AMD's GlobalFoundries is a Potent Weapon Against Nvidia

AMD's GlobalFoundries subsidiary is ready for 28nm GPUs.

With Dirk Meyer as CEO, AMD's cranking out products like there is no tomorrow.

Where did all the money go?

I was surprised to find that U.S. government borrowed $770 billion from China. In comparison, all the oil exporters (Saudi, UAE, etc) only lent $213 billion to the US. So, when US is deploying those nuke subs and F22s around China, it is actually using Chinese money. Who owes money is the boss. What a scheme!

There is an explosion of Ponzi scheme cases like this one. The victims are usually friends and relatives of the scammers. It seems everyone is losing money: from small investors, to big banks, to big governments. So where did the money go?

Or, maybe the money never existed in the first place.

What happened was the US government borrowed the money from other countries, and award it to US corporations (for contracts such as weapon systems) and federal employees (such as salaries for judges and agents)...

CNBC's Jim Goldman Makes Himself a Fool

Despite the Intel's dirty acts revealed by the EU, the Korean FTC and the Japanese, Jim Goldman of CNBC jumps for the defense of the big Intel money pile. Can this man tell the difference between right and wrong, honor and dishonor, competition and anti-competition?

"Oh really? Not one of those millions of harmed consumers brought an action against Intel." Goldman wrote.

My suggestion to Mr. Goldman: do some research so not to make yourself a fool. There are dozens if not hundreds of class action law suits against Intel by consumers of Intel processor based PCes. They all accuse Intel of robbing them money by eliminating competition and maintaining high prices.

It's no surprise that Mr. Goldman had not heard of these cases. Because when individuals act against big money like Intel, the media ignore their complaints.

Even assuming consumers were too dumb to complain (they were not and they had sued Intel), Intel's behavior is dirty business and harmful. Once Intel kills off competition, it can start charging whatever higher price it can get, like the old times when a 486 CPU cost $1200.

Because of Intel's tactics, most of the world are still in dark ages: they are using outdated FSB based technology made by Intel, instead of AMD's 64 bit Direct Connect technology that is well suited for HD computing.

The $1.4 billion fine imposed on Intel was way too small for the crimes it committed against the European people and the damage it inflicted on the advance of computing technology .

Intel's dirty and nasty tactics -- Intelers should be ashamed

The EU finds Intel guilty

Conditional rebates and payments

Intel awarded major computer manufacturers rebates on condition that they purchased all or almost all of their supplies, at least in certain defined segments, from Intel:

• Intel gave rebates to computer manufacturer A from December 2002 to December 2005 conditional on this manufacturer purchasing exclusively Intel CPUs
• Intel gave rebates to computer manufacturer B from November 2002 to May 2005 conditional on this manufacturer purchasing no less than 95% of its CPU needs for its business desktop computers from Intel (the remaining 5% that computer manufacturer B could purchase from rival chip maker AMD was then subject to further restrictive conditions set out below)
• Intel gave rebates to computer manufacturer C from October 2002 to November 2005 conditional on this manufacturer purchasing no less than 80% of its CPU needs for its desktop and notebook computers from Intel
• Intel gave rebates to computer manufacturer D in 2007 conditional on this manufacturer purchasing its CPU needs for its notebook computers exclusively from Intel.

Furthermore, Intel made payments to major retailer Media Saturn Holding from October 2002 to December 2007 on condition that it exclusively sold Intel-based PCs in all countries in which Media Saturn Holding is active.

Certain rebates can lead to lower prices for consumers. However, where a company is in a dominant position on a market, rebates that are conditional on buying less of a rival's products, or not buying them at all, are abusive according to settled case-law of the Community Courts unless the dominant company can put forward specific reasons to justify their application in the individual case.

In its decision, the Commission does not object to rebates in themselves but to the conditions Intel attached to those rebates. Because computer manufacturers are dependent on Intel for a majority of their x86 CPU supplies, only a limited part of a computer manufacturer's x86 CPU requirements is open to competition at any given time.

Intel structured its pricing policy to ensure that a computer manufacturer which opted to buy AMD CPUs for that part of its needs that was open to competition would consequently lose the rebate (or a large part of it) that Intel provided for the much greater part of its needs for which the computer manufacturer had no choice but to buy from Intel. The computer manufacturer would therefore have to pay Intel a higher price for each of the units supplied for which the computer manufacturer had no alternative but to buy from Intel. In other words, should a computer manufacturer fail to purchase virtually all its x86 CPU requirements from Intel, it would forego the possibility of obtaining a significant rebate on any of its very high volumes of Intel purchases.

