Intel to be Slapped with Greatest Fine in EU History

[WhiteLotus]

damn right. we did a fine job too

 

[Gam'ster]

I'd rather see Intel pull out of the EU than pay them. .

Too much money involved even after the fine. Also how long do you think these companys that " pull " out would last without the investment and customer base that the EU generates ?.

But as i have said before the EU is a load of rubbish and is just after money as per. No real leadership just beaurocrats getting to much money for very little work and even less concern in his policys and actions for the working class man.

 

[Easy Rhino]

Don't be one of those sorry kids that eats this kind of BS... it's really sad when people do that! I've heard a enough that AMD dies, goes bankrupt, gets bought, goes tits-up or gets blown up because of financial problems in the last 8 or so years... so far, they are pushing products that a lot of us can afford and are glad it's still here to make a difference.

well im not "one of those kids." i really like amd products, however recently their stock has been downgraded to "junk" status. LOL. so unfortunately that is not a good sign. also, investment researchers believe that by 2011 AMD will have to stop competing with intel in order to survive. that may mean they stop making desktop chips and stick with graphics and maybe do umpc chips. who knows.

 

[FordGT90Concept]

Too much money involved even after the fine. Also how long do you think these companys that " pull " out would last without the investment and customer base that the EU generates ?.

But as i have said before the EU is a load of rubbish and is just after money as per. No real leadership just beaurocrats getting to much money for very little work and even less concern in his policys and actions for the working class man.

Actually I don't think it would be much different. Intel would just close their customer support/offices in the EU and move product through OEM channels (that is, Intel is not a business EU has direct jurisdiction over). The EU would basically have to make Intel products contraband and/or apply a tariff to their products in order to have any major impact. In which case, Intel would have to downsize or start a EU division to make them happy.

 

[Gam'ster]

The EU would basically have to make Intel products contraband and/or apply a tariff to their products in order to have any major impact. In which case, Intel would have to downsize or start a EU division to make them happy.

Thats very true FordGT, But i dont think Dowsize is even in Mr Otellini's vocabulary. Even after a hefty fine such as this i dont think it would deter intel or microsoft from continuing operations in the EU or anyother state it is being investigated in, As always with large multi-national companys a certain amount of cash is set asside for situations like this or similar due to public and governmental exposure there is always a risk, Especially if they are found guilty then at some level they knew it would be discovered.
The profits and the major public product exposure they have far outweighs any fine the EU in its wisdom can dish out. Ok a lot of what we are saying here is specualtion as we dont know the particulars of the case but imo i doubt it would ever come to that. Im not arguing the point just stating my opinion, a lot of what is said in situations like this is misread its not my intention to flame .

 

[TreadR]

idiot

Keep it real, boy! :shadedshu

It is perfectly fair...

No, it's not! It's a discriminatory action any day unless courts say so!

It is competition, if AMD wants to compete, they need to offer their products to the companies at competitive prices.

Haha... first, they're not ideas, they're observations... second, you seem to have an issue keeping track of what the issue is. To put it plain, you can't talk about competition when Intel as the bigger company that has more-demanded products (was it 80% or 70% of the market) bribes resellers and OEMs not to buy AMD products. In fact, it amazes me that Intel is shit scared of a 20% market company! That shows what? AMD has potential and value. If not, Intel would have stuck to fair-business.

The NF200 thing didn't come up till about half way through the ordeal.

I like it when people are wrong and blatantly deny it!
I don't want to write long stories so I'll make a short "sketch"...

nVidia wanted true QPI, true... for free? NO! Not for free, but for a license FEE as they did with the Core platform and as it should be in a business world.
Did Intel accept? no!... and yes, they were entitled not to.
Why they didn't? Because they've seen QPI as a way of LEVERAGE! You know what that action is called in legal terms? EXTORTION!
What to leverage?... Well, what did Intel LACK in the desktop market that would appeal to so many users? Common, take a guess! It would improve their position in a critical market, that's for sure!
The answer is SLI! ... on an already CrossFireX enabled product! What would a gamer want more than a full-option-mainboard?!?!

You want to know why you're worng... not misinformed, we've been there and you wanted to argue, but plain wrong?
The following... all of them!

