And the EU strikes again...

At least it's not Microsoft this time:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/8047546.stm

Looks to be a pretty large scale cartel including Acer, Dell, HP, Lenovo and NEC.

So is this likely to change anything? Are we going to see an surge in AMD powered devices as manufacturers leave intels (supposed) grip? And if we do will AMD use the capital (from increased sales) to bring their products up to scratch?

EDIT: This made me laugh:

"Ms Kroes joked in her own news conference that Intel would now have to change its latest advertising slogan from "sponsors of tomorrow" to "the sponsor of the European taxpayer"."

Neelie for the win!

That's a message to all you greedy American corporations! Don't mess with Dutch women.

Seriously, I dislike cartels, bad for consumers. But I dont get the current suit against Microsoft. For putting Internet Explorer as standard on Windows. I think AMD in this case is still the loser, Intel has it's market share and is not letting go. They will be fined again, just like Microsoft.

Oh and it's not sponsoring the European taxpayer, it's taxing them less

1.6B or whatever... almost be cheaper to simply buy AMD, shut it down, and then tell Europe to go screw themselves for CPUs.

elmer said:

1.6B or whatever... almost be cheaper to simply buy AMD, shut it down, and then tell Europe to go screw themselves for CPUs.

Right,...

The lenses Intel use to light their wafers in their stepper machines come from Carl Zeiss and are researched here in Holland.

So if we can stick your processors somewhere, you can stick your lenses in yours!

Your'e assuming that the EU would let them buy (the european parts) of AMD.

Which, IIRC, includes all their manufacturing plants (I think I'm right in saying AMD still make their own chips)

I think the important point to draw from this, is that 'choice' is important, and bully-boy underhand tactics will not win the day. If you want people to choose your products, provide a compelling case for them to 'choose' (your product). Be it, better performance, competitive cost, increased value, fantastic quality or superb experience.

Having a large market share I.e. > 80%, is not a problem, as long as you aquired it in a fair and just manner. If that market share is being eroded by competitors, then don't * about it or use underhand tactics. Build better products!

Big corporations should learn from their mistakes; to be fined once is tough luck, to be fined twice or more is careless, and shareholders don't forget these things quickly as the fine always hits the bottom line. Yes, you're always going to have the small fishes gnawing away at your feet and complaining to the regulators, but the solution for them is the same. Build better products!

Good news for the consumer and thank you EU. My only issue is it should be the USA doing these kind of things. We also have anti-trust laws and they aren't much different then the EUs. Unfortunately our government tends to be too far up corporations asses collectively to see any possible illegal dealings when it smacks them in the face. And you can't even make the argument that an Intel monopoly beneifts the USA in some way (see the DeBeers monopoly and South Africa). Intel largest competitor AMD is also an American company (hence "American Micro Devices"). The fact that AMD had to go to the EU to complain about Intel is pretty compelling evidence on how ineffective our own government is in stopping cartel behavior.

Bass said:

Good news for the consumer and thank you EU. My only issue is it should be the USA doing these kind of things. We also have anti-trust laws and they aren't much different then the EUs. Unfortunately our government tends to be too far up corporations asses collectively to see any possible illegal dealings when it smacks them in the face. And you can't even make the argument that an Intel monopoly beneifts the USA in some way (see the DeBeers monopoly and South Africa). Intel largest competitor AMD is also an American company (hence "American Micro Devices"). The fact that AMD had to go to the EU to complain about Intel is pretty compelling evidence on how ineffective our own government is in stopping cartel behavior.

It's Advanced Micro Devices.

And don't kid yourself that the EU's not biased either - AMD have large manufacturing interests in Europe - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AMD#Production_and_fabrication

That said if the allegations of Intel's buying of market share are true I wholeheartedly agree with the ruling (and think it's a good thing regardless as to whether the allegations are true)

What they hell was she trying to say.. they offered a rebate.. mumble mumble, no others could compete.. what?

GoddersUK said:

Bass said:

*snip*

It's Advanced Micro Devices.

And don't kid yourself that the EU's not biased either - AMD have large manufacturing interests in Europe - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AMD#Production_and_fabrication

That said if the allegations of Intel's buying of market share are true I wholeheartedly agree with the ruling (and think it's a good thing regardless as to whether the allegations are true)

Hah nice catch. My bad.

stevo_ said:

What they hell was she trying to say.. they offered a rebate.. mumble mumble, no others could compete.. what?

Intel offered special incentives to OEMs and retailers to only carry Intel processors. These kind of deals are illegal.

Hmm, well either way, people wouldn't know the difference to make a sensible choice.. if they were given realistic choices they'd still go for intel on the desktop / high end system anyway because amd have floundered since the core 2 was released..

stevo_ said:

Hmm, well either way, people wouldn't know the difference to make a sensible choice.. if they were given realistic choices they'd still go for intel on the desktop / high end system anyway because amd have floundered since the core 2 was released..

at least their quad cores really are quad cores and not dual dual cores...

Bass said:

stevo_ said:

*snip*

Intel offered special incentives to OEMs and retailers to only carry Intel processors. These kind of deals are illegal.

