I'll go by clockspeed alone for a minute or two.

Another thing, I am in the US, so these price lookups may or may not be accurate.

Now, I'm going to want maximum graphics power. So I want a 3way PCI-express 2.0 system.

A 3 way PCI-Express 2.0 board for Socket AM2 with DDR2 memory with 8x for each slot... will set me back around $170 for a good Asus board with an Nvidia chipset.

A 3 way PCI-Express 2.0 board for Socket AM3 with DDR3 memory with 16x for 2 slots, 4x for the third slot, would also cost about $170 for a middle reviewed DFI board.

A 3 way PCI-Express 2.0 board for Intel Core I7 starts at around $190 for a junk board, and I'm looking closer to $250 for a board with 2 16x slots. Granted, I could spend that $250 on a MicroATX board which does the same thing but will fit in an Apevia X-Qpack.

Okay. So, realistically, to get the same options support on Motherboards, I'm looking at a pretty hefty price premium for Intel Kit.

That matters if I have a limited amount to spend.

So what about processors?

Well, for a Quad-Core 3.0ghz processor from AMD, I'm looking at $225 for the 945 Deneb core.

Newegg only lists one Intel I7 that's above 3ghz, and it's the 3.2ghz Nehalem which costs around $999.

Okay, yes. the 3.2ghz Nehalem will outrun the 3.0ghz Socket AM3, and the $245 3.2ghz Phenom as well..


But really, Core I7 starts at $280 with the 2.66 Quad Core 920 from Intel. Okay, it's a kick butt processor. I'm not going to say it's not one. Is it really worth over $40 more than a Socket AM3 from AMD? No. It isn't.


So, for the average person, a high performance AMD platform is going to cost a chunk less than an equivalent performance system from Intel.

If Vendors who sell computer parts continue to price Intel and AMD system in the same price bracket (and I'm looking at HP and Dell when I say that), then AMD market share won't go anywhere.

However, if vendors start selling AMD products and making a point of the price difference without a difference in performance... we'll see the scenario AMD wants. We'll see Intel cutting prices like a PETA cuts through former pets. (yeah, not afraid to go there too)
 
GORANKAR said:
When you look at when this occurred, (2002-2005), it does looks bad. They prevented AMD from competing during what could be considered AMD's golden age.
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Actually, AMD was bragging at the time that it was selling everything it could manufacture. AMD's "golden age" was marked by 1) historical high market share and stock price, 2) capacity limited sales and 3) totally depending on K8 instead of seriously working the next gen chip (the rushed Barcelona was an unsurprising disappointment). AMD's absolutely poor execution (no pun) by Ruiz during that time is what has AMD in its current state. Raising money during $40/share time for expansion (more fabs) for a capacity constrained company should have been a no-brainer.

Intel pretty much stopped the exclusive rebates a couple of years ago, which is why they are acting dumb over what practices they are supposed to change. As pointed out in Intel's press release today, they currently have one rebate program that doesn't appear to break the EUC's findings, that is at least when they get a chance to review it. Hopefully the EUC can spend a few $$$ to get it out to the company it's raping.
 
Ruiz could have done it better but the decision to buy ATI at that time was imo a correct decision eventhough the timing was quite off. I doubt that ATI could manage to pull it through their R600 failure if they are not bought by AMD but AMD could pay less for ATI if they waited longer. The problem with waiting, another bigger company like Intel could have bought ATI before AMD get the chance to buy them. It would be a very big problem for both AMD and nVidia if Intel manage to acquire ATI but it could as well push AMD and nVidia to do a joint venture to compete against Intel.
 
Saist said:
So what about processors?

Well, for a Quad-Core 3.0ghz processor from AMD, I'm looking at $225 for the 945 Deneb core.

Newegg only lists one Intel I7 that's above 3ghz, and it's the 3.2ghz Nehalem which costs around $999.

Okay, yes. the 3.2ghz Nehalem will outrun the 3.0ghz Socket AM3, and the $245 3.2ghz Phenom as well..


