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AMD Files Suit Against Intel (eWeek)

eWeek looks at AMD's anti-trust suit against Intel. "The suit identifies 38 companies that AMD says Intel has pressured in one way or another. It says, for example, that Intel put pressure on Hewlett-Packard Co., whose PCs come with AMD chips, to limit its use of them. The suit also says Intel used financial incentives in an effort to persuade Dell Inc., which does not use AMD chips, not to do so."
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AMD Files Suit Against Intel (eWeek)

Posted Jun 28, 2005 17:41 UTC (Tue) by emkey (guest, #144) [Link]

This should be interesting. Intel has long had a reputation of dancing near the hairy legal edge to maintain its dominance.

I suspect the timing has a lot to do with the fact that AMD is currently having a lot of success in the high end and thus has the money and motivation to finally go after Intel.

Given how Microsoft was "punished" for similer alleged crimes though I'm not that optomistic.

AMD Files Suit Against Intel (eWeek)

Posted Jun 30, 2005 13:58 UTC (Thu) by hazelsct (guest, #3659) [Link]

Microsoft was prosecuted by the U.S. Department of Justice under Clinton, and was convicted, then "settled" with the Bush DoJ for a slap on the wrist (or perhaps on the back).

This is very different. Here AMD is suing Intel, and the DoJ has nothing to do with it. The better parallel is that when companies sued Microsoft for antitrust damages, they won/settled those suits at a cost to Microsoft of $billions (including the Sun suit).

With the evidence they have, I'd say AMD has a good shot at this, although it will take a very long time. Likewise, RedHat, Novell, Mandriva or Ubuntu (or IBM?) can go after Microsoft and shut down their sweetheart deals with OEMs!

AMD Files Suit Against Intel (eWeek)

Posted Jun 28, 2005 17:51 UTC (Tue) by thompsot (guest, #12368) [Link]

Sounds accurate enough from the perspective of "the outside looking in". I've always been very confused as to why AMD's routinely superior tecnology and price points aren't immediately integrated into OEM's product offerings, and why over time they have been adopted so slowly. This pretty much explains it if the charges are true, and AMD seems to be ready to show the evidence. More details can be found at Google News. Looks like Intel execs have been rubbing shoulders with Microsoft execs a little too long and are adopting Microsoft's business practices. Of course, the old expression "Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely" may apply here as well...

I hope AMD gets some help on this. The institutions and people affected in the industry need to step up if these allegations are true, and not make AMD drain their capital fighting it alone.

AMD Files Suit Against Intel (eWeek)

Posted Jun 28, 2005 18:02 UTC (Tue) by JoeBuck (subscriber, #2330) [Link]

Antitrust suits take years before anything happens. Probably the best AMD can hope for in the short term is that an active lawsuit might force Intel to be more careful about pressuring customers, and generally avoid giving AMD additional evidence.

AMD Has Been Building This Case a Long Time

Posted Jun 28, 2005 18:08 UTC (Tue) by huffd (guest, #10382) [Link]

Here is an article that goes into great detail what Intel has done. The second page actually lists the infractions, quotes from various corporate officers and the companies involved. In other words AMD is not in this alone. People from these other companies will be called to testify if it ever gets to court. Intel should just roll-over like they did the last time they were sued for being a monopoly and settle out of court. Bet most of you never knew that did you?

http://sanjose.bizjournals.com/sanjose/stories/2005/06/27...

icc vs. gcc on AMD64?

Posted Jun 28, 2005 20:39 UTC (Tue) by dmarti (subscriber, #11625) [Link]

Paragraph 125 alleges that Intel's compilers "degrade the program's performance" on AMD processors. Is this just "CPU-Dispatch"?

A generic version of the function is generated that will run on any IA-32 processor. Another version would be tuned for the Pentium III processor by vectorizing the first loop with SSE instructions. A third version would be optimized for the Pentium 4 processor by vectorizing both loops to take advantage of SSE2 instructions.

Anyone have benchmark numbers on the same code on AMD and Intel, built with each compiler?

icc vs. gcc on AMD64?