Yup. I remember MS sells cheaper OEM to HP, Dell, and those big brand because they are high volume customer. You know like Walmart demand cheaper price. MS got sued for that, so, it sells the same price with rebate, like those Creditcard reward program.

Intel just have to do something like that. Maybe something like NFL lisencing contract or something.

GoddersUK said:

stevo_ said:

*snip*

at least their quad cores really are quad cores and not dual dual cores...

Who cares? I don't care if the cpu has clever feature x if it doesn't make enough difference to beat clever features a, b, c on another.

As an educated consumer, I pick the best choice.. and each time I've looked to buy a system I really do check to see what the best cpu I can get in my range is.. and I've done this numerous times in the last couple of years and intel always comes out on top.. amd for a moment (and maybe still do), held a market for lower end middle class cpus - but thats about it..

This said, intels i7's are overpriced to f---

@magicalclick

There is no problem with economics of scale type pricing. The problem here is with a cartel agreement Intel made with several companies (who really should also be prosecuted IMO). Actually what Intel did if it's true is direct violation of the spirit of anti-trust law. This is the exact type of situtions anti-trust law was CREATED to fight against. Anti-trust actually means anti-cartel ("trust" is just a 19th centure word for "cartel"). You can say Microsoft / IE is creative interpretation of the law's wording, but I think this clearly violates both the word of the law and the spirit of the law.

What I can't believe is the EU was the one who actually took this further. IMO it should be America, who should have sued Intel and pushed this matter because Intel is one of our companies and so is AMD and it should be the USA who deals with this case. But I can not blame the EU at all. America is so slow with these kind of corporate crimes or basically ignores they exist. Maybe it could have been the USA taxpayers getting this kind of money otherwise.

Bass said:

@magicalclick

There is no problem with economics of scale type pricing. The problem here is with a cartel agreement Intel made with several companies (who really should also be prosecuted IMO). Actually what Intel did if it's true is direct violation of the spirit of anti-trust law. This is the exact type of situtions anti-trust law was CREATED to fight against. Anti-trust actually means anti-cartel ("trust" is just a 19th centure word for "cartel"). You can say Microsoft / IE is creative interpretation of the law's wording, but I think this clearly violates both the word of the law and the spirit of the law.

What I can't believe is the EU was the one who actually took this further. IMO it should be America, who should have sued Intel and pushed this matter because Intel is one of our companies and so is AMD and it should be the USA who deals with this case. But I can not blame the EU at all. America is so slow with these kind of corporate crimes or basically ignores they exist. Maybe it could have been the USA taxpayers getting this kind of money otherwise.

One other general comment....

with apple dropping the Power PC chips  and with the AMD parts beeing almost 100% the same as an intel part (at least so far as running programs on them anyway) I wonder amout the way that tends to give us a kind of "hardware monoculture"

in plant sci. a monoculture is generaly seen as bad due to pests and such, 1,000,000 acers of the same kind of wheat can be wiped out really fast but if you had 3 kinds of wheat + 2-3 other crops ...

even the iPhone and the ce devices ARM chips are used in them...

just another side to the story...

figuerres said:

Bass said:

*snip*

One other general comment....

with apple dropping the Power PC chips  and with the AMD parts beeing almost 100% the same as an intel part (at least so far as running programs on them anyway) I wonder amout the way that tends to give us a kind of "hardware monoculture"

in plant sci. a monoculture is generaly seen as bad due to pests and such, 1,000,000 acers of the same kind of wheat can be wiped out really fast but if you had 3 kinds of wheat + 2-3 other crops ...

even the iPhone and the ce devices ARM chips are used in them...

just another side to the story...

Well the reason x86 is so popular is mostly because of Windows. Windows (desktop) only runs on x86 - not because it's impossible to port WINDOWS itself to any other arch (it's been done before, even in recent times). It's impossible to port all the software that runs on Windows which explicitly is compiled to x86. Because not one organization controls it all and there can be software out there in use without the source code left or the company who made it is bankrupt, and still this software is important.

So porting off x86 is hard/impossible. That's the only reason we still even use the arch. Really it's a terrible arch (4 GP registers, wtf?). In fact, x86 is so complex, so braindead of a design, that there doesn't even exist an REAL x86 processor today. No one would dare dream to make one. Internally AMD and Intel processors have a different instruction set and different arch, they just expose an x86 instruction to the outside. There is this level on indirection (like a virtual machine IN the hardware) built in for compatibility and it costs a substantial amount of circuity to implement (this "microcode").

ARM is much better - it can be implemented efficiently WITHOUT microcode, the instructions are executed directly by the processor, so it gets better per transistor performance that x86 can ever dream of. (The reason ARM processors are slower then modern x86 is because they use FAR less transistors, it has nothing to do with the arch itself). It's instruction set is very consistent, easy to understand.

MIPS is also a lot better. One of the purest and simpiest instruction sets around. Both are very simple cores (RISC) but manage to pack in a lot of useful instructions and many more registers then x86.