Intel's legal woes...

[Idontcare]

Originally posted by: Acanthus
Viditor with an anti-intel thread.

Just when i took you out of my sig as the iraqui information minister of AMD.


AMDs financials couldnt possibly be any worse.

Nehalems leap will not be matched by AMD, you can only get the jump from an integrated memory controller once

Have fun toying with the lawsuit stocks though. Im still hanging on to Rambus myself. However im not posting speculation about the stock and financials of Rambus every friggin 3 days on the CPU forums like anyone cares.

Please lets not turn these threads into the same useless forum that the Yahoo stock forums have always been.

It's nice if we can keep the personal negativity and implied intentions to a minimum (some is healthy venting, but not over the top). I deplore those yahoo stock threads because they are 80% personal attacks and 19% opinion and 1% insightful analysis.

If you posted about Rambus every 3 days in the CPU forum yes you should have a discussion with the mods as that topic goes into "Memory and Storage". I would hope the regulars of the memory forum would welcome such info though and treat you and your threads as an asset rather than an eyesore on the first page.

Personally I believe that posting industry impacting doom and gloom about AMD and Intel in the CPU forum is appropriate and relevant as both the thread's read counts and post counts suggest.

 

[Regs]

AMD will not see a dime of Intel's money for a decade and AMD knows this. They're main source of revenue from this debacle will be in the form of new investments and added confidence.

I think people in general have been giving AMD too much credit. Just look who's behind the wheel, Hector. The man that drove Motorola into the dirt and is now one of the highest paid CEO's for semi-cons. WTF are people thinking?

Can the past 2 years get any worse for AMD?
A merger that's turning bust and lets not forget how much AMD over paid for ATi.

A Barcelona core that was delayed for 6-12 months over glitches and still had glitches on release. Ok, all processors have glitches or defects now and then. However, this is AMD's marketing for you: "OMG OUR PROCESSORS HAVE A BUG AND WE ARE WORKING ON IT 24HRS STRAIGHT!!!!! PLEASE DONT FORGET TO BUY OUR STOCK!!!!!WE SUCK WE KNOW"



Poor execution..poor execution...POOR EXECUTION!!! Piss poor product launches time and again and it will at least a year before any confidence is regained again if any.

 

[CTho9305]

Originally posted by: myocardia

Originally posted by: Duvie
My gut tells me AMD is purchase by someone else and they re-emerge stronger....

AMD will no longer be able to make x86 CPU's, if they are bought. People keep forgetting this fact.

I keep hearing this, but if cross-licensing went away, would Intel be able to produce AMD64 processors? Both companies have pretty significant patent portfolios. Have the 80386 patents not expired yet? The 80486 turns 20 years old pretty soon; the 386 turned 20 a couple years ago.

 

[bryanW1995]

I thought that patents only lasted 17 years.

 

[Pelu]

Ok this is the result of this matter:

If... Intel get busted...

Intel = Good Performance

AMD = Some trouble in Performance...

after the lawsuit and fines...

Intel = Some trouble in Performance due to money..

AMD = Still trouble in Performance for unknown reasons...

the results are:

We are so screw!!!!!

 

[Idontcare]

Originally posted by: CTho9305

Originally posted by: myocardia

Originally posted by: Duvie
My gut tells me AMD is purchase by someone else and they re-emerge stronger....

AMD will no longer be able to make x86 CPU's, if they are bought. People keep forgetting this fact.

I keep hearing this, but if cross-licensing went away, would Intel be able to produce AMD64 processors? Both companies have pretty significant patent portfolios. Have the 80386 patents not expired yet? The 80486 turns 20 years old pretty soon; the 386 turned 20 a couple years ago.

I agree with this point, everything has a price in business and you can count on Intel being willing to re-negotiate a new cross-licensing agreement with whomever owns the current AMD IP portfolio.

As I am fond of saying these days, it would be to the detriment of Intel's shareholders if Intel's executive management team ran themselves afoul of FTC interaction resulting in the market's placing a non-zero likelihood of INTC being forceably broken up.

 

[Duvie]

Originally posted by: myocardia

Originally posted by: Duvie
My gut tells me AMD is purchase by someone else and they re-emerge stronger....

AMD will no longer be able to make x86 CPU's, if they are bought. People keep forgetting this fact.

Well how much longer is that really going to last and haven't we seen other companies making a deign of cpu technology beyond x86? Cell design?

They would still be attractive for the mere fact of their fab space and AMD's flashdrive business...

If Nvidia bought AMD, most definitely ATI would have to become a single entity again....I am sure the FTC wont allow that merger and demise of the only other real competitor in the highly touted graphics market.

 

[golem]

Originally posted by: CTho9305

I keep hearing this, but if cross-licensing went away, would Intel be able to produce AMD64 processors? Both companies have pretty significant patent portfolios. Have the 80386 patents not expired yet? The 80486 turns 20 years old pretty soon; the 386 turned 20 a couple years ago.

