Intel and Advanced Micro Devices filed motions on Wednesday in the U.S. District Court in Delaware, seeking sanctions against each other. Both motions are related to the retention of information in the antitrust case filed by AMD in 2005.
Intel's motion asserts that AMD failed to adequately retain documents in the case it filed against Intel in 2005. "AMD misrepresented its efforts and tried to hide its failures from the court and Intel," according to an Intel statement Wednesday.
The chipmaker alleges that AMD's claims about document retention were exaggerated. "Ever since Intel disclosed its problems in 2007, AMD claimed to have an 'exemplary' scheme to retain documents in this case. It is now clear that AMD did not, and that some AMD executives and employees failed to retain thousands of documents and e-mails," according to Intel spokesman Chuck Mulloy.
In the legal filing, Intel summarized its argument under the heading: "Summary of Argument: AMD Should Be Ordered To Do What Intel Long Ago Did Voluntarily." Intel stated: "At least by January of 2005, AMD reasonably anticipated its lawsuit against Intel and did everything a future plaintiff would to do to prepare for that case...But (it) did not start retaining relevant documents, the one thing the law obligated it to do."
Intel said its effort to "remediate or correct" mistakes it made in the discovery process cost the company tens of millions of dollars. It said it believes that it has complied with the plan and successfully corrected the problem. "As a result, Intel delivered nearly 200 million pages of documents to AMD."
AMD motion cites Intel's "auto-delete shredder"
In addition to dismissing the Intel motion as having "no merit," AMD filed a separate motion on Wednesday about Intel's "failure to preserve evidence."
AMD challenged Intel's claim that its remediation efforts (mentioned above) were successful. "Intel could have easily avoided this evidence preservation fiasco, had it and its counsel exercised a modicum of diligence in designing and implementing an effective document preservation program," AMD said.
This "fiasco," AMD said, led to "Intel's much-heralded, high-vaunted, but ultimately unsuccessful, attempt at remediation."
An excerpt from the filing continues: "At the heart of Intel's preservation problems was its failure to disarm an aggressive auto-delete system, despite uncontroverted authority required it do so...It's auto-delete shredder continued to run without any safety net."
AMD also alleged that "Intel has severely and irreparably harmed AMD's ability to present its case. At a company where paper trails are strongly discouraged, Intel imposed a 'move it or lose it' document preservation regime, where any document not manually saved was permanently expunged."
In the conclusion, AMD states that it "has submitted a proposed jury instruction for the court that attempts to remedy prejudice caused by Intel's spoliation of evidence." The instruction provides that the jury be told that Intel "destroyed hundreds of thousands of relevant documents."
Updated at 3:10 p.m. PDT, adding statements from Intel and AMD motions.
SanDisk said Monday that it is shipping memory chips that will allow consumers to store more data on tiny Secure Digital flash cards.
SanDisk X4 chip
(Credit: SanDisk)The Milpitas, Calif., company's X4 technology packs four bits of data into each memory cell. To date, flash memory chipmakers typically stored one bit or two bits per cell. Each individual die--or chip--holds 64 gigabits of data, or 8 gigabytes. This is the highest capacity per die in the industry, according to SanDisk.
The technology is not yet shipping in cutting-edge retail products, however: it is currently being used in 8GB and 16GB SDHC (Secure Digital High Capacity) cards as well as 8GB and 16GB Memory Stick PRO Duo cards, the company said.
Future related technology from SanDisk--possibly not based on current X4--is expected to yield SD flash cards that hold 64GB of data and larger capacities. Currently, mainstream SanDisk SD cards top out at 32GB.
Flash memory cards sold at retailers are typically not as reliable as solid-state drives--which also use flash chips--sold with laptops. And the higher the density per chip and the more bits per cell, the bigger the challenge for maintaining data reliability. SanDisk says it has met this challenge.
"Our challenge with X4 technology was to not only deliver the lower costs inherent to 4-bits-per-cell but to do so while meeting the reliability and performance requirements of industry standard cards," Sanjay Mehrotra, SanDisk's president and chief operating officer, said in a statement.