If Intel was in a deal with nVidia regarding the Nehalem chipset license, which NV never got since they were legally threatened by Intel, stating they don't have the right to produce such chipsets... how the heck can you expect NV to bring such controversial products on the market?... since you've wondered why you haven't seen any nVidia made Nehalem chipsets you've implied nVidia has that right.

And the NF200 thing didn't came up, it was NO next big idea, as you've implied which is also a wrong... it's an OLD chip, which is available to any mainboard manufacturer, and if Intel wanted SLI they would have had to increase the price of their motherboards which already costs more than it's worth... thus they devised a cunning plan of extorting nVidia. Sounds malefic...

And you keep on babbling about i7's amazing launch time... did you've missed the news that it didn't had such a great launch or what?... the i7 launch wasn't so important and seeing how NVISION is the place where nVidia likes to show off... the bad thing was that the 09 edition was scraped, but it didn't matter as they didn't had anything new to present anyway!

This is finally when nVidia gave up on having one of their chips on every SLi board, and finally just allowed manufacturers to qualify the board for SLi by simply paying a small licensing fee and sending nVidia samples for SLi qualification.

Caved?... LOL ... right!... In the recent presentation of NV, the marketing director Tom Petersen said that a basic C2D in SLI is enough or even better compared to a single vga i7 setup as to what games concern! Not only that, but it's also cheaper! Wouldn't that be contradictory? Why license SLI for Nehalem when you can counsel users what to buy, and not only that, but tell the that they can do it cheaper too!

If gamers will be limited to using AMD CPU's in the future... they WILL use AMD CPU's in the future because as great as Nehalem and i7 are, a GTX300 will always be better!

So I don't see why they "caved"! What I see was FRAUD... in a matter of speaking!
Technically, I cant say that such practices are legal, but by using QPI as a leverage.. they might have crossed the legal fine line.

I see you like to spin things up to prove a point and that is a waste of my time... so I'll be making my last comment to you, cause it's pointless arguing with a guy that contradicts himself. What I mean:

firms without substantial market power have tended to be allowed to engage in exclusive dealing agreements, whereas exclusive dealing agreements on the part of "dominant" firms have tended to be curtailed (see verb paragraph 3.)

Thank you twilyth, the bold statement is exactly the reason I have issue with this ruling against Intel(and the rulings against Microsoft). You should not be punished, and not have to follow special rules, simply because you are a bigger company.

Is it fair that, none of the OEMs will use Company A's products, because the dominating Company X decided to pay these OEMs not to use them? Thats whats going on. Thats just abusing your market position, its like a person paying people to take up places in a competition with limited places so that you cant participate, because you'd be a threat to their victory.

Yes, it is fair, because there is nothing stopping Company A from offering the same deals as Company X. It isn't Company X's fault that Company A can't/won't be competitive.

From my point of view... that's exactly why your families business are allowed to do that and why large corporations like Intel are not!



Thank you twilyth!

 

[kaneda]

Britain: the only empire to have given its prisoners a better country than its own people. thanks guys!

Here here. to bad its a shadow of its former glory

 

[WhiteLotus]

Here here. to bad its a shadow of its former glory

We gave so much to the world

 

[twilyth]

We gave so much to the world

Take comfort in the fact that English is the Latin of the modern age. Although in a few more decades I'm betting on Chinese. Probably some bastardized amalgam - like in Bladerunner.

 

[muon]

anti competitive?
if anything the EU promotes competition... why do you think they are trying to stop an intel monopoly?
without amd, intel would be sitting on $500 multi core P4's at 6ghz LOL

Yeh I'm agreeing with you Investigating anticompetitive behaviour surely means that you promote competitive behaviour? I think you misread my post.

 

[captainskyhawk]

Take comfort in the fact that English is the Latin of the modern age. Although in a few more decades I'm betting on Chinese. Probably some bastardized amalgam - like in Bladerunner.

English is easy to learn, and even latin is easier than chinese, there's no way it can be widely adopted, the chinese speak it and that's it and that's the way it's been for thousands of years

 

[DaedalusHelios]

English is easy to learn, and even latin is easier than chinese, there's no way it can be widely adopted, the chinese speak it and that's it and that's the way it's been for thousands of years

There is more than one type of chinese. Also the language is tone based which makes it even harder to learn.

