AMD lawyer: Intel would 'like us dead'
In the wake of the latest kerfuffle between Advanced Micro Devices and Intel, AMD's chief counsel seized the moment to sound off on a primal fear at his company: Intel is bent on its destruction. Intel, of course, doesn't quite see it that way.
After Intel accused AMD on Monday of breaching a 2001 patent cross-license agreement with Intel, AMD's top lawyer had some choice words for its bigger rival.
In a phone interview Tuesday, AMD general counsel Harry Wolin refuted Intel's claim that the AMD manufacturing spin-off Globalfoundries is not a subsidiary--and thus cannot legally use Intel intellectual property--and talked more broadly about Intel's tactics.
Intel's ultimate goal, Wolin believes, is to crush rivals into oblivion. "In their perfect world, we wouldn't exist. If they had to deal with the government every now and then, that's fine, and they're still extracting monopoly profits from the industry," he said.
Wolin doesn't buy into the oft-repeated theory that Intel needs AMD to keep the industry honest and to keep the U.S. government at bay. "I don't agree with the premise that they have to have us and they think they have to have us. I think they would absolutely like us dead," Wolin said.
The Dickensian depiction of AMD as the impoverished, distressed victim of Intel's bullying and manipulation is inaccurate and, more importantly, misses the relevant point, according to Intel spokesman Chuck Mulloy. "It's nice of them to try to speak for us. AMD has been a competitor for almost 40 years in one form or another. This is not about AMD going away," he said. "This is about our rights and AMD's rights under the patent cross-license agreement."
Ashok Kumar, an analyst at investment bank Collins Stewart, said the premise of a remorselessly predatory Intel set on killing off its rivals is attention-getting but not that realistic.
"Could Intel put them out of business? Probably. But is it a likely outcome? I don't think so," he said. "Because they'll get a lot of significant push back from the OEMs (PC makers). The OEMs will essentially be making a beeline to Washington, D.C."
Intel contends this is a very localized dispute about whether Globalfoundries is a subsidiary or not, and not a manufactured issue "to distract the world from the global antitrust scrutiny (Intel) faces," as AMD said in a statement Monday. "AMD cannot unilaterally extend Intel's licensing rights to a third party without Intel's consent," said Bruce Sewell, senior vice president and general counsel for Intel, in a statement on Monday. Intel maintains the issue is that Globalfoundries is 34.2 percent owned by AMD and 65.8 percent-plus owned by Advanced Technology Investment Co., an investment company. So, in effect, Globalfoundries is not an AMD subsidiary.
Wrong, AMD says. It is not about ownership. AMD has met the conditions that qualify it as a subsidiary. "It requires that AMD originally contributed at least 50 percent of the assets. If you look at the fact that we've thrown in the German factories, we've thrown in the people, we've thrown in the technology, we've thrown in the intellectual property. I don't think there's any credible argument that says we haven't thrown in more than 50 percent of this. It says nothing about owning. It says you have to originally contribute 50 percent of the assets," Wolin said.
And what happens from here?
"Let's say the parties end up in a lawsuit at the end of 60 days," Wolin said. (Intel says it will terminate AMD's rights and licenses under the cross license in 60 days if the alleged breach has not been corrected.) "Well, you know, that lawsuit doesn't come to court for years and wouldn't come to court until well after the antitrust suit would come to court, which is currently scheduled for February of next year," according to Wolin.
Intel says the next step is mediation, where Globalfoundries is brought to the table. If this doesn't resolve the issue, then they would both be off to the races and the lawsuits would begin.
Brooke Crothers has served as an editor at large at CNET News, an editor at Dow Jones' Asian Wall Street Journal Weekly, and a senior editor at InfoWorld. His CNET blog covers chip technology and computer systems, and how they define the computing experience. He also contributes to The New York Times' Bits and Technology sections. He is a member of the CNET Blog Network and is not an employee of CNET. Disclosure. Follow Brooke on Twitter @mbrookec. 
to hide?
And "better" is subjective, yes, Intel has the performance crown, but the Phenom 2's offer great bang/buck.
AMD gives us better processors than Intel
Ph2 720 v C2D E8400, the ph2 is noticeably faster and costs less
AMD jnot having the performance crown doesn't mean they make bad products
I like to think that there is still hope for AMD to make a comeback, remember P4?
its Phenom 2
Opteron was a significant step up in x86_64 server chips, and one of the reasons Itanium never caught traction. While Intel/HP were struggling down that path, Opteron provided solid server performance with a simpler migration path. If anything, AMD's success with Opteron forced Intel to refocus on their core market.
AMD forced Intel to focus on architecture and to de-emphasize clock speed as the only performance enhancer. AMD chips out performed Intel clock-per-clock for a long time. Intel finally went back to the architecture and now we have Core2 and I7. Both superior to the netburst architecture in terms of work per clock and work per watt.
AMD beat Intel to market with processors that directly connected to DRAM memory, bypassing the bridge.
AMD beat Intel to true multicore on a single die. Not hyper threading, and not packaging tricks, but true multicore.
So the list goes on.
Intel has a lot of smart talent, but they don't innovate unless they are forced to. They would far prefer to milk a single product to maximize return, which is entirely sensible for a company to due. Competition is what drives innovation, and a lot of Intel's advancement in the last fifteen years has been in response to AMD's innovation.
I still thing that AMD systems often beat Intel on bang for the buck, but as processors costs drop as a percentage of system costs on mid range systems, AMD's margin is shrinking faster than Intel's.
AMD 486 foundry search taps DEC Scotland plant
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0EKF/is_n2001_v40/ai_15031863
How to Solve the Parallel Programming Crisis:
http://rebelscience.blogspot.com/2008/07/how-to-solve-parallel-programming.html
Unless you are a professional that needs workstation class hardware; enterprise, media and scientific computing will always need desktops, workstations and servers.
A friend of mine was going to buy a laptop. I told her to ask the sales men or an AMD comparison. She was told that AMD CPUs are 'unstable'. This is the kind of trickery that is going on in the today's market.
She ended up with a Core 2 Duo with Intel Mobile Graphics 'Centrino 2' (Slow as anything when watching movies, or even photos). When for the same price she could have got a Core 2 Duo with dedicated ATI / NVIDIA graphics, or a balanced PUMA platform from AMD.
RT
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- by connexion- March 23, 2009 7:56 AM PDT
- AMD is a really good company for computer chips, in my opinion. Intel is an overpriced brand and is not always the best! Buy AMD!
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