AMD v Intel

After Apple's shocking move last month, AMD has increased the tension in the CPU circles by announcing its antitrust lawsuit against market leader Intel. Fur began to fly this week with the announcement by Intel that their offices in Europe were raided by EU antitrust investigators (LA Times Story). This coupled with the increased scrutiny by Japanese officials over Intel's business practices in the east has left many of us wondering what Intel's future might hold.

AMD claims that Intel has used their over 80% market share to bully companies away from using AMD products. The suit states that Intel has used underhanded techniques to maintain their dominance in the CPU market, like withdrawing benefits extended to resellers that sell Intel CPUs exclusively, like Dell. AMD has announced that many executives in the computer field are giving them encouragement and saying that they have evidence of antitrust activities, however the executives will not testify unless subpoenaed because they fear Intel's retaliation (limit product availability, withholding discounts etc.). To date no evidence of these claims have surfaced, and with so many people fighting not to be a part of this case, it looks like this is going to be a slugfest that will be on people's tongues for at least the foreseeable future.

Also in the suit, is a claim that Intel's compiler is designed to run more slowly on a machine that is running an AMD processor. Again no solid evidence of this, however this article (The Tech Report) has a section regarding a test done by a gentleman named Mark Mackey who has tested this claim using Intel's Fortran compiler for Linux. Without going into details, he does find a problem with their compiler and his conclusions back AMD's claims. A thread on Slashdot also backs the claims against Intel. You can read about them in the provided links. If this turns out to be true, then the sparks could be flying before we know it, and Intel could be getting more bad press than SCO or Microsoft.

In the short term you and I will see almost no effects of this, except the bi-weekly news stories that will popup around the web. The case is in its infancy at this point so picking a side is probably premature. In a bulletin issued by legal analyst Martin Reynolds he advises, "Do not make any changes to system procurement plans because of AMD's lawsuit. This case will generate a great deal of media attention, but will likely not affect the IT industry in any material way, because neither AMD nor Intel will allow itself to be distracted from its operations." We will see how long the general public can stay impartial.

Read more here Internetnews.com Article.
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