 

[Mussels]

the only way english will be replaced with another language, is if the english speaking countries are taken over in time of war and all media with english is destroyed.

Any other way, the large amount of books, music and movies will ensure that the english language remains dominant.

P.S my asian mushroom speaks english anyway.

 

[eidairaman1]

LMAO!

the only way english will be replaced with another language, is if the english speaking countries are taken over in time of war and all media with english is destroyed.

Any other way, the large amount of books, music and movies will ensure that the english language remains dominant.

P.S my asian mushroom speaks english anyway.

 

[Triprift]

I will say one thing while i agree with the fact that Intel are wrong and deserve to get fined for there practices it pisses me off that Amd are potrayed as the ultimate good guys who are up against the evil Intel. When infact there just as ruthless and most likely do there own soddy bussiness practices but because of there size are not noticed.

 

[Tyr.1358]

I think this is pocket change for Intel though, they made billions with their Core 2 line of CPUs.

Yeah, they did make a lot of money. I think that a better way to look at the damage done by a fine like that is to compare it to their earnings. Look at this: http://www.intc.com/results.cfm?Quarter=&Year=2008

Last year they made 8.2 billion dollars. A billion euro fine would come out to 1.33 billion U.S. tender (according to google). That isn't exactly a slap on the wrist; that is 16% of their earnings. That is extreme compared to Microsoft's fines. Look at this: http://www.microsoft.com/msft/earnings/FY08/earn_rel_q2_08.mspx

Microsoft made 16.37 billion dollars. They got fined 1.4 billion. That is only 8.5% of their annual earnings. If you look at it objectively, that makes Intel's fine TWICE as heavy as the one imparted on Microsoft.

Not "pocket change" at all. Not one bit. What is even worse, is what happens to the company's creditors when the stock starts to drop? http://www.google.com/finance?client=ob&q=NASDAQ:INTC

Intel will have to raise prices to make back that lost 16%, PLUS their projected growth earnings for next year. Let's say their annual growth is 7%. That means that they need to recoup 23% of 8.2 billion dollars. That is 1.88 billion dollars. 1.88 billion divided by how ever many chips they ship equals the fallout cost to the consumer. Even if they ship 20 million chips in a year, that comes out to $90 extra that we have to pay. And that is just to keep the investors on board with projected growth, never mind actually being profitable and making back the lost cash.

If this fine actually gets levied against Intel, the fallout will suck so bad for consumers. Sure, theoretically it gives AMD a better price edge, but realistically all it does is piss off OEM vendors. Imagine the look on Dell's face (no pun intended) when they realize that they have to find a way to subsidize another $90 off of every model, out of thin air.

Unless I am totally missing something . . .

 

[newtekie1]

theres a difference between offering a lower/more competetive price, and only offering that lower price to people who dont sell any competing products.

Yes there is a difference, however again there is nothing stopping Company A from offering the same deals as company X, it is called competition. Deals like this happen daily in the business world.

 

[Mussels]

Yes there is a difference, however again there is nothing stopping Company A from offering the same deals as company X, it is called competition. Deals like this happen daily in the business world.

In fact, there is something against it called "laws". They dont mean much here on the internet, but they sure do in the business world.

 

[newtekie1]

No, it's not! It's a discriminatory action any day unless courts say so!

Discrimination has nothing to do with it. What Intel did was fair business, there was nothing stopping AMD from doing the same thing. In fact I'm sure they did, the EU just isn't doing anything about it.

Haha... first, they're not ideas, they're observations... second, you seem to have an issue keeping track of what the issue is. To put it plain, you can't talk about competition when Intel as the bigger company that has more-demanded products (was it 80% or 70% of the market) bribes resellers and OEMs not to buy AMD products. In fact, it amazes me that Intel is shit scared of a 20% market company! That shows what? AMD has potential and value. If not, Intel would have stuck to fair-business.

I know it is an argument of symantics, but Intel was not bribing anyone. Giving exclusivity discounts is different than bribes. Intel wasn't paying companies to not use AMD, Intel just wasn't charging as much to companies that didn't use AMD(and Via and IBM). Deals like this drive competition.

