AMD takes antitrust case to the masses

Advanced Micro Devices launched a marketing campaign against Intel on Wednesday, running full-page ads in newspapers to outline the reasons for its antitrust lawsuit and to issue a call to action.

The ad, which ran in newspapers from The New York Times to Capitol Hill's Roll Call, broadens AMD's legal fight into a battle that embraces the force of public perception and of policy makers.

Whether this effort prompts the U.S. government to take action similar to that of Japan's Fair Trade Commission has yet to be seen.

AMD's ad alleges Intel has harmed and curtailed competition in the chip industry, citing such issues as Intel strong-arming major customers to accept exclusive deals and threatening retaliation should they do business with AMD.

"For most competitive situations, this is just business. But from a monopolist, this is illegal," AMD claims in its ad.

Making its point in language that the U.S. Federal Trade Commission understands, the ad further asserts that "Intel's illegal actions hurt consumers--everyday."

Higher prices and a reduction in innovation and choice among computer sellers are cited in the ad.

AMD also issued a call to action for consumers, asking them to read its legal complaint and "demand innovation."

With AMD's lawsuit potentially taking 18 months to go to trial, this salvo could be the first of many to come in the coming months.

The chipmaker is not alone in using full-page ads to try to sway public opinion in a contentious battle. Other high-tech companies have used similar methods. Hewlett-Packard did so in its proxy battle with former director Walter Hewlett over the Compaq Computer merger, as did Sun Microsystem in its Java fight with Microsoft.

This needs to be investigated for sake of innovation and consumer protectio

AMD and Cyrix (VIA) have always forced Intel from the early days to innovate and compete. AMD chips in recent years have trumped or equaled Intel.

For capitalism and free markets to work for the consumer we should support this plea from AMD. I own a Celeron 2.2 and will be switching to AMD if in fact the allegations are true.

-MJB

[deecee]

No...you will swtich for other reason

You will switch because for less than the price you paid for the Celeron, you can get AMD's Sempron which out-performs the Celeron handily and is more power efficient. You will know that because AMD's media effort will spark your interest to investigate a bit more and find out some facts about the current crop of computer processors available. You will switch because you finally get inspired to find a bit more facts about the chips inside your PC and AMD's effort is trying to inspire as many consumer to do that as possible. You don't care if Intel push its customer around if you don't benefit from what AMD is trying to sell, and Intel is trying hard to prevent masses from realizing what AMD is trying to sell.
Let's hope AMD's effort works at least for now because it's going to be good for the consumers this time around.

[AgeOfPenguins_com]

AMD has rip-off prices for Dual-Core chips

They have admitted that it costs them peanuts to double the processing cores on a piece of silicon. Why are they adding more chips to the high end, and never "moving chips downstream" like we should expect?

Their most expensive chip was 800 - so they simply priced their latest (FX-57) at $1050, instead of pricing it at $800 and doing some discounting.

It seems that Intel and AMD are in a de-facto conspiracy to milk us all of our cash. Why don't they slug it out on price, even a little bit?

Matthew

[deecee]

Because AMD is a business

And business' goal is to make money, not to make better product available for more people, they only do that because by doing that they would make more money. The reason they can put their new chips at high prices is because there is no answer from their competitors (Intel namely) to challenge them from a technological point of view, it's that simple. There's no shame for a business to want to make a profit especially considering the R&D cost associated with developing the products.

[AgeOfPenguins_com]

Someone else thinks AMD is a rip-off

http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=24270

Oh please!!!!

Please do you really think that the PC companies that AMD says was forced by Intel to offer Intel processors only would have done so if they had consumers that wanted AMD processors? No, they would have done whatever brought them the most money, just like any other greedy corporation would have done. In fact this whole law suite is being brought by one of those greedy corporations that can't seem to get the market share they feel their products deserve. Why, because most consumers want intel, a brand they trust and one they can be 100% assured of having total OS support for. Intel also makes better products. Though far from cutting edge. Lets face it, they haven't had a revolution in processor design in more than a decade. If they had we wouldn't still be stuck with DMA's and IRQ's and we would have a whole different processor architecture by now. AMD is the same way. Some old technology the first XT computer had, except that they managed to tweak it to fake some more speed out of it.

