Quote:Intel has formally accused AMD of breaching the two companies' 2001 cross-licensing agreement. This development probably shouldn't come as a surprise, since Intel questioned the legality of AMD's foundry spin-off way back in October last year. Now that AMD's former manufacturing business is finally operating as a separate company—GlobalFoundries—Intel has taken action.

Here's why Intel thinks AMD is breaching the agreement:

Quote:Intel believes that Global Foundries is not a subsidiary under terms of the agreement and is therefore not licensed under the 2001 patent cross-license agreement. Intel also said the structure of the deal between AMD and ATIC breaches a confidential portion of that agreement. Intel has asked AMD to make the relevant portion of the agreement public, but so far AMD has declined to do so.

Intel adds that it has "attempted to address [its] concerns with AMD without success since October," and the alleged breach could lead Intel to take away AMD's licensing rights. However, the company says it is "willing to find a resolution."

What does AMD have to say about all this? The firm responded with the following statement:

Quote:Intel's action is an attempt to distract the world from the global antitrust scrutiny it faces. Should this matter proceed to litigation, wee will prove not only that Intel is wrong, but also that Intel fabricated this claim to interfere with our commercial relationships and thus has violated the cross-license.

According to AMD's form 8-K filing, Intel isn't kidding about taking away AMD's license—it "purports to terminate [AMD]'s rights and licenses under the Cross License in 60 days if the alleged breach has not been corrected." Naturally, AMD doesn't think it's doing anything wrong. As a matter of fact, the smaller company thinks Intel has violated the agreement by making those threats:

Quote:[AMD] maintains that Intel's purported attempt to terminate [AMD]'s rights and licenses under the Cross License itself constitutes a material breach of the Cross License by Intel[,] which gives [AMD] the right to terminate Intel's rights and licenses . . . while retaining [AMD]'s rights and licenses under the Cross License Agreement.

Judging by the wording of that sentence, it seems like AMD thinks it's entitled to take away Intel's x86-64 license while continuing to make x86 processors. Intel currently uses AMD's x86-64 technology in all shipping Pentium and Core processors, while AMD, naturally, uses Intel's x86 tech in all of its PC processors.

- Source: [TechReport]

I am so confused.

Meh, as long as processor prices don't go up because of it, I won't really care.

Fanboyism is stupid. Buying based on price value is the way.

(This post was last modified: 16/03/2009 09:23 PM by Assassinator.)

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Okay, if you're confused, I'll try to explain a little.  I don't really know if this is accurate, it's just what I think is the case (so don't quote me on this).

There are many different CPU architectures out there (ie MIPS, SPARC, ARM etc).  The x86 architecture was developed by Intel, thus I would believe that Intel has some patent on it.  The x86 architecture just happened to become popular, and nowadays, basically all "computers" use an x86 based processor.
Now it happens that Intel gave away licenses to other companies to allow them to produce x86 processors.  AMD obviously has one which allows them to use Intel's x86 architecture in their CPUs.
A few years back, I recall Intel saying that 64-bit was impossible on the x86 architecture.  Then in 2004, AMD released their Athlon64 series of processors, which had their AMD64 (aka x86-64) extensions on the CPU.  Intel quickly copied AMD's architecture and dubbed it EM64T (and I'm guessing from the above AMD gave Intel a license to do so).

Now if Intel has their way and terminates AMD's license to produce x86 processors, AMD is pretty much kicked out of the CPU market.  On the other hand, if AMD revokes Intel's ability to use AMD64, Intel may no longer produce x86-64 capable CPUs.  Intel could develop their own 64-bit implementation, but this will most likely break all current 64-bit binaries (ie Windows x64 will not work on an Intel implementation of 64-bit x86 processor; MS would have to recompile Windows for it to work on the "new CPUs").

In the end, both companies lose, though AMD probably loses more.  For consumers, it's definitely not a good thing as there could potentially be less competition.



Oh By the way, before the Core2's, Intel's CPUs were probably worse than AMDs in terms of heat :P

(This post was last modified: 17/03/2009 04:38 AM by ZiNgA BuRgA.)

So whots the real reason>!?
and
PEACE!