I like it when people are wrong and blatantly deny it!
I don't want to write long stories so I'll make a short "sketch"...

I love it when people are wrong, don't know what they are talking about, then try to act like a badass while still being wrong.

nVidia wanted true QPI, true... for free? NO! Not for free, but for a license FEE as they did with the Core platform and as it should be in a business world.

Did Intel accept? no!... and yes, they were entitled not to.

If you read here, you will see that at first nVidia wanted to produce the chipset under their current licence, giving them QPI for free.

Why they didn't? Because they've seen QPI as a way of LEVERAGE! You know what that action is called in legal terms? EXTORTION!

Not wanting to give away technology that you have spent millions developing to another company so they can produce a competing product is far from extortion.

What to leverage?... Well, what did Intel LACK in the desktop market that would appeal to so many users? Common, take a guess! It would improve their position in a critical market, that's for sure!
The answer is SLI! ... on an already CrossFireX enabled product! What would a gamer want more than a full-option-mainboard?!?!

I don't doubt that getting SLi for Intel Chipsets wasn't one of the reasons that Intel held up licensing talks as long as possible.

You want to know why you're worng... not misinformed, we've been there and you wanted to argue, but plain wrong?
The following... all of them!

I'm not wrong, you are. Why are you wrong, because you are basing your speculation and accusations on a very bad memory of how things happened.

If Intel was in a deal with nVidia regarding the Nehalem chipset license, which NV never got since they were legally threatened by Intel, stating they don't have the right to produce such chipsets...
how the heck can you expect NV to bring such controversial products on the market?... since you've wondered why you haven't seen any nVidia made Nehalem chipsets you've implied nVidia has that right.

Again, if you remembered correctly, they were not in talks at first, nVidia wanted to use QPI to make Nehalem chipsets for free under their current license with Intel. Intel had to take them to court to stop that. Only then did Intel and nVidia enter into negotiations for licensing.

Really? They never got it... http://www.bit-tech.net/news/hardware/2008/08/29/nvidia-has-a-qpi-license/1

Who's wrong here again?

And the NF200 thing didn't came up, it was NO next big idea, as you've implied which is also a wrong... it's an OLD chip, which is available to any mainboard manufacturer, and if Intel wanted SLI they would have had to increase the price of their motherboards which already costs more than it's worth... thus they devised a cunning plan of extorting nVidia. Sounds malefic...

If you read here, after nVidia realized that they would not be able to get an i7 chipset out for launch due to not having the proper licensing, they decided the next best thing would be to have motherboard manufacturers include the NF200 to enable SLi.

You are right in one respect, in that motherboard manufacturers(not Intel as you claim) did not want to increase the price of their already too expensive motherboards. It was the motherboard manufacturers that stopped nVidia here, not Intel.

And you keep on babbling about i7's amazing launch time... did you've missed the news that it didn't had such a great launch or what?... the i7 launch wasn't so important and seeing how NVISION is the place where nVidia likes to show off... the bad thing was that the 09 edition was scraped, but it didn't matter as they didn't had anything new to present anyway!

It not having a great launch has nothing to do with the discussion, you are the first to bring that up. The issue was the time of the launch, and by the time nVidia had a license to QPI, it did not have enough time to produce a chipset for the i7. Which is why they had rely on their backup plans to get SLi on i7.

Caved?... LOL ... right!... In the recent presentation of NV, the marketing director Tom Petersen said that a basic C2D in SLI is enough or even better compared to a single vga i7 setup as to what games concern! Not only that, but it's also cheaper! Wouldn't that be contradictory? Why license SLI for Nehalem when you can counsel users what to buy, and not only that, but tell the that they can do it cheaper too!

Not really, as the people running i7 setups are the people that must have high end. It was extremely important for nVidia to have SLi available for i7 when it launched. Otherwise, all the people buying the i7 at launch would be using ATi cards, and nVidia would have lost a huge amount of money. "Good enough" isn't something most i7 users are used to using as a standard for performance.

If gamers will be limited to using AMD CPU's in the future... they WILL use AMD CPU's in the future because as great as Nehalem and i7 are, a GTX300 will always be better!

