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The United States Federal Trade Commission recently began a formal antitrust investigation into Intel's business practices. This action is not simply a problem for Intel, but should serve as a wake-up call for the entire technology industry and anyone who values innovation. Some of the drivers behind the Intel inquiry are complaints by its competitor, Advanced Micro Devices. Both AMD and Intel compete to provide microprocessors for computers, with Intel holding a larger portion of the market.
"The FTC's formal probe into Intel's business practices will force the company to divert attention and resources away from its research and development, notes TechNewsWorld columnist Sonia Arrison. Instead, the chipmaker will waste time in litigation."
Hmm, What an opening statement!
1) Intel has plenty of money and this litigation will most likely have NO impact on Intel's billion dollar profit margin.
2) A call to arms for the tech industry? I think that has begun with the persecution of companies such as Intel, who use their position to monopolize a market based in the US, which already is hurting for innovation.
3) Do you think Intel values innovation? I think Sonia knows NOTHING about innovation in the CPU industry. Intel wants first to increase their profit margin, and then they will innovate their design. But not if there is no competition!
Yesterday, when I first read this article, I felt a LARGE amount of bias. I feel this is either because of the author's inability to conduct proper research, or she is being paid by someone to make such erroneous statements.
The truth is Intel has used its dominant market position as the favored brand name in the public to force PC manufacturers to NOT buy AMD processors. They have done this in the past by offering discounts to those who do not support AMD, and have attempted to sell their products at a higher price than normal to those who also buy AMD products.
The only reason Intel can get away with this is because the largely ignorant public believes Intel is superior. In fact, AMD has proven to engineer superior designs many times in the past. The public is unaware of the situation because of many who believe that the GHz of a processor and its FSB equates to performance. If you are one of those people, please educate yourself in this day and age to understand some basics of computing.
The GHz increase tactic is a brute force method of advancement in processor design. There are many other components that can be improved upon to increase the number of instructions in a computer program that can be processed per second. Not only that, a higher frequency requires more current usage, which equates to more power dissipation. Intel carried their brute force design methods in to multi-core processor design; simply duplicating their duo core to create a quad core. This multiplication leads to a lot of inefficiencies with increasing data throughput and hence reduces your total performance increase.
But this last tactic has tricked many unwitting consumers to think that more is better. More importantly, it shows that Intel’s pace of innovation is unmatched by its pace of profit.
AMD’s path has been innovative and they have been the industry leader (in design) many times in the past, which forced Intel to reluctantly follow engineering efforts at AMD. AMD may be reluctant to increase their GHz rate or number of processors, as fast as Intel because they want to provide an architecture that will really utilize the power of having more.
AMD's most recent purchase of ATI provided an opportunity for AMD, in 2006, to announce another architectural advancement in incorporating GPU functions in to their multi-core design, also called Fusion. Intel recently announced they have "developed" a method to put general GPU functions in to a CPU; surprising?
There is little to be gained in performance by rushing to a solution simply to trick the public in thinking your design is better. Or is there?
Intel has shown the world that the public will simply go for more and bigger, and they have made billions from unwitting users worldwide.
If you want to stop this Idiocracy (yes in reference to the 2006 film) go for AMD products. Or at least, compare a cheaper more elegant AMD design to the Intel design you may be considering. This will in turn continue Intel to lower their prices and focus more on innovation. We will begin to see more advancement in the CPU industry, and hopefully reach a point where we have an exponential gain in computing power. And when this occurs, we will have advancements in parts of our lives that are unimaginable; at least right now.
And NO, I am not an AMD employee or affiliate in ANY way. I have followed their design patterns for quite a while, and its obvious to me AMD will lead the path of innovation.
Hmm, What an opening statement!
1) Intel has plenty of money and this litigation will most likely have NO impact on Intel's billion dollar profit margin.
2) A call to arms for the tech industry? I think that has begun with the persecution of companies such as Intel, who use their position to monopolize a market based in the US, which already is hurting for innovation.
3) Do you think Intel values innovation? I think Sonia knows NOTHING about innovation in the CPU industry. Intel wants first to increase their profit margin, and then they will innovate their design. But not if there is no competition!
Yesterday, when I first read this article, I felt a LARGE amount of bias. I feel this is either because of the author's inability to conduct proper research, or she is being paid by someone to make such erroneous statements.
The truth is Intel has used its dominant market position as the favored brand name in the public to force PC manufacturers to NOT buy AMD processors. They have done this in the past by offering discounts to those who do not support AMD, and have attempted to sell their products at a higher price than normal to those who also buy AMD products.
The only reason Intel can get away with this is because the largely ignorant public believes Intel is superior. In fact, AMD has proven to engineer superior designs many times in the past. The public is unaware of the situation because of many who believe that the GHz of a processor and its FSB equates to performance. If you are one of those people, please educate yourself in this day and age to understand some basics of computing.
The GHz increase tactic is a brute force method of advancement in processor design. There are many other components that can be improved upon to increase the number of instructions in a computer program that can be processed per second. Not only that, a higher frequency requires more current usage, which equates to more power dissipation. Intel carried their brute force design methods in to multi-core processor design; simply duplicating their duo core to create a quad core. This multiplication leads to a lot of inefficiencies with increasing data throughput and hence reduces your total performance increase.
But this last tactic has tricked many unwitting consumers to think that more is better. More importantly, it shows that Intel’s pace of innovation is unmatched by its pace of profit.
AMD’s path has been innovative and they have been the industry leader (in design) many times in the past, which forced Intel to reluctantly follow engineering efforts at AMD. AMD may be reluctant to increase their GHz rate or number of processors, as fast as Intel because they want to provide an architecture that will really utilize the power of having more.
