Intel Pulls Out $1.25B to Settle All AMD Problems

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"AMD will also withdraw all of its regulatory complaints worldwide."

So does this mean that Intel is off the hook for all the anti-competitive crap they've been getting in trouble with over the last year or so... If so, $1.25 billion sounds on the light side... didn't they give Dell $6 billion over a period of 5 years?
 

bunz_of_steel

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Should have been more than 1.25 billion because Intel kept AMD from making potential financial gains. And AMD would be in much better position to compete in the market during this recession .... that were still in.
 

robwright

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So who won? Did AMD get the better end of the deal? I doubt Intel would have settled like this if it hadn't been getting pressured by the EU, Korea, and New York.
 

wildwell

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If this was the quickie settlement, I wonder how much Intel would stand to owe AMD if all of the legal disputes were allowed to play out over the years!
 

SAL-e

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We will be back here in 4 years once the new patent cross license agreement is due to expire. Until then prepare to pay higher prices on CPUs. Intel will recover $1.25B from you and AMD will enjoy the higher prices also.
 

hellwig

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I guess this means all that B.S. about GlobalFoundries not having permission to produce x86 chips is gone too. I can't believe AMD settled for so little. According to another article I read, they still have over $3-billion in debt, this doesn't even cover half that.

And I agree clemaaron. Intel paid dell $6-billion to not sell AMD chips, but now AMD gets only $1.25 billion as an "oops, our bad" apology? Maybe the figure was reduced because AMD admitted some fault of their own.

Don't know. Either way, we have 5 years until more dirt turns up on Intel and they go into another "everything belongs to us" tirade against their competitors.

In the meantime, I'm going to wait and see how much they end up paying Nvidia to settle those claims.
 

WheelsOfConfusion

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[citation][nom]bige420[/nom]So by "5-year cross license agreement" does that mean AMD has access to all Intel's patents and whatnot?[/citation]
Probably not ALL of them, but enough that, for example, Intel can't sue AMD for using x86 and AMD can't sue Intel for using x86-64.
 

tpi2007

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There is an additional information that isn't made clear in this article, and a very important one, I might say: AMD is now able to go completely fabless, and even to the length of being able to choose where to produce it's chips, it doesn't have to be only Globalfoundries. Anandtech has more information on it.
 

jonpaul37

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[citation][nom]bige420[/nom]So by "5-year cross license agreement" does that mean AMD has access to all Intel's patents and whatnot?[/citation]

no details yet in the cross-license agreement, but hopefully it's a nice smooth transition so BOTH companies can get back to work and actually compete fairly.
 

haricotvert

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[citation][nom]clemaaron[/nom]"AMD will also withdraw all of its regulatory complaints worldwide."So does this mean that Intel is off the hook for all the anti-competitive crap they've been getting in trouble with over the last year or so... If so, $1.25 billion sounds on the light side... didn't they give Dell $6 billion over a period of 5 years?[/citation]

To quote the NY Times, "However, the Intel-AMD settlement does not end separate antitrust actions against Intel by government bodies in the Europe, Asia and the United States."

This is Intel's way of getting AMD off their backs for another 5 years or so, and is more or less a tacit admission that they would lose a legal battle in the end - one that could potentially be more costly than the $1.25 billion they are shelling out here. In fact, they stated that themselves:

"The final negotiating point, Mr. Otellini said, was how much Intel would pay A.M.D. He said that it pained him to write such a big check, but $1.2 billion might well be a 'small multiple' of the company’s potential liability if it lost a jury trial in Delaware."

But no, it certainly doesn't affect the antitrust lawsuits already filed by government entities (Korea, the European Union, and now New York).

Granted, it's hard to try and recoup losses from bygone years, regardless of how ill-gotten those gains might have been. I think AMD acknowledges that the only way they will get market share back is to focus more on development and their new GlobalFoundries fab. The government antitrust lawsuits don't funnel any money into AMD anyways - it would just be in the form of fines that would go straight back into government coffers.

In other words, AMD will gladly take that money and run with it, and let Intel continue to be caught up with government watchdogs.
 

pharge

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Looks like AMD is really short of cash. Hope that 1.25B will keep it alive for a while.

Just like presidenteody said... we need AMD to push Intel and keep the CPU price low!
 
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