Now you've lost me...CPUs are not GPUs...why are you comparing them...

So I don't see why they "caved"! What I see was FRAUD... in a matter of speaking!
Technically, I cant say that such practices are legal, but by using QPI as a leverage.. they might have crossed the legal fine line.

I've explained why they had to cave and enable SLi natively for the x58 chipset. Intel only had a small hand in it when they held up nVidia on making a true i7 chipset. There are several things that cost nVidia time, and time was the deciding factor:

1.) nVidia's assumption that their old licences applied to the new i7 platform.(This was nVidia's fault)
2.) Negotiations between Intel and nVidia for a new license that covers the i7 platform, and any other platforms with an IMC.(You can argue this was partially Intel's fault, in that they could have been unreasonable in an effort to slow down negotiations, but without actually being at the negotiation, it would be nothing more than speculation.)
3.) The motherboard makers telling nVidia they wouldn't use the nf200 chip due to costs.(This is nVidia's fault, nVidia should have come up with something that didn't cost others more money)

All of these things cost nVidia time, time they didn't have as the i7 launch was approaching quickly and they needed an SLi solution by launch. So they had to cave and allow SLi on the x58 chipset without an NF200 chip.

I see you like to spin things up to prove a point and that is a waste of my time... so I'll be making my last comment to you, cause it's pointless arguing with a guy that contradicts himself. What I mean:

I see you like to piece together your inaccurate remembering of the facts to form a bunch of speculation, to accuse a company you don't like of things they did not do.

And I never contradicted myself, you just fail at reading and comprehension, obviously.[/QUOTE]

 

[newtekie1]

In fact, there is something against it called "laws". They dont mean much here on the internet, but they sure do in the business world.

Unfortunately, in the business world they mean little also.

 

[yogurt_21]

well im not "one of those kids." i really like amd products, however recently their stock has been downgraded to "junk" status. LOL. so unfortunately that is not a good sign. also, investment researchers believe that by 2011 AMD will have to stop competing with intel in order to survive. that may mean they stop making desktop chips and stick with graphics and maybe do umpc chips. who knows.

a quick correction amd's stock has not been downgraded. infact they are far from being downgraded. in order to maintain their status on nyse they have to keey at least 100mil stock value... they're worth 2.8 bil by current stock price and are working their way up (as is intel from their lows) and investors show their approval by buyign stocks, disapproval by selling. currently they're buying. overall intc, nvda, and amd are all working their way up from their lows, I just can't see how amd would have been downgraded during an upswing

 

[Easy Rhino]

a quick correction amd's stock has not been downgraded. infact they are far from being downgraded. in order to maintain their status on nyse they have to keey at least 100mil stock value... they're worth 2.8 bil by current stock price and are working their way up (as is intel from their lows) and investors show their approval by buyign stocks, disapproval by selling. currently they're buying. overall intc, nvda, and amd are all working their way up from their lows, I just can't see how amd would have been downgraded during an upswing

i was mistaken. it is their credit rating that has been downgraded to junk status. and with a junk credit rating they cant borrow money to fufill their longterm investment strategy. also, the just reported another large loss but their stock is up, according to market reports, because their sales are up. you can thank the recession for that as people want to cut costs.

 

[DaedalusHelios]

i was mistaken. it is their credit rating that has been downgraded to junk status. and with a junk credit rating they cant borrow money to fufill their longterm investment strategy. also, the just reported another large loss but their stock is up, according to market reports, because their sales are up. you can thank the recession for that as people want to cut costs.

It was so bad that the German government had to loan them money to keep fabs open in Germany. It was in a Tom's hardware article a year ago.

 

[Easy Rhino]

It was so bad that the German government had to loan them money to keep fabs open in Germany. It was in a Tom's hardware article a year ago.

yup. i mentioned this in an earlier post. people always seem to think that the government is always working for the little guy... enter obama...

 

[Swansen]

Hard to say anything over what TK and Mussells have already said, but its sad that in the US, nothing is done... They promote and let run amuck huge corporations because they are run by huge corporations... and in turn, these huge corporations run peoples lives. I'm not sure if i agree with the penalty.. taking away their money is a really weird and odd punishment, but i guess what do you do.