Earlier today, Intel and Advanced Micro Devices announced a comprehensive agreement to end their outstanding legal disputes. After the jump, AMD CEO Dirk Meyer’s official remarks about the agreement.
Wow. Intel and AMD’s seemingly endless legal battles have finally ended. The two companies said early Thursday that they have reached a comprehensive agreement that resolves their many antitrust and patent disputes. Under its terms, Intel will pay AMD $1.25 billion and agree to “abide by a set of business practice provisions” presumably crafted to temper its alleged anticompetitive practices.
Looks like AMD has benefited from the same favorable PC updraft that’s lifting Intel. On Thursday, the chip maker reported a narrower third-quarter loss than expected, thanks to “strong demand” for its microprocessors and graphics chips.
The passing of a year hasn’t much changed Oracle CEO Larry Ellison’s opinion of cloud computing. Remarking on the industry’s sudden fascination with the concept at Oracle OpenWorld last September, Ellison reduced it to a thin sheen of windshield condensation. In conversation with former Sun CEO Ed Zander at a Churchill Club event a little over a year later, Ellison expanded on those remarks, suggesting that if the cloud is anything, it’s a cloud of BS.
Though some analysts claim otherwise, MySQL is an asset, not baggage, and Oracle has no plans to unload it. Nor does the company think it will be forced to win regulatory approval for its proposed purchase of Sun Microsystems. “No, we’re not going to spin [MySQL] off,” Oracle CEO Larry Ellison told attendees of a Churchill Club event in Silicon Valley Monday evening.
Pat Gelsinger isn’t the only Intel veteran leaving the company amid the big management restructuring announced today. Longtime general counsel Bruce Sewell is taking his leave as well. Which is odd, since Sewell has been quarterbacking Intel’s fight against antitrust allegations at home and abroad since, well, since they were first brought against the company.
When Intel CEO Paul Otellini said “the worst is now behind us,” he was clearly not referring to AMD. Posting earnings Tuesday afternoon, AMD reported an ugly loss of $330 million, or 49 cents a share–greater than the 47 cents analysts had been expecting.
Intel’s year of sequential gains in the semiconductor market came to an abrupt end in the first quarter of 2009. According to market research outfit iSuppli, the chip giant’s share of the market fell 2.5 percent to 79.1 percent in Q1. Meanwhile, AMD’s rose about 2.3 percent to 12.8 percent.
You know things are bad at AMD when the company’s schadenfreude over Intel’s European legal woes spills over into its brand messaging. Surf over to AMD’s Web site this morning and you’ll find foremost on its homepage not a message about Fusion, its next-generation microprocessor design, or branding for its various chips, but a gigantic European Union flag.
Larry Ellison’s got some news for skeptics predicting Oracle will dump the Sun Microsystems hardware business when its $7.4 billion acquisition of the company closes: It’s not gonna happen. In an interview with Reuters subsequently filed with the SEC, the Oracle CEO said he plans to maintain that part of Sun’s business.
After three years, AMD is finally getting around to merging it’s microprocessor and graphics divisions, another stab at reaching profitability after more than two years of losses. On Wednesday afternoon the company said it would consolidate the two divisions into one–platforms and products–led by SVP Rick Bergman.
What a lousy week for Intel, yeah? First Korea’s Fair Trade Commission fines the company $25 million for abusing its dominant market position in the country and offering discounts to PC makers in an effort to drive rival AMD out of the market. And now Federal Trade Commission has opened a formal investigation into its pricing practices.
If Advanced Micro Devices is, as former Intel CEO Andy Grove once said, “the Milli Vanilli of semiconductors,” then Intel may turn out to be its Clear Channel.
The European Commission said today it has brought antitrust charges against Intel, which the commission accuses of violating competition laws and abusing its dominant position in the global [...]
John Paczkowski has been poking fun at the tech industry and the personalities that drive it since 1997. From 1999 to 2007, he wrote the award-winning tech news Web log Good Morning Silicon Valley for the San Jose Mercury News, Silicon Valley's daily newspaper. Read more »
Here is a statement of my ethics and coverage policies. It is more than most of you want to know, but, in the age of suspicion of the media, I am laying it all out.
While the technology behind the Telephone is new, the design is reassuringly old-fashioned, reminiscent of a phrenologist’s horn or ear-candle in form. We found the experience far more comfortable than the one we had with the Telegraph.
12:58 AM: Breakfast: Two schools of fish from Tokyo Bay. Calories: 782,000. How I was feeling when I ate this: confused, irradiated, hating my size.
11:37 AM: Exercise: “Taxi Stomp” (alternating legs, for 30 blocks). Calories burned: 148,900,183.
1983. The Beatles announce their first tour in thirteen years, but likewise announce that Michael Jackson will be going on tour with them as a one gigantic mega-concert event.
Best video mashup ever.
A Facebook Memorial
Wow.
Worth it for the Rickrolling photo alone.
Excellent.
Flughumor!
… you vacuous, toffee-nosed, malodorous perverts
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