If Intel either forced AMD out of business using illegal business practices, or tried to acquire AMD then that becomes grounds for the FTC/SEC, but if AMD voluntarily leave the marketplace or are forced to due to their own misfortune/change of direction/consumer preference then I don't think that it becomes a monopolies commission issue.
I view it the same. At the end of the day AMD's misfortune has nothing to do with Intel. The blame rests squarely on them, and them alone.
It is totally unreasonable to expect Intel to be in any way to blame. It certainly couldn't be argued it was their fault for having a better product. I'd be saying the same thing if the fortunes were reversed.
AMD should consider themselves at least fortunate for having the GPU income they do as well as something thats competitive with Nvidia for now.
The rise of 64-bit ARM might mitigate the monopoly argument in any case, although it does give me cause to wonder how the x86 market would be seen with regards the Intel/AMD x86 cross-licence (VIA being pretty much a non-entity) if said licence is not transferrable in any potential AMD buy out. I'm assuming that the licence is voided as an (at least 4+ years) x86-64 licence + AMD's IP would exceed AMD's market cap and company value (esp. if you add in the GPU IP).
I have high hopes for ARM. Okay it remains to be seen if it could compete anywhere near the enthusiast price-point of Intel, but in the budget and general consumer market the higher efficiency processors are likely in my opinion to make considerable head waves.
I just hope they're overall better equipped than AMD have shown themselves to be, because they've totally screwed up a perfectly acceptable portfolio of CPU products and pretty much left themselves scraping the barrels in the hopes of a few good scraps -- cue the insanely crap ratio of "good" yields at Global Foundries. Double cue the whole BD mess -- and its a sodding landfill of one at that.
I won't comment on the whole x64 license thing between Intel and AMD, as know little of it.
I think that comes down to people choosing their OS but not having the choice to use their own preferred software. IE is automatically installed with Windows in the usual install method, and if you weren't forward thinking enough to have another browser downloaded ready to go, you would have to use IE in order to obtain its replacement.
I totally agree. The situation was totally different. In essence Microsoft "forced" you to use their browser, at the very least in order to download and then install another one to replace it. It should have been a optional extra from day one.
I didn't agree with adding the capability to select another browser after getting updates as acceptable either. The user should have the immediate choice, not have to download an update to then choose if they want to use something other than IE.
How that was even agreed by the courts is beyond me, as most uninformed users likely just cancelled the box anyway, not knowing any better.
I'll need convincing of that. I hope it's true for every tech users sake, but I don't think that the world is awash with experienced semi-conductor engineers and chip designers- and even if it were you still have to 1. offer them better terms than where they are at present, and 2. they would be restricted from using some of their knowledge base due to non-dislosure/non-compete/proprietary information clauses in employee contracts...so basically you're starting from scratch the day they are hired. Could result in a significant amount of time between proposal and retail deployment.
I personally think they're screwed. At best the influx of people (if you want to call it that) will arrive and they'll immediately be thrown to the drawing board. It is unlikely they'll be able to continue from where the designs were left by those that worked on them before. So your talking yet another generation lost while they get there head in the game, and use R&D results from research into chip design that is already several years behind Intel. Of course, this yet again all depends on whether they can get a half decent return in production. If I'm correct in thinking the following is true, then we're already half starved of the majority of the companies best processor products as it is. But it doesn't matter how good something is if you can't get enough of it to the market to actually make any money on your investment.
You lose the potential goldmine of earnings then R&D into future products gets starved. From there on its a vicious circle almost impossible to exit from without a monumental cash injection, God-like creative thinking, unimaginable good fortune and every star in the universe aligning to your beckon call. It is unreasonable to suggest AMD can plow untold billions into future designs when the current processors are struggling to keep with demand, and therefore make money.
It would likely take Intel to totally lose the plot and launch something that completely fails in the market, or a bad design unnoticed until launch in order for AMD to stand any chance of catching up -- and thats assuming AMD actually got things in order in the first place.
I'm sorry, but Intel are too refined at this game now. They're confident enough to show you ahead of time how good something will be. They never disappoint either, with results in the wild (as far as I recall) always on par with the slides leaked.
I just don't see Intel slipping up, and I certainly don't see them slowing down now.