But X4 will, for the time being, be hampered by poorer performance and endurance than X3 (3-bits-per-cell) technology, said Gregory Wong, founder and principal analyst at Forward Insights, which does research on flash memory technology.
The memory technology itself--the 4 bits per cell 64-gigabit memory--is codeveloped and co-owned by SanDisk and Toshiba. The X4 controller technology is solely owned by SanDisk.
Drop the word "Apple" into any discussion with any company and the effect is nothing short of remarkable.
This innocuous logo can evoke fear
Over the last year, I have talked to middle-level and high-ranking executives at enough companies to know exactly what to expect when the topic of Apple is broached: fear.
A recent interview with a fairly big company provides an example as good as any. (But I could cite a much bigger company too, it's doesn't seem to matter.)
The way this interview proceeded was typical. Most of it was devoted to questions about the company's product plans (unrelated to Apple)--and the interviewee divulged plenty of information. A smaller slice of the interview was about customers or companies related to the interviewee (again, unrelated to Apple). Here, queries were answered with differing levels of transparency. Though less was revealed, nothing was a conversation stopper.
Then, toward the end, the conversation turned to Apple--which is not unusual as Apple's tentacles are everywhere, particularly in the case of hardware. My question began something like: "So, I understand Apple is..." The response was remarkably consistent with past interviews. I quote from the mid-level manager: "I don't want to lose my job." I've heard variations on this job security (I-have-absolutely-nothing-to-say) theme related to Apple during the last 12 months or so.
The angst is always palpable. When the interviewees clam up, then quip something like "I like getting a paycheck every month," with a wry smile, they aren't joking. And these people don't even work for Apple.
I haven't written about the Apple gag-order syndrome until now because it hadn't struck me as that surprising, i.e., the stock phrase "I can't comment on another company's product plans" is used often--not to mention the legal weight of nondisclosure agreements.
But this changed a few months ago when I realized how the Apple question consistently evokes fear (or call it distinct unease) in many interviewees.
A sensational claim? Maybe it sounds that way. But I'm calling it as I see it.
Why Apple? It's not a stretch to say that Apple is probably one of the most secretive companies in Silicon Valley. But it's also one of the most influential and, consequently, most powerful. How do I know this? This middle-level manager at this fairly big, independent, and successful company felt compelled to comment on his job security twice. And the second time he said it, the smile had clearly left his face.
European antitrust regulators on Monday published internal e-mails that detail alleged antitrust behavior by Intel.
The European Commission Monday published a "non-confidential version" of its May 13 decision against Intel, which imposed a fine of $1.45 billion against the chip giant. That decision found that Intel broke EC Treaty antitrust rules (Article 82) by engaging in illegal practices to exclude competitors from the market for "x86" central processing units (CPUs).
The EC action was based on complaints from Intel's chief rival, Advanced Micro Devices.
Intel appealed the decision in July to a European court, saying that "evidence was ignored or misinterpreted."
Today, the EC fired back. Some of Monday's particulars from the EC press release include:
Intel rebates to Lenovo during year 2007 "were conditioned on Lenovo purchasing its CPU needs for its notebook segment exclusively from Intel. For example, in a December 2006 e-mail, a Lenovo executive stated: 'Late last week Lenovo cut a lucrative deal with Intel. As a result of this, we will not be introducing AMD based products in 2007 for our Notebook products'."
Intel rebates to Dell from December 2002 to December 2005 were conditioned on Dell purchasing CPUs exclusively from Intel. For example, in an internal Dell presentation of February 2003, Dell noted that should Dell switch any part of its CPU supplies from Intel to its competitor AMD, Intel retaliation "could be severe and prolonged with impact to all LOBs [Lines of Business]."
