FTC Sues Intel for Tactics to Stifle Competition

[halbhh]

Blundered into this article:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. government accused Intel Corp of illegally using its market dominance to stifle competition, in a lawsuit that seeks to stop the marketing practices that have helped maintain Intel's status as the world's biggest chip maker.

The suit, filed on Wednesday, pushed Intel shares down 2 percent and boosted the stocks of competitors Advanced Micro Devices Inc and Nvidia Corp, which have accused the chip giant of anti-competitive behavior.

The U.S. Federal Trade Commission said Intel has been trying to shut out competitors in maneuvers that date back to 1999 -- the same year the agency settled a previous antitrust fight against the company.

...

Feinstein disagreed with Intel's characterization of the remedies as unprecedented. Intel would not face financial penalties but the remedies would require a shift in its pricing structure, he said.

The FTC's complaint said Intel punished PC makers that bought chips from AMD or Via Technologies Inc and changed software to hurt the performance of competing CPUs, or central processing units.

"Intel threatened OEMs (computer makers) that considered purchasing non-Intel CPUs with, among other things, increased prices on other Intel purchases, the loss of Intel's technical support, and/or the termination of joint development projects," the FTC said in its complaint.
...

While AMD has settled its dispute against Intel, graphics chip maker Nvidia has continued its fight, calling for scrutiny of Intel's graphics processing units (GPUs), often used in mobile phones, personal computers and game consoles.

I've the feeling this isn't over.

There's a kind of denial at Intel.

They can't mentally, psychologically accept that their tactics are...essentially only a variation on monopolist tactics of old -- the kind of thing anti-trust laws were set up to prevent.

So, instead of settling with the FTC, I'm betting Intel will delay and argue, etc.

My guess is this could drag on and on.

..

[billdcat4]

AnandTech: The FTC Sues Intel Over CPU & GPU Competition

[qcmadness]

it is unfair to intel

although the pricing strategy is questionable, why intel complier has to tweaked to suit amd cpus? totally nonsense!!

[JumpingJack]

I agree with QC here, asking Intel to specifically optimize or validate their compiler to work on competitor products is like asking AMD to optimize their graphics drivers to work on nVidia GPUs.

Regardless, Intel is in massive hot water ... settling with AMD won't do them much good.

[ColonelCain]

I disagree. What the FTC is pointing out is that Intel purposely put stops in their compiler on non-Intel CPU's.

[halbhh]

Corporate culture is more durable than we'd guess, or at least more than I'd guess.

The powerful example that really showed me something was how Ford in the 1920s was quite conservative in extending credit to customers to buy Fords. While GM was liberal.

Fast forward 80 years....Ford's conservative approach proves out. GM lives only because of massive federal help.

[halbhh]

I disagree. What the FTC is pointing out is that Intel purposely put stops in their compiler on non-Intel CPU's.

yah, if it's a case of sabotaging the compiler for non-intel chips, that's not at all the same as simply failing to optimize for non-intel.

[Afrodisiac]

Can Nvidia get hit with something similar for putting vendor locks on games?

[Cain]

Damn Europeans, always going after American companies.

[logain]

Damn Europeans, always going after American companies.

[CHAD BOGA]

I disagree. What the FTC is pointing out is that Intel purposely put stops in their compiler on non-Intel CPU's.

What do you mean by "stops"?

[beerandcandy]

the compiler stuff is bogus
it says use at your own risk in the legal mumbo jumbo
amd could make thier own compiler there is nothing stoping them from doing that
or use one of the other 3 available

[JumpingJack]

the compiler stuff is bogus
it says use at your own risk in the legal mumbo jumbo
amd could make thier own compiler there is nothing stoping them from doing that
or use one of the other 3 available

Heck, Intel compiles better code for AMD processors than MS compilers do anyway.

The argument/accusation here is that Intel specifically ID'ed the AMD CPU and forced the compiler to avoid SSE optimizations.

Now, the only info for this I saw was in a fanboy blog -- I tried to reproduce it, but could not see what he saw. Evidently, from what I can recall (cannot find that blog link), it was only in one revision of the compiler, and it was not the revision I worked with... so it could be true.

[qcmadness]

Heck, Intel compiles better code for AMD processors than MS compilers do anyway.

The argument/accusation here is that Intel specifically ID'ed the AMD CPU and forced the compiler to avoid SSE optimizations.

Now, the only info for this I saw was in a fanboy blog -- I tried to reproduce it, but could not see what he saw. Evidently, from what I can recall (cannot find that blog link), it was only in one revision of the compiler, and it was not the revision I worked with... so it could be true.

this may be true but that may not be intel's fault

the sse2 function in pre-rev. e K8 is broken and enabling sse2 will slow down the cpu

[beerandcandy]

how does the compiler know an amd cpu is going to be the one running the code being compiled? isnt everything compiled for x86?

