Re: AMD sues Intel (antitrust)

Robert Myers wrote:
> Chipsets are not a product differentiator to save the industry from
> stagnation. They are a slightly different style of trim. AMD is doing
> nobody any good in terms of reviving interest in the industry. It's
> all insider talk.

The chipsets themselves aren't, but the features they bring can be. For
example, if you got an integrated graphics chipset, and you can get an
integrated graphics core in there that's almost as fast as a state of
the art graphics card, then that's a differentiating feature. I would
expect that these sorts of high-perf integrated chipsets will likely be
made by the two graphics behemoths themselves, ATI and Nvidia. You
might end up with a gamer's laptop that has as much battery life as a
thin'n'lite. You're not going to get a gamer's laptop out of Intel
integrated graphics.

Right now HP is marketing a Turion business notebook with a fingerprint
reader, which none of its Intel models have yet. Small feature
differences like these go a long way, until somebody catches up.

Various wireless manufacturers are working on ways of improving WiFi
antennas, some are coming out with greater ranges, while others are
trying to integrate WiFi, Bluetooth, and Cellular into a single radio
thus saving power over multiple independent ones. I'd expect the
telecom specialists like Broadcom, or Altera to develop these before
Intel.

>
> You almost made up for all your abusive language by flattering my
> imagination in an earlier post, because, frankly, imagination is what
> this industry doesn't have. It's just so lame-ass worn out on the same
> old ideas that nothing really matters any more. Call me anything you
> like. AMD is just more of the same.

You're perfectly free to take my comment about your imagination
flatteringly.

> Itanium is better for some of the problems I do, but it won't save the
> world any more than Opteron will. The problem with Itanium isn't that
> it's too much of a leap but that it's all ideas that were old before
> the first die was laid out.

But it turned out more of the world was looking for something like the
Opteron than they were for something like the Itanium.

> > Umm, I don't know if you've been paying attention here, but this is
> > exactly what is being challenged here: "if you want to stay in this
> > business you have to do business with Intel". For example, nobody says
> > any of the following things:
> >
> > -if you want to stay in this business, you have to deal with Seagate.
>
> <snip etc.>
>
> >
> But so what? AMD claims that's only because Intel is such a mean
> badass (which it probably is) and that it's all illegal (which remains
> to be shown).

Well to answer the "so what" part of it. No manufacturer wants to be
held hostage by its own suppliers.

> > I'm sure most people weren't pleased with having to testify against
> > John Gotti either, but it needed to be done.
> >
>
> I'm _seriously_disturbed_ by that comparison. Or should I call it
> "cheap?"

Should I have said Al Capone? A much more historically prominent
gangster? Would that be much more high-class?

> > Karl Rove was just a general in his war, his soldiers were these sorts
> > of PR firms. In this case, Thomas McCoy, AMD's internal corporate
> > lawyer, is his firm's Karl Rove.
> >
> If Thomas McCoy can pull this off the way Carl Rove pulls things off,
> he'll be a media star. Carl Rove, for all his vaunted smarts, didn't
> invent the strategy the Bush campaign used ex nihilo, not by a long
> shot. And they had (and still have) an endless supply of money.

Well yes, Karl Rove was not the pioneer of negative political
campaigning. At best he just improved it a bit. Negative campaigning
has been around much longer than him. McCoy might be the first to bring
this technique into the business world.

> > Pretty telling isn't it? A group of industry executives so completely
> > cowed and afraid for the existence of their firms due to one component
> > supplier?
> >
> But I thought they were all so _happy_ and so _eager_ to talk.

Not sure, are you reading the same articles that we are?

> Any lawsuit that isn't a candidate for summary judgment is a war of
> attrition.

Where do you get the idea it's not a candidate for summary judgement?
It seems like that's what AMD is aiming for.

> > As for out of court settlement, it's upto AMD if they want to accept an
> > out of court. However AMD chose to go with a jury trial for a reason,
> > which is that they feel that Intel won't be able to wiggle out on
> > technicalities; in jury trials, the spirit of the law has to be
> > followed as much as the letter of the law. This puts Intel at a
> > disadvantage and it knows it. So I don't think AMD will be so willing
> > to settle out of court here. They don't want these sweetheart deals
> > where Intel pays out money, and doesn't have to admit a thing.
> >
> Yada, yada, yada. They're so _mean_. I see that Gates/Ballmer is
> going to write a $775 million dollar consolation prize (plus $75
> million in software credits) to IBM. Microsoft keeps the monopoly.

Good for IBM. Good for Microsoft.

But any outcome of this will likely reach into the billions of dollars.
Even an out of court will reach into the billions too.

> > Also quite seperately, it looks like some consumer class-action
> > lawsuits have started against Intel. Seems to be a copycat of the AMD
> > anti-trust lawsuit.
> >
> Oh, I'm sure Intel will be heartbroken over a class action lawsuit.
> Those of us who were smart enough to buy Intel will be getting coupons
> so we can buy more... Intel. It will just be another marketing
> expense.

I'm sure Intel is a little concerned at having to fight so many wars on
so many fronts simultaneously. And I doubt that Intel's internal legal
staff is equipped to fight against the ambulance-chaser style courtroom
antics. It'll keep them busy unnecessarily.

Yousuf Khan

.

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