Intel rebates to HP from November 2002 to May 2005 were conditioned on HP purchasing no less than 95 percent of its CPU needs for business desktops from Intel (the remaining 5 percent that HP could purchase from AMD was then subject to further restrictive conditions set out below). In a submission to the Commission, HP stated that "Intel granted the credits subject to the following unwritten requirements: a) that HP should purchase at least 95% of its business desktop system from Intel ..." An HP executive wrote: 'PLEASE DO NOT... communicate to the regions, your team members or AMD that we are constrained to 5% AMD by pursuing the Intel agreement.'"
The EC also cited "Naked Restrictions" such as: "Intel payments to Acer were conditioned on Acer postponing the launch of an AMD-based notebook from September 2003 to January 2004. For example, in a September 2003 email, an Intel executive reported: "good news just came from [Acer Senior Executive] that Acer decides to drop AMD K8 [notebook product] throughout 2003 around the world...They keep pushing back until today, after the call with [Intel executive] this morning, [Acer Senior Executive] just confirmed that they decide to drop AMD K8 throughout 2003 around the world. [Acer Senior Executive] has got this direction from [Acer Senior Executive] as well and will follow through in EMEA [Europe Middle East and Africa region]".
AMD was quick to chime in with a comment Monday. "This is the first time that Intel has had to confront now publicly available facts of its illegal behavior and it won't be the last. The U.S. FTC and New York Attorney General's continuing investigations and AMD's civil case against Intel will provide other clear demonstrations of Intel breaking the law, and we remain confident that we will win our U.S. civil case against Intel, which goes to trial in March," AMD said.
Intel also issued a response Monday. "There is nothing new here. This Decision reflects the underlying bias we have come to expect from the case team that ran this investigation," Intel said. "The Commission relied heavily on speculation found in e-mails from lower level employees that did not participate in the negotiation of the relevant agreements," Intel said. "At the same time, they ignored or minimized hard evidence of what actually happened, including highly authoritative documents, written declarations and testimony given under oath by senior individuals who negotiated the transactions at issue."
Intel continued: "Also, the Commission consistently construed ambiguous documents in a manner adverse to Intel, while overlooking or dismissing authoritative documents as 'insufficiently clear' when they contradicted the Commission's case. This pattern occurred across the board with respect to documents and statements submitted not only by Intel but also by third parties. The result was that the Commission dismissed or ignored extensive exculpatory evidence."
IBM scientists have imaged the chemical structure of an individual molecule, increasing the possibility for creating electronic building blocks on the atomic and molecular scale.
By using an atomically sharp metal tip terminated with a carbon monoxide molecule, IBM scientists were able to obtain an image of the inner structure of the molecule. The colored surface represents experimental data. The model below shows the position of the atoms within the molecule.
(Credit: IBM)Scientists In Zurich, Switzerland, have, for the first time, imaged the "anatomy," or chemical structure, of an individual molecule with "unprecedented" resolution, using noncontact atomic force microscopy (AFM), IBM said Thursday. Resolving individual atoms within a molecule has been a long-standing goal of surface microscopy, according to the computer company, which has a research and development program dating back to 1945.
This research will be essential for building computing elements at the atomic scale that are vastly smaller, faster and more energy-efficient than today's processors and memory devices, IBM said.
The research is reported in the August 28 issue of Science magazine.
Though in recent years progress has been made in research of nanostructures on the atomic scale with AFM, imaging the chemical structure of an entire molecule has never been achieved with atomic resolution, according to IBM.
The atomic force microscopy was done in an ultrahigh vacuum and at very low temperatures (5 Kelvin equals minus 268 degrees Centigrade or minus 451 Fahrenheit) to image the chemical structure of individual pentacene molecules. Pentacene has a crystal structure that gives it properties as an organic semiconductor.
Scientists were able "to look through the electron cloud and see the atomic backbone of an individual molecule for the first time." This is roughly analogous to X-rays that pass through soft tissue to enable clear images of bones, IBM said.
The Science magazine article follows another piece published two months ago in the June 12 issue of the magazine covering the "determination of atomic charge states." The results discussed in both of these articles will "open new possibilities for investigating how charge propagates through molecules or molecular networks," IBM said.