Moreover, in order to be able to compete with the Intel rebates, for the part of the computer manufacturers' supplies that was up for grabs, a competitor that was just as efficient as Intel would have had to offer a price for its CPUs lower than its costs of producing those CPUs, even if the average price of its CPUs was lower than that of Intel.

For example, rival chip manufacturer AMD offered one million free CPUs to one particular computer manufacturer. If the computer manufacturer had accepted all of these, it would have lost Intel's rebate on its many millions of remaining CPU purchases, and would have been worse off overall simply for having accepted this highly competitive offer. In the end, the computer manufacturer took only 160,000 CPUs for free.

As a result of Intel's rebates, the ability of rival manufacturers to compete and innovate was impaired, and this led to reduced choice for consumers.

Rebates such as those applied by Intel are recognised in many jurisdictions around the world as anti-competitive and unlawful because the effect in practice is to deny consumers a choice of products.

Payments to prevent sales of specific rival products

Intel also interfered directly in the relations between computer manufacturers and AMD. Intel awarded computer manufacturers payments - unrelated to any particular purchases from Intel - on condition that these computer manufacturers postponed or cancelled the launch of specific AMD-based products and/or put restrictions on the distribution of specific AMD-based products. The Commission found that these payments had the potential effect of preventing products for which there was a consumer demand from coming to the market. The Commission found the following specific cases:

• For the 5% of computer manufacturer B’s business that was not subject to the conditional rebate outlined above, Intel made further payments to computer manufacturer B provided that this manufacturer :
• sold AMD-based business desktops only to small and medium enterprises
• sold AMD-based business desktops only via direct distribution channels (as opposed to through distributors) and
• postponed the launch of its first AMD-based business desktop in Europe by 6 months.
• Intel made payments to computer manufacturer E provided that this manufacturer postponed the launch of an AMD-based notebook from September 2003 to January 2004.
• Before the conditional rebate to computer manufacturer D outlined above, Intel made payments to this manufacturer provided that it postponed the launch of AMD-based notebooks from September 2006 to the end of 2006.

The Commission obtained proof of the existence of many of the conditions found to be illegal in the antitrust decision even though they were not made explicit in Intel’s contracts. Such proof is based on a broad range of contemporaneous evidence such as e-mails obtained inter alia from unannounced on-site inspections, in responses to formal requests for information and in a number of formal statements made to the Commission by the other companies concerned. In addition, there is evidence that Intel had sought to conceal the conditions associated with its payments.

x86 CPUs are the main hardware component of a computer. The decision contains a broad range of contemporaneous evidence that shows that AMD, essentially Intel's only competitor in the market, was generally perceived, by computer manufacturers and by Intel itself, to have improved its product range, to be a viable competitor, and to be a growing competitive threat. The decision finds that Intel's practices did not constitute competition on the merits of the respective Intel and AMD products, but rather were part of a strategy designed to exploit Intel's existing entrenched position in the market.

Intel’s worldwide turnover in 2007 was €27 972 million (US$ 38 834 million). The fine in this case takes account of the duration and gravity of the infringement. In accordance with the Commission's 2006 Guidelines on Fines (see IP/06/857 and MEMO/06/256) the fine has been calculated on the basis of the value of Intel's x86 CPU sales in the European Economic Area (EEA). The duration of the infringement established in the decision is five years and three months.

The Commission’s investigation followed complaints from AMD in 2000, 2003 and 2006 (the last having been sent to the German competition authority and subsequently examined by the European Commission). The Commission's decision follows a Statement of Objections sent in July 2007 (see MEMO/07/314), a Supplementary Statement of Objections sent in July 2008 (see MEMO/08/517) and a letter sent to Intel in December 2008 setting out additional factual elements relevant to the final decision. Intel's rights of defence have been fully respected in this case.

Email from within the DOJ - Intel to be nailed

Intelers are quiet these days, they know uncle Obama is not going to give them favors. Reliable sources say.

This is the statement of an e-mail in full - even though the source was anonymous, we have to state that this opinion is opinion of the source alone and not the comment of US Department of Justice:

"Hi Theo,

We are not actively investigating the x86 cross-license agreement between the two parties involved (or indeed, any party that has to do with x86-based patents originating from Intel Corporation), but I can tell you from our experiences that patents are not The 10 Commandments http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ten_Commandments .

