Intel is knee-deep in trouble now. According to the FTC, Intel was “engaging in a deliberate campaign to hamstring competitive threats to its monopoly.” After paying AMD 1.25 billion to settle several disputes, and then getting fined by the EU for 1.45 billion, Intel now has the Federal Trade Comission hot on its heels. The allegations are the same the EU fined Intel for, which are:
The E.U.’s charges included paying computer makers to use Intel chips instead of AMD ones, and even threatening some companies if they went ahead and used AMD CPUs. The FTC notes that the public has been denied access to “potentially superior” chips as a result of the same bad practices. And it highlights what seems to be a particularly nasty one: Intel apparently designed compiler code so that it”deliberately stunted” the performance of the code when run on non-Intel CPUs, and then told the public the code simply worked better on Intel-made chips.
Ouch. The first hearing is on September 8, 2010. From the looks of it, Intel might not come out of this in a good condition.
[Via FTC, MarketWatch]