Understanding the charge distribution may lead to building computing elements ... Read more
Nvidia is readying silicon that would work with Intel's newest processor design, according to a report. Intel claims Nvidia does not have the legal rights to make companion chips for its newest processors.
In February, Intel alleged in a lawsuit that the 4-year-old chipset license agreement with Nvidia does not extend to Intel's future-generation processors with "integrated" memory controllers, such as its "Nehalem" Core i series of processors.
A chipset is companion silicon to the main processor. Integrated memory controllers are built into the processor itself to increase performance between the processor and memory.
According to a report on Chinese-language Technology Web site HKEPC, Nvidia is planning to bring out a MCP99 chipset that supports Nehalem processors and Intel's Direct Media Interface, or DMI. Nvidia cited DMI back in February as a technology that Intel was trying to prevent it from using.
Despite the report's claims, it is not clear yet whether Nvidia would in fact bring out a chip before the legal matter is settled with Intel.
Nvidia had no comment on the report.
Nvidia's current 9400M Intel-compatible chipset, which is used with Core 2 architecture-based processors, has been successful. It is used in Apple's MacBook and Toshiba's Qosmio lines, for example, and in Netbooks that use the Atom processor.
During Nvidia's July 26 earnings conference call, in response to an analyst's question about building chipsets for Intel's Nehalem processors, Nvidia CEO Jen-Hsun Huang said: "We're not necessarily building chipsets for future Intel buses. We've not commented anything on that and so you are just going to have to wait to see what we come up with," he said. "Our company is...pretty darn clever. There is a lot of ways to skin the cat," he said.
Intel said the matter is being left to the courts. "We tried many times to resolve the conflict but we couldn't resolve it. So we asked the courts to," said Intel spokesman Chuck Mulloy. "By the time something comes to market, hopefully we'll have some resolution," Mulloy said.
The European Union's ombudsman has criticized the antitrust regulator in a recent case against Intel, saying the regulator did not include evidence that was potentially exculpatory for the chipmaker, according to a report in The Wall Street Journal.
In May, Intel was fined 1.06 billion euros ($1.45 billion) for engaging in, according to the Commission, illegal anticompetitive practices to exclude competitors from the market for computer chips based on the x86 architecture--the design that both Intel and Advanced Micro Devices use in their microprocessors.
"Intel has harmed millions of European consumers by deliberately acting to keep competitors out of the market for computer chips for many years," competition Commissioner Neelie Kroes said in a statement at the time.
The investigation was driven by complaints from rival AMD.
The ombudsman, P. Nikiforos Diamandouros, chided the Commission for "maladministration" by not formally citing an August 2006 meeting between Commission investigators and a senior Dell executive, according to the Friday report in the Journal. The Dell executive was providing evidence in the case and "is believed to have told investigators that Dell viewed the performance of Intel rival Advanced Micro Devices Inc. as 'very poor,'" according to the report.
The Journal report concludes that this "could imply that Dell chose Intel chips for technical reasons, rather than because it was muscled into doing so." This would contradict the formal EU decision that claimed that PC manufacturers bought chips from Intel strictly because they did not want to forfeit hefty rebates from Intel.
The ombudsman cannot change the outcome of the case, according to the report.
Intel did not comment.
A letter from The Securities and Exchange Commission to Intel is not likely to inspire a future episode of "24."
The June 4, 2009 letter (originally marked "confidential") to Intel from the SEC states: "We are aware of a May 2008 news report that PCs in Cuba contain your Celeron processors. Cuba, Iran, Sudan, and Syria are identified by the State Department as state sponsors of terrorism, and are subject to U.S. economic sanctions and export controls."
Intel Celeron chips in Cuba: paging Jack Bauer? Probably not.
The letter continues. "We note that your Form 10-K does not include disclosure regarding contacts with Cuba, Iran, Sudan, and Syria. Please describe to us the nature and extent of any past, current, and anticipated contacts with the referenced countries, whether through distributors, resellers, licensees, or other direct or indirect arrangements."