But really, Core I7 starts at $280 with the 2.66 Quad Core 920 from Intel. Okay, it's a kick butt processor. I'm not going to say it's not one. Is it really worth over $40 more than a Socket AM3 from AMD? No. It isn't.
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Yes. Yes it is. Go look at some multi-threaded benchmarks. And the "2.66GHz" clock speed of an i7 920 is moot, they can all pretty much do at least 3.8GHz on air which will rape any AM3 CPU sideways.

I've purchased both an i7 920 and a Phenom II X3 720 recently, and both platforms have strengths and benefits, but AMD has absolutely nothing to compete with the i7s right now in raw performance. And the difference between a complete i7 920 build and an AM3/DDR3 Phenon II quadcore build is only about 150 bucks.
 
ICOM said:
...or people that buy Intel CPU's
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I don't see how. The choice to choose one over the other has always been there. If you don't find a vendor that will carry AMD, then you find one that does. The choice hasn't been taken from the customer since no one forces them to go to one source over another. You go to the source that has what you want.
 
Intel broke a few minor rules a long time ago (when this investigation started), so I can understand them needing a slap on the wrist.

But this is just ridiculous. The EU is plain and simply extorting them. Intel was fined $35m for this in Korea. A $1.45b fine is nothing short of the EU taking money because they can, while trying to help out European companies. The fact that this money is lining the EU's pockets instead of going to AMD is all the proof you need.
 
MavericK96 said:
Yeah, honestly I don't see how those are any different from giving discounts for bulk purchases. The more the company buys from Intel, the better deal they got. How is that in any way unfair? AMD could/should have done the same thing. Too bad they didn't have the better tech to offer.
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The problem is that they are not giving incentives for buying in bulk, they were taking away the discounts if thier customers used a certian percentage of AMD parts. AMD lost market share baecause of anti-competative tactics and who can say what they could have done with the extra revenue that they would have had. They might have been able to push the Phenom I's out on 45nm with the 6mb of cache it needs to compete with core2.

Its not that likely, but its a plausable outcome that was squashed. Something should have been done, but im not the one to say what or by who.
 
banned_user said:
The problem is that they are not giving incentives for buying in bulk, they were taking away the discounts if thier customers used a certian percentage of AMD parts. AMD lost market share baecause of anti-competative tactics and who can say what they could have done with the extra revenue that they would have had. They might have been able to push the Phenom I's out on 45nm with the 6mb of cache it needs to compete with core2.

Its not that likely, but its a plausable outcome that was squashed. Something should have been done, but im not the one to say what or by who.
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Yes, there is a difference between bulk purchases (prices for x number of units, y number of units, and z number of units) vs. allocation ratios 95% to 5%. The second is downright underhanded. You could essentially consider it to be "I won't do business with you if you sell AMD processors". Well, AMD is the bigger risk, and also a significant part of revenue, so not doing business with one or the other is very costly for the company, which is essentially forcing one's hand against AMD.
 
MavericK96 said:
Yeah, honestly I don't see how those are any different from giving discounts for bulk purchases. The more the company buys from Intel, the better deal they got. How is that in any way unfair? AMD could/should have done the same thing. Too bad they didn't have the better tech to offer.
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no that would be written like

if manufacturer A buys 10,000 intel cpus then they recieve a discount.

not

if manufacturer doesnt use amd cpus then they recieve a discount..

There is a world of difference!
 
I'd love to see AMD actually become competitive with Intel again,much like ATI has with Nvidia.The consumer is the winner in such competitions.But ATI didn't get back in the race by getting help from a greedy bunch of thugs like the EU,they did it by developing products that matched Nvidia in performance for lower prices.AMD hasn't come close to that since the introduction of the Core 2,and the i7 only widened the gap.They had their shot and they blew it.
 