I think I read somewhere that the party responsible for breaking the terms of the cross licensing agreement loses access to the patents of the other party. The other party still keeps access to the patents of the party that broke the agreements, tho. there might be some compensation agreement for this continued access.

Which makes sense. Otherwise, AMD could just break the agreements, stop making chips (since they are losing money in their chipmaking business) and sue the hell out of Intel for using using AMD patents. (BIG BIG SIMPLIFICATION - just an extreme example of why this makes sense)

Of course, it's just a legal document and subject to interpretation. One party or the other will take it to court to try and improve their position.

 

[RallyMaster]

AMD needs to stop being such a crybaby. It's their fault that they haven't made anything worth buying in the past few years (except for their really cheap parts maybe). Their CPUs don't perform as well as Intels and their GPUs are still slightly behind similarly priced offerings from NVIDIA. I've been an AMD buyer since the K6-II was around in 1998. I've bought two AthlonXPs, two Athlon64s and an Opteron since then. Not a single Intel product in between except the PIII 600MHz in a Dell laptop. Not a single Intel product in daily operation at my house right now. The best part, however, is the fact that my family has stock in INTC. Now that's irony.

 

[Chosonman]

Intel gets a slap on the wrist ($25mill LOL)

Intel will just raise the price of their CPU's to offset the cost of the lawsuits they instigated through their unfair trade practices and Intel fan boys will basically pay for their bad practices. In the end everyone is happy.

I don't know if anyone's mentioned this, but Intel and AMD both share intellectual rights to X86 architecture.

 

[myocardia]

Originally posted by: CTho9305
I keep hearing this, but if cross-licensing went away, would Intel be able to produce AMD64 processors?

Sure, they would just have to keep paying whomever bought AMD's patents the few cents per processor that they now pay directly to AMD.

Have the 80386 patents not expired yet? The 80486 turns 20 years old pretty soon; the 386 turned 20 a couple years ago.

I have no idea about that. All I do know is that AMD only gained the right to make x86 CPU's through a judge's decision, and that decision is supposed to have said that AMD can neither sell that capability, nor can they pass that capability on to whomever buys AMD, should it ever be sold. Of course, whoever buys AMD could fab 64-bit-only CPU's from day one, but that's not what we were discussing, and would only really enable them to make server CPU's.

Originally posted by: Duvie
Well how much longer is that really going to last and haven't we seen other companies making a deign of cpu technology beyond x86?

I have no idea how much longer it will last. It may actually be ad inifinitum, since AMD wouldn't have survived, had they not been able to fab 80286's and 80386's. As far as other companies making x86 variants, AMD and Intel are the only companies that I'm aware of that are under a court orders, pertaining to x86's, so the rules for other companies would be different, from what I understand.

 

[CTho9305]

Originally posted by: myocardia

Originally posted by: CTho9305
Have the 80386 patents not expired yet? The 80486 turns 20 years old pretty soon; the 386 turned 20 a couple years ago.

I have no idea about that. All I do know is that AMD only gained the right to make x86 CPU's through a judge's decision, and that decision is supposed to have said that AMD can neither sell that capability, nor can they pass that capability on to whomever buys AMD, should it ever be sold. Of course, whoever buys AMD could fab 64-bit-only CPU's from day one, but that's not what we were discussing, and would only really enable them to make server CPU's.

Well, at the time of the court case, patents on the 386 wouldn't have expired, let alone patents on the 486. Copyright for the microcode is a different story, but would presumably be irrelevant now since I'd expect all microcode got completely rewritten when the various companies moved to out-of-order microarchitectures.

A 64-bit-only CPU could probably be used for an EEE PC, where you don't need to run Windows. If you're in the Linux world, just use 64 bit and be done with it. While you're at it, kill off real mode/v8086 mode and just boot up in protected mode .

 

[imported_seferio]

The chances of AMD winning their lawsuit are very high. There is no question that Intel used illegal rebates and payments to stifle competition from AMD. The real concern is whether or not AMD will survive until the lawsuit is resolved and how much longer they can live after they receive a big payment/settlement from Intel.

 

[myocardia]

Originally posted by: CTho9305
Well, at the time of the court case, patents on the 386 wouldn't have expired, let alone patents on the 486. Copyright for the microcode is a different story, but would presumably be irrelevant now since I'd expect all microcode got completely rewritten when the various companies moved to out-of-order microarchitectures.

Originally posted by: myocardia
I have no idea how much longer it will last. It may actually be ad inifinitum, since AMD wouldn't have survived, had they not been able to fab 80286's and 80386's. As far as other companies making x86 variants, AMD and Intel are the only companies that I'm aware of that are under a court orders, pertaining to x86's, so the rules for other companies would be different, from what I understand.

^^^There's your answer.

Originally posted by: CTho9305
A 64-bit-only CPU could probably be used for an EEE PC

Do you mean the Asus EEE, the one that uses an Intel processor?

If you're in the Linux world, just use 64 bit and be done with it.

Linux 64-bit has the same drawbacks as Windows 64-bit, as far as drivers are concerned. That's the reason that nearly everyone who uses desktop Linux uses the 32-bit variants.

