The proverbial fly-on-the-wall at Intel's Santa Clara HQ records an interesting sales meeting following the AMD settlement.
"Now guys, repeat after me", comes the voice of an Intel marketing executive, "when I go to see Dell and HP I don't start off by telling them: 'If you buy AMD chips we'll cut you off at the knees, and you'll find a horse's head in your bed.'"
"C'mon guys, c'mon. It's not that difficult. Now repeat after me: 'When I go to see Dell and HP . . . . .'"
Clearly it was difficult for the sales guys. The new nicey nicey sales approach was going to take time to absorb
Having to go into customers and sell on comparative chip features: superior hyper-threading, a more magnificently architected pipeline, a more massive L2 cache etc etc would be a culture-shock.
The most fascinating thing about the Intel-AMD deal was what it didn't say.
Teasingly, it hinted that Intel might change its ways. 'Intel has also agreed to abide by a set of business practice provisions,' said the Intel-AMD joint statement.
Does that mean a little or a lot? Will there be fewer decapitated horses around, or will the Intel-AMD war remain an all-out, no-holds-barred affair?
We'll see.
Meanwhile AMD's new chums from the Gulf will be pleased that their fabs will be duly licensed to make x86 processors.
Which, in turn, means that AMD doesn't have to remain legally connected to Globalfoundries to pass on the protection of its x86 licence which, in turn, means AMD and Globalfoundries can be legally de-coupled which, in turn, means 1) That AMD will be free to persuade Wall Street that its shares deserve a higher valuation and 2) That the Gulf guys will feel free to build a fab mega-complex in Arabia.
Do we, the consumer, benefit from this? Will PC processors, and hence PCs, fall in price? Will Intel's almost 30-year-long control of the PC processor market weaken? How long's a piece of string?
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Comments (4)
You were obviously never a fly on the wall at intel's SC headquarters. Please stop publishing false information.
Posted by Ryan | November 16, 2009 6:06 PM
Posted on November 16, 2009 18:06
Ryan, If your sense of humour is so deficient that you thought this post was intended seriously, then I shall have to ban you from reading Mannerisms.
Posted by David Manners
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November 16, 2009 9:17 PM
Posted on November 16, 2009 21:17
imo Intel realised they had done almost too good a job almost railroading a competitor off the road....they need a competitor and they were in danger of effectively killing off their main one in their core microprocessor business.
Hence they were willing to back off. Clearly the issue is a lot more complex than this point, and many many good business reasons on both sides have been cited in the media for the agreement, but this one had not been thrown into the pot....thought I'd see whether it sticks.
Posted by Geoff Revill | November 17, 2009 12:57 PM
Posted on November 17, 2009 12:57
Geoff, Wasn't it one of Clausewitz's principles not to expose yourself on more flanks than necessary? The AMD case was something Intel had control over, whereas it has no control over the actions of the anti-trust people in Korea, Japan, Europe, New York and the FTC. So closing down the one front over which they had control may have seemed prudent.
Posted by David Manners
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November 17, 2009 1:23 PM
Posted on November 17, 2009 13:23