Intel sees the light ... maybe

[unixronin]

Intel and AMD just settled their autitrust and patent-licensing disputes.  ...For now.  Hopefully it'll last this time.

Under the new agreement, AMD and Intel have agreed to drop all past patent cross-licensing disputes, enter a new five-year patent cross-licensing pact, and terminate all current antitrust and patent-infringement litigation worldwide.  The agreement also ends Intel's opposition to the GlobalFoundries spin-off, and frees up GlobalFoundries to pursue fab business for non-AMD customers.  Additionally, Intel will pay AMD a $1.25 billion penalty and has agreed to abide by "a set of business practice provisions" that basically amounts to halting its widespread practice of using bribes, kickbacks, and threats of supply restrictions to encourage computer manufacturers to reduce their business with AMD.

This has been along time coming.  Perhaps Intel finally Gets It that playing this kind of dirty pool only hurts their image and leads potential customers to question Intel's ability to compete on the strength of its products alone.

Intel has very good products.  So does AMD.  If Intel and AMD compete fairly on their merits, they will drive a continuing mutual improvement in their products, which can only be good both for them and for everyone else.  We need only look at Microsoft to see how this drive to improve is lacking in a monopoly-dominated market.

(The Detroit auto industry is a different case.  GM, Ford and Chrysler may not have been a single monopolistic company, but in many ways, the way they've designed and built cars for the last half-century, they might as well have been.  The key factor there was not near-monopoly control of the US auto market, though, but more the handing over of final authority on engineering decisions from the engineers who wanted to make the product better, to the accountants who wanted only to shave every last nickel out of it, combined with a lack of incentive to build more efficient engines because US gasoline was so cheap for so long.)

This is a new page for Intel and AMD.  Let's hope they stay with it.

Comments

[ithildae]

Autos are something that will be in demand for quite a while. Detroit has the engineering skills and capacity to produce a quality product. The issue is their cost structure and incentives to produce what the customers want. As long as labor costs drive engineering to the limits of safety to even compete, US auto companies are dead. It is all over but the thrashing. The government may keep them on life support for a while, but exponential entitlement program growth will force the government to divest the car companies. It will not matter how many union jobs are at stake. (I am assuming that the government will not run the car companies at a profit, ever.)

I really do see the potential for a viable auto industry in the US.

[unixronin]

So do I. I just don't think it's going to be based in Detroit/Flint/Dearborn any more.

[ithildae]

I don't see why not. You have the cheap labor there. Lots of vacant facilities already setup to produce cars. Lots of expertise in all aspects of auto production, mostly unemployed. Seems like an ideal place.

I don't think it will be related to the "Big Three" auto companies in any way.

Tesla Motors is HQ'd in California, with the plant in Arizona (I think.) Plenty of car IP ready to be had cheap. The fences for entry are high in that segment of the market.

[unixronin]

A "cheap labor" force that thinks any auto company job is going to be back to, as you pointed out, UAW business-as-usual, and which is in the habit of vandalizing vehicles not made by the Detroit Big Three. And those vacant facilities are all set up to produce Detroit-as-usual cars.

Nope, I think there's no reason for any New Generation automaker to set up in Detroit. Detroit's day is over. There's plenty of better places to build cars. Look at the Corvette plant in Bowling Green, Kentucky, or look at where almost any of the Japanese manufacturers with plants in the US have chosen to site their plants.