As expected, the Federal Trade Commission has closed its proceedings against Intel
Everyone knew that Intel would promise not to behave badly toward chip rival Advanced Micro Devices
AMD got some unexpected concessions out of this deal, though:
- Intel must modify its license agreements to make it easier for AMD to enter a merger or joint-venture agreement down the line. I don't know that IBM
(NYSE: IBM) or Hewlett-Packard(NYSE: HPQ) - The industry-standard PCI bus must be supported by Intel's processors and chipsets for another six years. This matters because AMD's graphics-chip business would suffer if Intel decided to redesign the standard graphics card interface or remove it altogether, in the interest of protecting its own integrated graphics solutions.
- That provision benefits graphics specialist NVIDIA
(Nasdaq: NVDA) even more than AMD. NVIDIA also gets the full benefit of all the protections that are headed AMD's way.
Intel, AMD, and the FTC have all proclaimed their satisfaction with this deal, which puts an exclamation point to many outstanding issues. NVIDIA will continue to battle Intel in court, however -- the company would like to have its chipset business back, or else remove Intel's right to use certain NVIDIA-made patents. Don't look a gift horse in the mouth, guys!
It's good to see a return to sanity in the processor industry. If Intel did -- and the company won't admit to any of this -- use monopolistic tactics to keep the competition down over the last decade, we should now be back to fair competition on an even playing field.
And even Intel agrees that this settlement "will allow us to continue to compete and to provide our customers the best possible products at the best prices." Milton Friedman and Adam Smith would be so proud.