Oh man some of the dumbest arrogant tripe has to be on HardForums. You guys fail to realize that because Intel Shut out AMD they shut out AMD chance to earn money WHICH in turn would have been used in R&D for new products. So yeah people blaming AMD are full of horse dung. Remember Intel is many times bigger then AMD. You have to appreciate that AMD came up with such a great CPU such as the K7 and K8 on a shoe string budget where as Intel couldn't with all their funds and R&D resources.. How many years did it take for them to catch up.

Just imagine if only intel was around.. We would still be in the Pentium Pro age and would be paying 1000 dollars per CPU.

Hmm in retrospect that might not have been that bad maybe the Crap x86 ISA would have been dead and buried a long time ago and maybe we would all be running true RISC chips. Maybe even there would be more CPU makers..

To all those narrow short sighted goofs, just imagine if AMD/ATI merged with Nvidia.. How would you like to pay 1000 dollars for the only graphics card able to have good performance. Funny thing is they wouldn't even be a monopoly..
 
Cyrilix said:
Yes, there is a difference between bulk purchases (prices for x number of units, y number of units, and z number of units) vs. allocation ratios 95% to 5%. The second is downright underhanded. You could essentially consider it to be "I won't do business with you if you sell AMD processors". Well, AMD is the bigger risk, and also a significant part of revenue, so not doing business with one or the other is very costly for the company, which is essentially forcing one's hand against AMD.
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There is absolutely nothing wrong with anyone or any company to say to another individual or company that "I won't do business with you if you do business with my competition." How is that even remotely wrong?
 
gaspah said:
no that would be written like

if manufacturer A buys 10,000 intel cpus then they recieve a discount.

not

if manufacturer doesnt use amd cpus then they recieve a discount..

There is a world of difference!
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Except, when there are only two choices, how is it really different? Really? Manufacturer A needs to buy a certain amount of CPUs to meet demand. Because that is constant, buying from Intel because you get a discount is the same thing as not buying from AMD because then they get a discount.

The way it was made to sound is that if they bought a certain percentage of their CPUs from Intel, they got a certain percentage of a discount. No one ever said anything to the extent of "if you don't buy all your CPUs from Intel, we won't sell to you".
 
maybe AMD will use this $$ to R&D a competitive product for a market (any market). They haven't even had a whisper of relevance in 2+ years.

I'm still waiting on the anti-trust suit against apple for bundling safari with OSX. <cough>
 
The money goes to EU and not AMD.

2nd.
Amd already have a good market share in europe, norway for instance, 40 %.
More than 50% on graphics.
 
I used to work for an OEM as an engineer. We sold both AMD and Intel platforms.

As we found problems with our systems, be it strange hardware incompatibilities, thermal issues, driver problems, etc, our job would be to fix these. Between 2002 and 2005 I worked there, and got to watch the launch of the early Athlon XPs and later the K8s. I ran Athlon's at home, and they were indeed, the fastest chips money could buy.

But damn did their platform suck.

I know many here ran VIA KT266s and the like, and for many, they were stable. But watching thousands try to go out the door and tracking failure rates on our QA lines, they were awful. It's not that the chip was bad, but AMD's reliance on third-party chip and board makers, in my opinion, really hurt them. It was easier (and cheaper, in support costs!) to build a slightly more expensive, and slightly slower intel system, with an Intel board, intel chipset, and the whole thing would work flawlessly. As we sold entirely to business and government, these factors were often more important. It wasn't until the NForce 2 came out that I really saw a chipset that seemed solid on the AMD side.

AMD is certainly capable of innovating, and they did have excellent processors for a time. I really do think however, that any expectation of theirs that a fast processor will capture the market all by itself is a false assumption. Intel enjoys success not just becuase it has a decent chip, but because there's a huge supporting ecology to go along with it. That's what makes it a winning sell, not because they upped the frequency a few notches.

AMD has tried to address this on occasion with half-hearted attempts. Until they really commit to building the same foundation for their processors as Intel has, they'll always play second string.
 
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