Yesterday turned out to be the most widely anticipated day in the microprocessor realm. AMD finally filed an antitrust complaint against its archrival Intel, the world’s largest chipmaker. Regardless of the obvious superiority of AMD’s Athlon 64 line of microprocessors, the world’s largest OEMs such as Dell, HP and Sony have either offered limited AMD based systems or they have outright declined to work with AMD at all. Allegedly, this is due to unfair and monopolistic business practices by Intel.

According to AMD’s press release, "The 48-page complaint explains in detail how Intel has unlawfully maintained its monopoly in the x86 microprocessor market by engaging in worldwide coercion of customers from dealing with AMD. It identifies 38 companies that have been victims of coercion by Intel - including large scale computer-makers, small system-builders, wholesale distributors, and retailers, through seven types of illegality across three continents." This is just the beginning of a chaotic drama that is expected to continue for some time. The press release gets even more interesting as AMD points out specific instances in which Intel had persuaded global corporations into exclusivity for their products by offering incentives for excluding AMD and penalties for purchasing products from its competition. For instance, the press release states, "According to industry reports, and as confirmed by the JFTC in Japan, Intel has paid Dell and Toshiba huge sums not to do business with AMD." AMD continued, "Intel paid Sony millions for exclusivity. AMD's share of Sony's business went from 23 percent in '02 to 8% in '03, to 0%, where it remains today."

The world’s second largest chipmaker has listed a decent number of Intel’s monopolistic behaviors in its 48-page complaint. Needless to say, Intel is definitely not a fair competitor and doesn’t believe in the concept of an open marketplace. This certainly reminds me of another "world’s largest" company with a similar expectation of controlling the global market for computer operating systems; I’ll leave the name up to your imagination.

One interesting point I noticed is that the entire complaint is quite easy to comprehend and contains very little "legalese", or legal double talk. This was quite surprising to me, having read some other complaints that took many hours and a legal dictionary to decipher. This was more than likely planned, so that the average consumer would be able to read and understand AMD’s point of view in this matter. I can visualize the lawyer’s frustration, having to reword his arguments in plain English after being rejected for the third time as being "too complicated". This may not be the case, but it is an amusing thought.

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