European Commission raid Intel offices

[Steve]

Didn't I say this would get good? The EC has this morning raided several of Intel's European offices, searching for material relating to AMD's antitrust suit against the company. AMD continue to fight their battle on two fronts - in the courts and in the press room, today issuing yet another strongly worded press release, their executive vice president saying the following:

The European Commission dawn raids show that Intel cannot and should not escape the scrutiny of antitrust officials around the world – nor can Intel escape the consequences of its anti-competitive actions, which raise prices, threaten innovation and harm consumers.

That sounds like fighting talk to me.

In other news, Dixons have slammed claims by AMD that they have limited the amount of AMD stock on sale following pressure from Intel. It's going to be hard for anyone mentioned in this case to not take sides, but similarly deciding quite how to deal with it all can be a PR nightmare for the companies involved. We're all talking about the case, however, so AMD are doing a good job with the publicity.

If it tickles your fancy, check out the full AMD press release, although it mostly outlines the action they've taken thus far.

[DR]

Surely it should be 'entered' rather than RAIDED - I do not think they had riot police with them.

[Steve]

Didn't you see the footage from an innocent bystander? There was paper flying everywhere, staplers being used to hold back the EC officials... complete chaos.

[starbuck]

Hopefully, this will just show what we already know, that AMD make better and cheaper processors than intel and they will become more mainstream.

[Steve]

Hopefully, this will just show what we already know, that AMD make better and cheaper processors than intel and they will become more mainstream.

That's got nothing to do with the antitrust suit. They're not out to prove they have better chips, they're out to prove that Intel have been illegally maintaining a monopoly.

[Dougal]

That's got nothing to do with the antitrust suit. They're not out to prove they have better chips, they're out to prove that Intel have been illegally maintaining a monopoly.

I think that he's trying to say that by removing the monopoly there will be more end users that get access to the AMD chips and will be impressed by what they get.

But as always, AMD is not as good as Intel depending on what you are using it for (and vice-versa)

[da.Guvna]

Did anyone see this as well?

http://www.shacknews.com/onearticle.x/37746

"To achieve this, Intel designed the compiler to compile code along several alternate code paths. ... By design, the code paths were not created equally. If the program detects a "Genuine Intel" microprocessor, it executes a fully optimized code path and operates with the maximum efficiency. However, if the program detects an "Authentic AMD" microprocessor, it executes a different code path that will degrade the program's performance or cause it to crash."

[DR]

Got to make sure we remove facts from fiction....

[Steve]

I think the compiler issue was more a case of P4 optimisations over any (include PIII) processor resulting in degraded performance.

From The Reg:

"It turns out that their special 'Pentium 4' memcpy, which I tested thoroughly in all kinds of situations, worked perfectly fine on an AMD Athlon and a Pentium III," he concludes and notes his decision to adopt a different compiler as a result.

That's not exactly targetting AMD there, is it?