I don't know who is to blame for the lack of computer advancement. Intel for not moving on a designing new processor technology, Microsoft for not getting on the band wagon with Windows or the consumers that seem to be too cheap to want to make the investment for a better computer system. Either way it all sucks!

Robert

[AgeOfPenguins_com]

Intel commercials work on you, I see

You obviously have little knowledge of PC hardware. AMD's chips are just as x86 compatible as Intel's, so you make yourself sound very ignorant. If you wanted to give believable reasons, you could have talked about motherboard manufacturing quality (4 layers vs. 5 or 6), hyperthreading, etc.

The truth is that AMD has developed a superior product to Intel, and the only reason they do not have 60% market share RIGHT NOW is: inertia. There are still companies that are used to Intel being the better chip (which was true back in '95). Ever since the K6, AMD has been hot at Intel's heels, often beating them to the punch with a new advancement in CPU technology.

Matthew McDevitt
ChantCd.com

[hacp]

Intel has been using underhanded tactics

Why do you think that Dell is not offering AMD products? Even Dell admits that it has an exclusive deal with Intel, so they get a huge price discount. It is not about the performance of a processor. Amd processors are currently very competative with intel. Check the benchmark results. In every benchmark, AMD is right there with Intel. Some applications, Intel runs faster, while others, AMD runs faster. So why doesn't AMD's market share reflect the performance of its processors? Because of the exclusive deals that Intel makes, which are clearly aimed to keep costumers from choosing between Intel and AMD.

[SystemsJunky]

BS

You guys are idiots. AMD makes a superior product in every way besides power consumsion. Look at the facts. In 2000, Intel held back a shipment to HP for 20,000 units because HP was in "talks" with AMD. IF thats not anti-comp. What the hell is? AMD has grounds to do what they have done...People bu yIntel because of the brand recognition, not because of performance. The chime on the TV is what lures them to buy. AMD on the other hand does make innovative products and gives the consumer a broader range of chips to run on than Intel ever will with their crappy doggy P4 lineup. I would buy Intel if my life depended on it. Ive been using all types of technology for the past 15 years. AMD's ARE BETTER. Period. They make Better chips, and some of the best flash memory on the market. They also introduced Hypertransport which is used by Major tech companies (apple, etc..) This isnt a frivolous lawsuit, They are seperating the fact from the BS which BTW, Intel is full of. Look at these prices.

You can get a P4 840 Extreme for $1040
The comparable AMD Opteron 265 goes for $856

I realise these prices are high on both but ****, Last time I checked the opteron smokes the P4 840.

Now the Opteron 875 is out and available for $2600 bucks. Which BTW is a state of the art CPU. Like always these prices fall rapidly.

Intel locks all of there customers into these contracts, its been going on for 20 + years....

</rant>

[mustangj36]

Criminal neglet of marketing.

I'm not going to argue over who makes the better processor here. I use several from each maker and have no complaints.
What struck me about news of AMD's media blitz regarding the suit was that it is AMD's FIRST mass market media campain! To the best of my knowledge, they have never advertised to the general public before, only in tech magazines. You don't reach a mass market this way. No matter how good your product is, if you don't promote it to the widest possible audience, NOBODY is going to know about it. Yeah, they have a great following among geeks and techs but these people represent only a small fraction of potential computer buyers and word of mouth doesn't go far beyond these groups.
Full page ads in major market newspapers aren't cheap. They can run to 25K or more each. If AMD had spent this kind of cash a few years ago, they might have gained more market share based on public awareness the way Intel did it.
BTW: Some earlier posters here praised the K6-2 as AMD's first great chip. Sorry, but I had close experience with three of 'em and they were all crap.