[qcmadness]

how does the compiler know an amd cpu is going to be the one running the code being compiled? isnt everything compiled for x86?

you can detect the brand id, family, model from the cpu directly

that's how cpu-z works

[beerandcandy]

not really see this is how it works you need to specify what you are optimizing for
if you screw it up its your fault

Processor Optimization Capabilities

These options allow you to tune performance specifically for the processor-based systems you are targeting.

-ax{K|W|N|B|P} (i32, i32em only)

Automatic Processor Dispatch. Generates specialized code for the indicated processors while also generating generic IA-32 code. You can use more than one code to tune for multiple processors in the same executable.

• K, Intel Pentium III processors and AMD Athlon XP processors.
• W, Intel Pentium 4 processors and AMD Athlon 64 and Opteron* processors.
• B, Intel Pentium M and compatible Intel.
• P, Intel Pentium 4 processor with Streaming SIMD Extensions 3 and compatible Intel processors.
• N, Provides additional Pentium 4 processor tuning beyond W

Note: Only the -axW and -axP options are available for Intel EM64T.

-x{K|W|N|B|P} (i32, i32em only)

Processor-specific targeting. Generates specialized code for the indicated processor. The executable should only be run on the targeted compatible processors.

• K, Intel Pentium III processors and AMD Athlon XP processors.
• W, Intel Pentium 4 processors and AMD Athlon 64 and Opteron processors.
• B, Intel Pentium M and compatible Intel processors.
• P, Intel Pentium 4 processor with Streaming SIMD Extensions 3 and compatible Intel processors.
• N, Provides additional Pentium 4 processor tuning beyond W.

Notes: Options N, B, and P generate a runtime check to determine that the correct compatible Intel processor is used to prevent potential runtime faults that could otherwise occur with K and W.
Only the -xW and -xP options are available for Intel EM64T.
Option -xW enables SSE/SSE2 vectorisation[14].

-tpp1 (i64 only)

Targets optimization for the Itanium processor.

-tpp2 (i64 only)

Optimize for Intel Itanium 2 processors.

-tpp5

Targets optimization for the Pentium processor.

-tpp6

Targets optimization for the Pentium Pro, Pentium II and Pentium III processors.

-tpp7

Targets optimization for the Pentium 4, Xeon, Pentium M and Pentium 4 with SSE3 support processors. This option is ON by default since version v7.0 to enable optimal instruction scheduling and cache management on i32 and EM64T systems.

-tune (i32, i32em, Fortran only)

Specifies the version of the architecture for which the Fortran compiler generates instructions. It accepts the following options

pn1

Optimizes for the Pentium processor

pn2, pn3

Optimizes for the Pentium Pro, Pentium II and Pentium III processors

pn4

Optimizes for the Pentium 4 processor. This is the default option; and the only option available for EM64T systems.

The Intel compilers for Linux support several GCC compiler command options[11]. Between the most interesting are:

-msse (i32 only)

generate code for the Intel Pentium III and compatible Intel processors.

-msse2 (i32 only)

generate code for Pentium 4 and compatible Intel processors.

-msse3 (i32 and i32em only)

generate code for Pentium 4 processors with SSE3 extensions.

-mtune=cpu

Performs optimizations for a specified CPU. The options for cpuare: pentium, pentiumpro, pentium4, pentium-mmx, itanium and itanium2.

-mcpu=cpu

Optimize for a specific cpu, where cpu is one of the following: pentium, pentiumpro, pentium4, itanium and itanium2.

-march=cpu (i32 only)

Generate code exclusively for a given CPU, where cpu is one of the following: pentiumpro, pentiumii, pentiumiii and pentium4.

Use the Intel compilers' optimization reports to assist in determining whether you can provide more help to the compiler in the form of anti-aliasing or memory-disambiguation information. In general, using -O3, IPO, and/or PGO, as well as the optimization reports to control aliasing and improve memory utilization provides the best performance for Itanium-based systems.

[JumpingJack]

this may be true but that may not be intel's fault

the sse2 function in pre-rev. e K8 is broken and enabling sse2 will slow down the cpu

Well, objectively I don't put it past Intel do finangle this, just as I don't put it past any company to push in various things to 'cheat' benchmarks into their favor.

I do distinctly recall the blog that outlined the compiler behavior, and he did a pretty good job of describing it.

[Sailer]

Can Nvidia get hit with something similar for putting vendor locks on games?

Technically it could, and the game companies involved could be charged with conspiracy. However, Nvidia does not have the near monopoly status that Intel enjoys, so it would be far harder to push it through a court.

[DaSickNinja]

How about they do something useful for once and take a look at Comcast and the practical monopoly they have.