 

[myocardia]

Originally posted by: seferio
The chances of AMD winning their lawsuit are very high. There is no question that Intel used illegal rebates and payments to stifle competition from AMD. The real concern is whether or not AMD will survive until the lawsuit is resolved and how much longer they can live after they receive a big payment/settlement from Intel.

I think you're right about all of those points, seferio. I agree wholeheartedly with all of them.

 

[CTho9305]

Originally posted by: myocardia

Originally posted by: CTho9305
A 64-bit-only CPU could probably be used for an EEE PC

Do you mean the Asus EEE, the one that uses an Intel processor?

If you're in the Linux world, just use 64 bit and be done with it.

Linux 64-bit has the same drawbacks as Windows 64-bit, as far as drivers are concerned. That's the reason that nearly everyone who uses desktop Linux uses the 32-bit variants.

...which is why you use a stable platform like a subnotebook .

 

[smthmlk]

Originally posted by: myocardia

Originally posted by: CTho9305
If you're in the Linux world, just use 64 bit and be done with it.

Linux 64-bit has the same drawbacks as Windows 64-bit, as far as drivers are concerned. That's the reason that nearly everyone who uses desktop Linux uses the 32-bit variants.

As for which has the higher proportion of GNU/Linux instances in the wild (x86 vs x86_64), I really don't know and haven't seen any statistics on the subject (I haven't looked, either). I'd guess x86, but not for the reasons you stated:

A) The drivers in the kernel source tree are open source and written/maintained to compile on both architectures (x86 & x86_64) generally; they're written from the ground up for both (if the driver exists). In my experience, there's either a driver for both arch's or none at all. Maybe you can refer to some specific examples where a driver works for x86 but not for x86_64 (and this driver is already in the source tree)? Or clarify what you meant?

Or were you talking about binary blobs from Nvidia, ATI, etc? Binary blob drivers are the only place where I would agree, since you're at the mercy of the company making the device to provide drivers. However, given that you can get by w/o the binaries from either Nvidia or ATI and still have a very usable desktop experience, I'd question the validity of this as a reason to avoid x86_64 distributions.

B) I'd be willing to bet a lot of people using x86 distros are those running GNU/Linux on old hardware that's i586/i686; this is one of GNU/Linuxs strong points--being able to run on very old hardware and not be too slow to actually use.

Of those who're running x86_64 capable hardware (amd64/emt64) but are still running x86 distros, I'd either chalk it up to ignorance, fear, their personal inability to get the flash plugin working in 64bit distros (no joke), or for some very specific reason individual to them or a very tiny proportion of the population of users.

(feel free to pm me about this so we don't take this any further off topic )

 

[Phynaz]

Originally posted by: seferio
The chances of AMD winning their lawsuit are very high. There is no question that Intel used illegal rebates and payments to stifle competition from AMD. The real concern is whether or not AMD will survive until the lawsuit is resolved and how much longer they can live after they receive a big payment/settlement from Intel.

If there is no question, then why has the lawsuit been going on for three years?

Why would AMD want to depose 475 people?

Why has a judge already ruled some evidence inadmissable?

Sounds like there are a at least a couple of questions.

 

[allies]

Originally posted by: Nemesis 1
Viditor Intel is fighting the koren decision . Also If I were Intel . I would start with Korea. And say No we ain't paying the cost of doing business in korea is to high with finds. Intel should just say no and stop doing business in korea. THan watch them koreans cry like babies .
Better Idea lets break intel up . That sounds great . AMD stole intels tech and now they are cring . You heard about Nehalem so now all of AMDS hopes lie in this lawsuite. PURE BS. This will only push Intel harder to prove AMD can't compete . Thats bad for AMD . IF AMD hadn't sued Nehalem wouldn't be coming out in 4th qt. AMD is its own worse enemy not Intel . AT least not until this lawsuite . Intel is just plane going to finish AMD off. Had AMD not bought ATI . they had a chance . AS it is now . Chapter 11 for AMD in 09.

Have you been to Korea? Or are you just talking out of your ass? Intel should quit doing business in Korea? Give me a freakin' break.

 

[ShawnD1]

Originally posted by: Duvie
If Nvidia bought AMD, most definitely ATI would have to become a single entity again....I am sure the FTC wont allow that merger and demise of the only other real competitor in the highly touted graphics market.

Intel is the leader in the video market, actually.

 

[Cookie Monster]

I think nVIDIA is veryY close to intel in terms of total graphics market share (2~5% difference). However its ironic how intel doesn't even have discrete solutions!

 

[Idontcare]

Interestingly Bloomberg is reporting Discover card's parent corp is suing Visa and Mastercard for $6B (triple damages) in an anti-trust suit alleging Visa and Mastercard engaged in unfair business practices by restricting POS (points of sale) from accepting Discover card alongside Visa or Mastercard.

It's not just Intel vs. AMD when it comes to this tactic being used and the recipients feeling it isn't legal.

http://www.chicagobusiness.com...?rssFeed=news&id=29755