AMD's most recent purchase of ATI provided an opportunity for AMD, in 2006, to announce another architectural advancement in incorporating GPU functions in to their multi-core design, also called Fusion. Intel recently announced they have "developed" a method to put general GPU functions in to a CPU; surprising?
There is little to be gained in performance by rushing to a solution simply to trick the public in thinking your design is better. Or is there?
Intel has shown the world that the public will simply go for more and bigger, and they have made billions from unwitting users worldwide.
If you want to stop this Idiocracy (yes in reference to the 2006 film) go for AMD products. Or at least, compare a cheaper more elegant AMD design to the Intel design you may be considering. This will in turn continue Intel to lower their prices and focus more on innovation. We will begin to see more advancement in the CPU industry, and hopefully reach a point where we have an exponential gain in computing power. And when this occurs, we will have advancements in parts of our lives that are unimaginable; at least right now.
And NO, I am not an AMD employee or affiliate in ANY way. I have followed their design patterns for quite a while, and its obvious to me AMD will lead the path of innovation.
Successful Monopolists Can Move Past......
Posted by: brettze 2008-06-13 15:05:55 In reply to: Sonia Arrison
Have you ever tried to walk past motion sensor without the light or siren coming on? it is a fun game but for successful monopolists ,they do similiar thing by moving so slowly that regulators are not ticked off enough to react... Small competitiors are too small to be noticed by motion sensors let alone ticked off shareholders... Consumers are motion sensors....
Intel once talked about building blocks for all of computing devices be it servers , routers, switches, whatever. I thought that Intel would displace Cisco long ago. I was wrong... Intel is not a good competitior but a good cheater... Intel is now into WiMax and it appears that Intel is not capable of good teamwork as it appears to insisit that it get the lion share of the new technology should it take off successfully. AMD is a wake up call for the entire technology industry, is nt it?
I would be damned only if AMD competes just enough to keep its employees paid and leaving shareholders holding the shaft.... True, AMD had robbed Intel of untold billions in lost profits, but hey, Intel got to cut prices . That deep repeatedly, I dont think so... If you ask me how consumers are harmed if any. Well, I can probably answer that AMD would probably not screwed up with its recent Opteron quad cores had it ample of money in its wallet not to mention a nice captial gain for its shareholders... Your thinking goes as following.... take care of consumers and screw the shareholders... Since when is shareholders never as consumers?? Shareholders are consumers too... Dont try to make me crazy with another senseless question of yours!!
I am not a bleeding heart, but....
Posted by: brettze 2008-06-13 14:32:10 In reply to: Sonia Arrison
Sonia
I had been following AMD for decades with deep interest. You might just for a "meet the deadline" data thumbing over a short span of hours and thinking that you are an expert and dont require much time to provide reliable information to readers.... This is very typical of columnists. I learn more from regular Joe Six Packs than I do from $450,000 a year experts like yourself... Still stonewalling? Look at AMD now at $7 a share and I dare you to buy one share of AMD... You would squeal like a squirrel! The last thing I need is someone pushing AMD back while I hold AMD shares... I simply blow anyone away with my deep knowledge...
I had been following AMD for decades with deep interest. You might just for a "meet the deadline" data thumbing over a short span of hours and thinking that you are an expert and dont require much time to provide reliable information to readers.... This is very typical of columnists. I learn more from regular Joe Six Packs than I do from $450,000 a year experts like yourself... Still stonewalling? Look at AMD now at $7 a share and I dare you to buy one share of AMD... You would squeal like a squirrel! The last thing I need is someone pushing AMD back while I hold AMD shares... I simply blow anyone away with my deep knowledge...
The investigation isn't centering around now or even the last 24 months. The main timeframe is approx 1999 - 2003. During this time, AMD was practically nonexistant except in the DIY / Whitebox community. Demand was strong, but none of the Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs) would build anything with AMD inside. It didn't make any sense. AMD processors were at times, faster than Intel (K7 reached 1 ghz before the PIII did) and cost less. Who wouldn't want to be able to sell a faster computer for better profits? Well, the reason is that Intel was funneling money back to the manufacturers under the table as an incentive to not use AMD AT ALL. When you have the market advantage that Intel has, that is illegal. AMD even tried to GIVE AWAY their chips once just to get HP to start making servers with their chips!! Hp was going to take the deal and then suddenly, it was a no go. They had even readied all of the promotional marketing material! Word was that Intel execs came to HP and told them point blank that if they used AMD, they would no longer be supplied with the Intel chips they needed for their customers that wanted them.
These are the tactics that AMD is contesting.
These are the tactics that AMD is contesting.
AMD has a very good case against Intel, which is why most countries that have made a decision thus far have chosen to fine Intel. The main objection is that Intel gave its customers discounts if they agreed limit their purchases from AMD. AMD also claims (and Intel denies) that because of the discounts Intel ended up selling some of its processors at below-cost in order to gain market share.
How is that not anti-competitive? Do you think Intel will continue to offer these discounts if AMD goes out of business? If there is no other company to limit purchases from, there's no reason to offer the discounts. They'll take advantage of their position as a monopoly on x86 processors to jack up prices for the consumer. We need to stop this behavior before that happens.
How is that not anti-competitive? Do you think Intel will continue to offer these discounts if AMD goes out of business? If there is no other company to limit purchases from, there's no reason to offer the discounts. They'll take advantage of their position as a monopoly on x86 processors to jack up prices for the consumer. We need to stop this behavior before that happens.
Please read the AMD complaint before you make such off the mark comments. AMD claims evidence that Intel abused its market dominance to shut out AMD, not based on technology prowess, but by tying financial incentives for VARs to their not using AMD, and punishing VARs who did use AMD. This is not fair competition, this is gross abuse by a monopolist!
