INTEL OEMs “are now allowed” to buy AMD CPUs

15 Jul, 2005 at 10:04am ET Article published in Tech

If they are now allowed, then that implies that they were NOT allowed before.

The wire claims that Intel has told its OEMs they “are now allowed” to buy AMD microprocessors.

Is this true? First it would imply that Intel told its OEMs they weren’t allowed to buy AMD microprocessors in the first place, so making the whole antitrust legal cafuffle in the US redundant. And demonstrating a certain gutlessness on behalf of the OEMs.

Source: The Inquirer

Comments

15 Jul 2005 ~ 10:12am GHoosdum What's a "cafuffle"?
15 Jul 2005 ~ 10:37am entropy

GHoosdum wrote:

What's a "cafuffle"?

A misspelling of a word that can be spelled any way other than the one they used :

Dictionary.com wrote:

Definition: disorder, commotion; also written curfuffle, kerfuffle, gefuffle

To be honest I thought they were just making words up, since it sounds so awesome. But apparently it's a real word! I definitely have to remember to use this one...
16 Jul 2005 ~ 1:05am Komete ahh How big of Intel lol
16 Jul 2005 ~ 2:02am profdlp Perfect timing. If this doesn't have AMD's lawyers grinning from ear-to-ear I don't know what would.
16 Jul 2005 ~ 5:03am TheBaron I question the truth behind this report
16 Jul 2005 ~ 5:19am Thrax I don't.
18 Jul 2005 ~ 11:40am Gobbles I question anything the inquirer reports.

However this kind of legal action is not free and I really think that AMD supporters are going to pay for this in the form of higher processor prices, which we are already seeing in the market place. I like AMD but using this to make up for a crappy global marketing scheme and such is kinda lame. If you want a partnership with a company like dell, find a smaller company and help build them up...
18 Jul 2005 ~ 11:46am TheBaron It just sounds rather sensationalist is all I'm saying
18 Jul 2005 ~ 12:04pm GHoosdum Have you guys noticed that AMD's market share has been decreasing from its peak in the XP days, pretty much proportionally to their price increases? It must be all Intel's fault! While I prefer AMD CPUs for many reasons, I'd love to see Intel's strong-arm tactics come to an end... but I don't think that Intel's marketing methods have nearly as much to do with AMD's current situation as AMD's changing pricing structure does.
18 Jul 2005 ~ 7:57pm Komete Price price price.. I wanna go 64 but just can't justify spending double the price of a mother board for a good cpu. I may just sit another upgrade year out untill the cheaper chips yeild better overclocking potential.
18 Jul 2005 ~ 11:10pm mmonnin AMD has been increasing their server market share from what I have seen.
18 Jul 2005 ~ 11:43pm Komete mmonnin... I think you hit the nail on the head.
19 Jul 2005 ~ 8:54am GHoosdum

mmonnin wrote:

AMD has been increasing their server market share from what I have seen.

So maybe they should couple their current market strategy for servers with their previous strategy in desktop chips...
19 Jul 2005 ~ 1:41pm mmonnin Their server market has been growing because they are the only ones with 64-bit support(Dual CPUs and the first with single CPUs), the only ones with true support for more than 4GB of RAM(Dual CPUs), and the only ones with a Dual Core solution(single or MP).

Intel can match AMD in some of those areas with their Pentium lineup but they are far behind in their server lineup.