The right way to bust a monopoly?
This PDF contains the AMD complaint against Intel. Not surprisingly, Intel has worked very hard to maintain their chokehold on the x86 processor market. Allegations in the AMD complaint include that Intel has bullied suppliers, "beating [them] into guacamole", and "pressur[ing] HP's senior management to consider firing" AMD-friendly vice presidents. A short summary of the complaint is behind the cut.
Bullet point #57 is a great example: "Intel was forced to relax its hold on NEC’s business when long-time NEC customer, Honda Motor Company, demanded that NEC supply it with servers powered by AMD’s Opteron microprocessors. After underwriting the considerable expense of designing and manufacturing an Opteron server for Honda, NEC then inexplicably refused to market the product to any of its other customers."
Distributors are being paid kickbacks -- er, "research and development funding," "retroactive bulk discounts," and "advertising subsidies" -- for staying Intel-only. Discounts are given only after OEMs and retailers meet Intel-dictated sales goals, including goals based on market share. They coerce OEMs, distributors, and retailers, all with the same hammer: "we're the biggest, and we're going to stay that way, or you're going to get boned." Intel sits in the biggest, comfiest chair at the standards-definitions meetings, and proposed a memory standard for DDR3 that served only to inconvenience AMD's ability to meet release dates. Intel's C/C++ compiler makes code that runs poorly on AMD processors. Intel uses the free market to force all of the OEMs to compete against each other for Intel's attention.
AMD makes the better chips, and is the first-and-best competitor in the 64-bit x86 chip arena. They have about 17% market share right now, and appear to be limited only by Intel's ability to box them out of the market. Isn't somebody bound to break ranks pretty soon?
Well, if you read the complaint, you can see between the lines that the retailers are tacitly cooperating with AMD. All of the details of the Intel deals appear to be leaked by AMD sympathizers within the OEMs and retailers -- people whose best interests would be served by forcing AMD and Intel to (gasp!) compete for their attentions.
I sent Dell an e-mail inquiring about buying an AMD desktop from them, just to see what kind of reaction I would get. Check it out:
2. Will Dell offer a computer with an AMD processor?
=============================
Dell re-evaluates this question frequently, but probably will not manufacture an AMD-based desktop or portable computer until demand from our customers is much higher. There are questions of compatibility with Dell's Intel-type motherboards and of the availability of very large numbers of units from our suppliers. Consistency, agility, and economies of scale allow Dell to offer most of our customers a high quality product at a moderate price.
I hate monopolies, and I build AMD systems anyway, so I'm not buying Intel for a home system if I can avoid it. I'm also rooting for AMD to get the "treble damages" they seek in the "Prayer for Relief" at the end of the complaint.
Bullet point #57 is a great example: "Intel was forced to relax its hold on NEC’s business when long-time NEC customer, Honda Motor Company, demanded that NEC supply it with servers powered by AMD’s Opteron microprocessors. After underwriting the considerable expense of designing and manufacturing an Opteron server for Honda, NEC then inexplicably refused to market the product to any of its other customers."
Distributors are being paid kickbacks -- er, "research and development funding," "retroactive bulk discounts," and "advertising subsidies" -- for staying Intel-only. Discounts are given only after OEMs and retailers meet Intel-dictated sales goals, including goals based on market share. They coerce OEMs, distributors, and retailers, all with the same hammer: "we're the biggest, and we're going to stay that way, or you're going to get boned." Intel sits in the biggest, comfiest chair at the standards-definitions meetings, and proposed a memory standard for DDR3 that served only to inconvenience AMD's ability to meet release dates. Intel's C/C++ compiler makes code that runs poorly on AMD processors. Intel uses the free market to force all of the OEMs to compete against each other for Intel's attention.
AMD makes the better chips, and is the first-and-best competitor in the 64-bit x86 chip arena. They have about 17% market share right now, and appear to be limited only by Intel's ability to box them out of the market. Isn't somebody bound to break ranks pretty soon?
Well, if you read the complaint, you can see between the lines that the retailers are tacitly cooperating with AMD. All of the details of the Intel deals appear to be leaked by AMD sympathizers within the OEMs and retailers -- people whose best interests would be served by forcing AMD and Intel to (gasp!) compete for their attentions.
I sent Dell an e-mail inquiring about buying an AMD desktop from them, just to see what kind of reaction I would get. Check it out:
2. Will Dell offer a computer with an AMD processor?
=============================
Dell re-evaluates this question frequently, but probably will not manufacture an AMD-based desktop or portable computer until demand from our customers is much higher. There are questions of compatibility with Dell's Intel-type motherboards and of the availability of very large numbers of units from our suppliers. Consistency, agility, and economies of scale allow Dell to offer most of our customers a high quality product at a moderate price.
I hate monopolies, and I build AMD systems anyway, so I'm not buying Intel for a home system if I can avoid it. I'm also rooting for AMD to get the "treble damages" they seek in the "Prayer for Relief" at the end of the complaint.