There were legal precedents in the past where market-limiting or market-damaging patents were pronounced "null and void" to the party that wanted to exercise its rights on the expense of the consumer. Example that you might use with your readers is the wheel. Even though there are than 10,000 patents about the wheel on a car, PTO [U.S. Patent Trade Office, Ed.] would not allow a patent that would result in inability to manufacture wheels by anyone else than the patent owner. If such patent was granted in the past, there are legal precedents that would allow PTO to safeguard market freedom.

Regards,"

Intel guilty -- findings by KFTC

The KFTC held a full-member committee on June 4, 2008 and decided to impose a corrective order and surcharges against abusing market dominance by 「Intel Corporation, Intel Semi-conductor and Intel Korea (Hereinafter referred to as “Intel”). To eliminate AMD, a rival company, from the CPU market using its dominant market power, Intel provided rebates to Samsung Electronics and Sambo Computer ranked 1st and 2nd in the domestic PC market on the condition that they would not purchase CPUs manufactured by AMD.

In May 2002, Intel agreed to provide rebates to Samsung Electronics on the condition that it suspend the purchase of CPUs made by AMD. In connection with this, Samsung Electronics in effect suspended the purchase of AMD CPUs starting in the 4th quarter of 2002, and received various amounts of rebates until the 2nd quarter of 2005 on the condition that they purchase only CPUs made by Intel.

During the period from the latter half of 2003 to the first half of 2004, Intel provided rebates (approximately $2,600,000 USD) to Sambo Computer (ranked 2nd in Korea) on the condition that it convert the company from which to purchase CPU from AMD to Intel for the Home Shopping channel sales. In September 2003, Intel, using market dominance and rebates, interfered with local marketing of 64 bit AMD-based CPU for desktop computers from Sambo Computer’s.

Such acts of providing rebates to customers on the condition that they would not deal with rival companies constitute a violation of Article 3-2 (1) 5 of the Monopoly Regulation and Fair Trade Act.

...

When the market share of AMD increased, Intel provided new rebates to PC makers and the market share of AMD dropped again. During the period from 2000 to 2006, AMD’s market share stood at 10% or less in most cases, and even its highest market share was only 17%.
However, in the CPU sales agent market where the consumers’ preference is directly reflected, AMD’s market share increased during the period from 2000 to 2005, and the market share went up as high as to 30% at the end of 2005. The KFTC started investigating this case in June 2005 and it took 3 years of thorough investigation and discussions with domestic and foreign economists and jurists before a final decision was made.

Intel’s action has forced domestic PC manufacturers to buy only the expensive CPU supplied by Intel, causing domestic consumers to purchase PCs at higher prices. In addition, it has reduced the purchasing options for PC consumers who prefer AMD CPUs.

George Ou Caught Red Handed in Making False Analysis

George Ou is known to be a bit mental, as he likes to accuse people of fraud with his semi-retarded and illogical stuff. He was again caught making false analysis.

An AMD guy wrote:

What's interesting is that those benchmark results are based on Intel systems configured with 24 GB of memory for the SPECcpu results and 96GB for the SPECweb result. Yet, when George does his price comparison later in the article, he uses servers configured with only 6 GB of memory in the case fo the Intel servers. Seems to be a bit of a misrepresentation there, even if these are considered the "standard" configurations the OEM publish on their sites. I would ask that if George is going to highlight benchmark numbers followed by price comparisons, he stay consistent.

Also, George claims that AMD "now refuses to post the TDP" for our Opteron EE processors. At no time have we ever "refused" to disclose that info to anyone. In fact, our MAX TDP number can be found here at www.amd.com/acp. Please note, that Intel's TDP number is not a MAX TDP. Had George taken the time to look on AMD's web site for the info, he would have found this information. If there is an article out there where an AMD spokesperson has "refused" to provide this info at any time, please send it to me.

Another poster further exposed George Ou with the following comparison:

HP has a special testlap where a huge amount of there systems are tested with various load SW and where you can combine each piece of hardware to see the influence. Both systems have the same base server layout and same latest server generation.

HP DL380G6
2 x L5520
4 x 4GB PC3-8500R LP
2x 146GB 15K 2.5 SAS
2 x 460W HE Power supply

idle: 132.29W
40% cpu load: 171.69W
60% cpu load: 191.72W
100% cpu load: 231.51W

HP DL385G5p
2 x 2376HE
4 x 4GB PC6400 LP
2x 146GB 15K 2.5 SAS
2 x 460W HE Power supply

idle: 106.68W
40% cpu load: 147.94W
60% cpu load: 168.7W
100% cpu load: 209.93W

So dear George you cqn already shut up with the bullshit about ACP and the launch of the opteron EE series, because they ARE more power efficient.