Posted Jun 28, 2005 22:03 UTC (Tue) by Ross (subscriber, #4065) [Link]

I'm not sure if it is a separate issue, but Intel's implementation of x86_64
has a couple of minor incompatabilities with AMD's. Intel's compiler
generates code which will only work on Intel's version. (Actually this is
third-hand information. I read about it on the gcc mailing list.)

OT: AMD, Intel, Xen and X86_64

Posted Jun 30, 2005 11:44 UTC (Thu) by robdinn (guest, #30753) [Link]

I lurk on the Xen developer mailing list.

Intel seem to have a number of employees working on the x86_64
port of Xen. I find it amusing that intel are working on supporting
an AMD inspired architecture. Anyway, Intel's support is very welcome.

As I understand it, both Intel and AMD have soon to be released
extensions for hardware assisted virtualisation. These two schemes
also have incompatabilities, but it seems that Intel and AMD seem
to be cooperating on providing support for both schemes in Xen.

(Maybe I misunderstand and it is the Xen developers who are forcing
them to cooperate.)

Also maybe because Xen developement is open, Intel can't pull the
same sort of trick like they have with thier proprietary compiler.

icc vs. gcc on AMD64?

Posted Jun 29, 2005 23:42 UTC (Wed) by Ross (subscriber, #4065) [Link]

Ok, here's a discussion which might have the information you want:

http://groups.google.ca/group/comp.arch/browse_frm/thread...

"I started mucking around with a dissassembly of the Intel-specific
binary and found one particular call (proc_init_N) that appeared to be
performing this check. As far as I can tell, this call is supposed to
verify that the CPU supports SSE and SSE2 and it checks the CPUID to
ensure that its an Intel processor. I wrote a quick utility which I
call iccOut, to go through a binary that has been compiled with this
Intel-only flag and remove that check.

Once I ran the binary that was compiled with the Intel-specific flag
(-QxN) through iccOut, it was able to run on the FX51. Much to my
surprise, it ran fine and did not miscompare. On top of that, it got
the same 22% performance boost that I saw on the Pentium4 with an
actual Intel processor. [...]"

AMD Files Suit Against Intel (eWeek)

Posted Jun 28, 2005 23:08 UTC (Tue) by nofutureuk (guest, #3116) [Link]

How is this related in ANY way to the open source community and linux???? I am not bothered about
how these guys run their businesses. I am bothered about what products they produce.

period. this is a story for /. or whoever but not lwn

AMD Files Suit Against Intel (eWeek)

Posted Jun 29, 2005 0:17 UTC (Wed) by larryr (guest, #4030) [Link]

I am bothered about how Intel runs their business when it puts me in a situation where in order to buy a product which I want, such as a particular laptop computer, I have to buy a product they produce which I do not want, especially when it is the CPU, which I would prefer be from AMD.

Larry

AMD Files Suit Against Intel (eWeek)

Posted Jun 29, 2005 2:02 UTC (Wed) by xorbe (subscriber, #3165) [Link]

Surely lots of people use Intel hardware to run their Linux boxes? Not that it affects Linux directly or indirectly.

AMD Files Suit Against Intel (eWeek)

Posted Jun 29, 2005 5:35 UTC (Wed) by huffd (guest, #10382) [Link]

Isn't Linux about choice? Wouldn't it be nice to buy a computer with an AMD CPU pre-loaded with Linux somewhere besides Wal-Mart?

Get real! This problem with tintel has been a major problem for Linux!

AMD Files Suit Against Intel (eWeek)

Posted Jun 29, 2005 18:06 UTC (Wed) by xorbe (subscriber, #3165) [Link]

Uh, the problem you talk about is a Microsoft thing, I think...

AMD Files Suit Against Intel (eWeek)

Posted Jun 29, 2005 15:18 UTC (Wed) by dmarti (subscriber, #11625) [Link]

There is some interesting Linux-related stuff in the complaint. Linux is one of two dominant OSs:

"The x86 versions of Windows and Linux, the two operating systems that dominate the business and consumer computer worlds..." (p. 9)

And it's OK to say you "reverse-engineer" something. AMD writes that it reverse-engineered Intel products on p. 7

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