NVIDIA responds to FTC/Intel suit

Comments

1. 
   16 Dec 2009 ~ 6:16pm Tomas I don't understand what they are saying: "when Intel fell behind in innovation within its core CPU market, it moved to smother competition in the GPU marketplace". How does that make sense? Didn't intel and Nvidia's strife begin after intel regained the upper hand in the CPU marked? In what way is Nvidia being "smothered"? Isn't it actually all about chipsets and integrated graphics? But then they should sue AMD as well, since they have actually planned to take over 100% of the chipset marked for their own CPU's.
   Do the FTC actually listen to these guys?
2. 
   16 Dec 2009 ~ 6:22pm Thrax No, the Intel/NVIDIA strife began right around the time NVIDIA introduced the ION chipset which made Intel look like a joke, and significantly reduced the value of the CPU.
   
   As time goes on, the power presented by the CPU will continue to erode. Even now, a 50 FPS difference in games at 1024x768 drops to <15 FPS at 1080p resolutions because today's GPUs are pulling just that much weight. Furthermore, stream computing's rise to preeminence will further reduce the the CPU's value as a mere ALU--a vessel for thread dispatch and integer logic, rather than the core experience as it largely is today.
   
   Intel knows this, which is why it began developing Larrabee, a GPU designed to compete directly with similar offerings from NVIDIA and ATI. Though it was recently canceled, let there be no doubt that the GPU is about to kick Intel's core business in the teeth.
   
   Whether or not Intel is acting illegally in the United States is not for myself or Icrontic to decide, but three other world governments have found that to be true, and the course of events do compel a certain interpretation.
3. 
   16 Dec 2009 ~ 7:02pm Cliff_Forster Tomas,
   
   This is all part of ongoing litigation stemming from alligations that AMD brought forth years ago. In what I beleive to be the biggest tech story of the year, Intel finally settles with AMD, but that does not mean they are free from scrutiny elsewhere.
   
   If you followed the EU antitrust case, there were many pages of testimony from various executives from the OEM's that said that Intel provided heavy financial incentives not as a traditional bulk buy, but to limit how much AMD product they installed and advertised for their systems. This is an obvious infraction of anti-trust law. Why would Intel do that you ask?
   
   AMD first got Intel's attention when Compaq started using the K6 in its Windows 95 desktops, nearly exclusively. A little time goes by, AMD releases the origional slot Athlon's to compete with the Pentium II, and ultimately the Pentium III. Intel at the time was making a slower, less innovative product in every phase, and get this, held its margin, they priced a Pentium II's that had higher clock speeds, yet slower performance, for more, and somehow made it work with consumers? Now we know how they did it, they just bribed the OEM's not to place orders for AMD, and threated to play hardball with them off if they did. I knew something smelled funny back then and have not purchased an Intel based product in years as a result. And don't even get us started on the Athlon 64 vs. the Pentium 4.
   
   That litigation finally out of the way, most recently Intel has been playing hardball with NVIDIA on various chipset licensing agreements. NVIDIA perhaps being less victimized than AMD, still sees the opportunity none the less, and I would not be surprised to see something coming out of a dispute from there, on top the the FTC filing. In my opinion NVIDIA has a legitimate gripe with Intel for trying to alter terms of an existing agreement.
4. 
   17 Dec 2009 ~ 12:57am MachineDog I'm just mad that I've gone almost 2 years now without a seemingly good reason to upgrade. Why isn't my OS feeling slow as shit yet? When did those sneaky bastards remove the hourglass!?
5. 
   17 Dec 2009 ~ 3:18am Snarkasm Nothing quite like somebody shouting "me too!"
   
   And Cliff, you have zero concept of what was or was not contained within the Intel/nVidia chipset licensing agreements. Please stop touting as fact what you do not know to be true.
6. 
   17 Dec 2009 ~ 10:56am Cliff_Forster Snark,
   
   What part of "In my opinion" was unclear?
7. 
   17 Dec 2009 ~ 12:53pm mirage Intel or Nvidia, whoever loses AMD wins. No wonder that AMD has settled with Intel and left the arena to the two of its rivals to fight each other. This is getting more complicated than the cheapest soap opera.
8. 
   17 Dec 2009 ~ 3:48pm Snarkasm

   Cliff_Forster wrote:

   Snark,
   
   What part of "In my opinion" was unclear?

   
   The way your sentence was constructed, it appeared that your opinion was that they had a legitimate gripe about the implied fact that Intel was trying to alter license agreements, not that it was your opinion that Intel was trying to alter license agreements.
   
   Apologies for the oversight.