Why NOT Intel?

THIS IS NOT A HATE PAGE!
The purpose of this page is to let you know the practices that Intel uses to eliminate competitors.

Even if you don't care about the practices of Intel, I am sure you care about the money you spend and if Intel does not have competitors, will have no reason for not increasing the prices.

Introduction

In 1993 Intel was asking chipset manufacturers to cooperate with them for the introduction of the PCI bus, an invention of Intel. The chipset manufacturers did cooperate with Intel and PCI was available from all chipset manufacturers, which is one reason for its fast success. It didn't take long and all the chipset manufacturers started to disappear from the market. Now Intel is the largest chipset manufacturer and is having the power to influence the market with its chipsets very well.
Over the past two years, intel's share of the chipset market has jumped to almost 72% (1997) from 27% in 1995, according to Mercury Research.

A very similar thing happened with AGP and video chipset manufacturers. Again Intel asked video chipset companies to work closely with them for the implementation of the AGP. The video chip manufacturers hardly have a choice because Intel is the market leader and you can't afford not to follow it. Now Intel has made it's own video chip ( i740 ). But the video chip market was too competitive for Intel.

Locking Out Competitors
Intel has threatened to sue any chip maker that makes a chip for slot 1 (also named P6 bus), effectively locking them out of the market, and depriving consumers of choice.

   Three companies, which have previously announced what are known as "core logic chip sets" for computers using the Pentium II processors, face legal action from the PC chip giant if they try to market their products.
   "The primary motivator for Intel to move to the P6 bus was the competitive landscape," said Mike Feibus, principal analyst with semiconductor market watcher Mercury Research Inc. "The bus is completely proprietary -- no one can use it without Intel's permission."
   "To develop these chip sets you need access to the (sixth-generation bus design)", "And that is protected by a combination of patents and trade secrets", "(Aside from cross-licensing,) we don't intend to license this technology to a third-party," said Intel spokesman Chuck Malloy.

   For Intel, it's simple. PC makers who want to use the Pentium II processor in their computers must use the P6 bus, and therefore, Intel's chip sets.

Overpriced Chips
Intel's near monopoly allows them to charge hyper-inflated prices.

"Historically, Intel has this remarkable ability to charge a factor of eight for a performance boost of two in microprocessors."

-PETER CHRISTY, Industry Analyst

Advertising
Intel pays for most of the ad when the computer maker includes the Intel Inside logo.

This puts publishers at risk if they should seriously offend Intel. Once the cash starts flowing, it's hard to pull away. These advertising subsidies, which many large corporations have discovered can be a control mechanism, are striking at the heart of free enterprise. Recent revelations about co-op advertising in the music business uncovered the fact that Sony and others pull lucrative ad co-op dollars away from any store that sells CDs for a price lower than that fixed by the record companies. Essentially it's a bribe to fix prices.

EPIC (Explicitely Parallel Instruction Computing), is a fancy acronym that Intel invented to hide that Merced (Intel's next generation CPU) is actualy a VLIW (Very Long Instruction Word) design.
After all Intel didn't invent VLIW.

Intel may have stoled technology from Digital's Alpha chip
Digital Equipment Corporation sues Intel Corporationfor violating microprocessor architecture patents

Lawsuit maintains Intel infringed Digital patented technology to enhance performance of Pentium, Pentium Pro and Pentium II microprocessors
...WORCESTER, Mass., May 13, 1997 Digital Equipment Corporation(NYSE:DEC) has filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court, District of Massachusetts, here charging Intel Corporation with willful infringement of 10 Digital patents in making, using and selling microprocessor products,
including its Pentium, Pentium Pro and Pentium II microprocessor families.
The patents were issued by the U.S. Patent andTrademark Office between 1988 and 1996.

The Alternatives There are many nonIntel CPUs which are usualy as Good or Better
(and have better price/performance rates). x86 compatible options for now are:


AMD Athlon	AMD K6-2	Cyrix M II

Athlon processor benefits of an extended 3Dnow instruction set.
And if you do not allready know, Athlon beats PentiumIII(at the same MHz)
in all types of applications, and ofcourse 3DGames. (and Athlon costs less)

It's up to you to keep Intel away from monopoly. Just say no to Intel.

(c) Sotiris Parmakis The author of this page has never worked for Intel, AMD, IDT, Cyrix or any other chipmaker company.
The author has never been paid by AMD, IDT, Cyrix or any other company or person for writing this article.

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