I'm afraid putting words out of the context you are, especially in regards to Compaq, no "matching the price" can somehow even out not taking chips for free, being afraid of Intel's retaliation.
You keep talking about AMD trying to give away contract quantity chips for free to Compaq. I'd really like to see some proof of this. I do KNOW that AMD offered 386SX chips to Compaq at a discounted price. Compaq then went to Intel, and Intel price matched AMD's contract price. This is a known fact.
Regardless, Intel was convicted for abusing it's dominant market position. That happened MAINLY vs AMD. It doesn't make AMD an angel, not at all, although, an underdog company is pretty limited in ways it could abuse its market position.
But you, like almost 100% of AMD's defenders NEVER point out the companies misdeeds, regardless of breadth or impact. Where have you (for example) ever pointed out that AMD isn't squeaky clean? A single post of yours would suffice.
Yes, although not as short sighted as turning blind eye to Intel's shitty practices and putting nearly exclusive blame on AMDs management. (maybe you don't mean it, but that's impression I get from reading your posts)
You mean like when I said?...
Intel have been guilty of some truly heinous acts, not just against AMD but Chips & Technologies, Intergraph, Cyrix, Seeq, and their own employees among others
What is actually behind your stance, do you have friends working @ Intel?
My stance?
My stance is regarding history as a whole. People here seem to be reasonably well aware that I write historical-based tech articles. Obviously you don't, or you would see that I treat the dealings of the companies with equanimity - unlike some here hell bent on highlighting the bad behavior of some companies while completely glossing over the bad behaviour of their favoured brand.
Here are some examples from an article on
the microprocessor and its effects on personal computing I wrote a little over a year ago- and I might add they have a readership orders of magnitude above what is posted in these threads:
Lawsuits became object lessons to those employed at Intel, as a means of protecting its IP (which Fairchild had failed miserably at) and a method of tying up a competitor's financial resources while delaying its time to market for products. - Andy Grove's strategy of using lawsuits and IP as economic weapons
More importantly for Intel, it stalled AMD's growth during a boom period of microprocessor growth and personal computing in particular. At a time when AMD was looking to take the next step to higher echelons of semiconductor companies -- albeit still relying heavily on licensed production -- the company's expansion was severely curtailed - On Intel's decision to withhold a 386 license from AMD after giving indications that a license would be forthcoming
The campaign was designed more to marginalize the 286 licensees (Harris, AMD, IBM, Fujitsu, and Siemens) as it was to sell Intel's 386s, and it quickly established in the consumer's mind that companies pushing the 286 (including Intel's own OEM partners) were selling obsolete technology while elevating Intel's brand as market leader...[ ]...
The Red X campaign presented obvious proof that Intel had little need for second source partners and belatedly spurred the x86 chip producers into making their own 386-class chips. The mark of AMD's design and manufacturing prowess was shown with the first 18 six-inch wafers, which were ready by August 1990 and yielded only a single defective Am386 die - Intel's "Red X" campaign to elevate the Intel brand and marginalize their 80286 licensees
And from
a history of AMD article I wrote back in late 2012 ( well before some other sites churned out their own articles on the subject):
This period represented a huge growth of the fledgling PC market. Noting that AMD had offered the Am286 with a significant speed boost over the 80286, Intel attempted to stop AMD in its tracks by excluding them from the next generation 386 processors. Arbitration took four and a half years to complete, and while the judgment found that Intel was not obligated to transfer every new product to AMD, it was determined that the larger chipmaker had breached an implied covenant of good faith.- Intel's about face in denying AMD a 386 licence
No review of this era in AMD's history would be complete without taking into consideration Intel's nefarious deeds. At this juncture, AMD was not only fighting Intel's chips, but also the company's monopolistic activities, which included paying OEMs large sums of money -- billions in total -- to actively keep AMD CPUs out of new computers.In the first quarter of 2007, Intel paid Dell $723 million to remain the sole provider of its processors and chipsets (accounting for 76% of the system builder's total operating income of $949 million). AMD would later win a $1.25 billion settlement in the matter, which is surprisingly low on the surface, but probably exacerbated by the fact that at the time of Intel's shenanigans, AMD itself couldn't supply enough CPUs to its existing customers.
I've lost count of the number I times I've commented on Intel's misdeeds. Waging economic warfare against AMD, Seeq, NEC ( the V20/V40 case), Intergraph, Chips and Technologies, crushing Cyrix (with IBM's help), the long running battle with DEC (both sides guilty) etc., the strong-arming and intimidation of their own workforce (and the
ostracization of Bob Graham the 3rd employee at Intel because Grove wanted all the marbles) etc... But the one thing that comes across is that nobody overlooks Intel's practices. The same is definitely not true of AMD. The common refrain is that is always someone else's fault that they are in predicament they are in. I would almost guarantee that you probably had no idea that AMD faked benchmarks for Barcelona until I linked to a story. I'm also pretty sure you don't have much idea about their earlier suspect marketing under Jerry Sanders and Hector Ruiz. I'm also pretty sure that you will never bring up the subject again just as many before you have buried selective parts of semiconductor history when it doesn't fit the narrative required.
Anyhow, feel free to demonize me because I take a measured view of the industry (Thirty-five years being around semiconductor topics will do that) rather than play cheerleader and reduce everything down to a simplistic good versus evil struggle.
I'll await your evidence that AMD offered free processors to Compaq. If this is indeed true then I am missing a part of semiconductor history - along with every contemporary writer and publication I've ever read.
You dismiss AMD's misdeeds from 1991 to 1997 as the "early beginning" yet dredge up AMD's scuppered deal with Compaq where Intel price matched AMD's 386SX from 1992? That seems like very selective reasoning.