The letter was cited earlier in The Wall Street Journal.
And what kind of computers are we talking about exactly? (It would strain credulity, I think, to cue in a Jack Bauer narration--"The following takes place between 7:00 a.m. and 8:00 a.m"--here.) The SEC letter offers this:
"The Cuban PCs have Intel Celeron processors with 80 gigabytes of memory (sic) and 512 RAM and are equipped with Microsoft's Windows XP operating system. Both could be violations of a U.S. trade embargo, but not something Washington can do anything about in the absence of diplomatic relations with Havana. Clerks said the PCs were assembled by Cuban companies using parts imported from China."
Maybe there's more to this than meets the eye but a lowly Celeron chip (one of Intel's bottom-of-the-performance-barrel processors) is hardly the chip to designate as a threat to national security. In short, data-crunching server farms--assuming they exist--in Cuba are not built with Celeron processors.
For the record, an excerpt from the Intel response is as follows: "Intel has no business contacts with the Subject Countries, either directly or indirectly through tacit agreement with its customers. Intel does not provide products or technology to the Subject Countries...."
A more productive line of inquiry--by another U.S. government agency--might be: Where on the world market might these countries be buying sophisticated multiprocessor computer hardware based on, for instance, the newest high-end Intel Nehalem Core i7 processors?
Now, there's an idea for a future "24" episode.
According to Nvidia on Tuesday, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has initially rejected an additional eight Rambus claims that Nvidia challenged.
The additional eight claims are based on two patents that Rambus has asserted against Nvidia in litigation. This follows the USPTO's rejection last month of 41 other claims in seven patents that Rambus had asserted, Nvidia said.
Rambus filed patent claims against Nvidia in an International Trade Commission action in November. The ITC litigation involves memory controllers--which handle communications between memory chips and other silicon--related to graphics processors.
"We are pleased that the USPTO decided to review the patentability of these two additional Rambus' patents and continued to agree with Nvidia's challenge to these eight claims," said David Shannon, Nvidia executive vice president and general counsel, in a statement.
Rambus, which develops high-speed memory chip technology, also commented on the announcement.
"As part of the multi-pronged approach to delay paying Rambus for our patented inventions, our litigation opponents have filed requests with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office to bring into question the validity of some of our patents. We have seen this tactic for years," according to a Rambus statement Tuesday. "This is a very long process, and the patents remain valid during the whole process," Rambus said.
Rambus is seeking to block importation and sale of Nvidia products that it claims infringe on its patents.
The ITC case goes to trial in August and a final determination is expected in 2010.
How do I calculate the size of meatballs?--O'Brien asks.
(Credit: 'The Tonight Show' with Conan O'Brien)"How do I calculate the size of meatballs?" That was the title of one of the seminal Intel science projects that late-night comedian Conan O'Brien covered in a segment last night on NBC's "The Tonight Show."
O'Brien was at the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair, billed as the world's largest pre-college science fair. Intel is one of the sponsors of the "The Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien," which launched recently with the retirement (from that show) of Jay Leno.
"Even though Intel is one of the world's largest corporations and they could crush me like a fly, they were nice enough to let me go visit their science fair in Reno, Nev.," O'Brien said.
"1,500 dweebs, nerds, and Poindexters," O'Brien said, describing the high school kids attending the event.
Conan O'Brien interviews science fair participants
(Credit: The Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien)A project of note was a "See Through Camera Jammer." "So if someone has a see-through camera, your device stops them from seeing through people's clothing?" O'Brien asked. "Why would you make this?" The response from the high school kid who did the project: "Because it's illegal." And Conan responded: "But I paid a lot of money for that thing."
He ended the segment with a visit to the meatball size-measuring project. "Of course, not everyone here is a genius. 'How do I calculate the size of meatballs?' This was a $13 million study commissioned by Chef Boyardee," he joked.
The link to "The Tonight Show" replay is here. Note that the Intel segment begins at about the 6:30 marker into the show.
