Antitrust scrutiny
As we've already observed, in this time of great job insecurity there's one set of people who can safely assume their jobs are safe: Intel's legal team. In the past few weeks Intel has initiated litigation with AMD, NVIDIA and Psion and is being investigated globally over antitrust allegations.
That last bit of work for its harried lawyers is part of an interminable antitrust case brought against Intel by, you guessed it, AMD. When we wrote about Intel's concerns surrounding the cross license agreement and how it's affected by the creation of GLOBALFOUNDRIES, we speculated: "...it probably wouldn't do Intel's chances of settling the case favourably any harm to have some legal bargaining chips to exchange for concessions from AMD."
Well it seems we were not alone in that suspicion. We spoke today to Jon Carvill, global head of communications for GLOBALFOUNDRIES and former senior AMD PR dude, in order to get a GLOBALFOUNDRIES perspective on this latest development.
"From a GLOBALFOUNDRIES perspective this doesn't change anything for us," said Carvill. "We see this as a diversionary tactic from Intel to distract from the global antitrust scrutiny they face. We remain on track to manufacture products for AMD and other future customers. This also has no impact on any of our long-term growth plans (i.e. adding bulk silicon capabilities in Dresden and breaking ground in NY)."
Several things are still unclear, such as the precise details of the "material breach", how Intel thinks it can be corrected and what Intel intends to do if it's not corrected. We will be firing these and other questions at AMD and Intel and hope to bring you their answers soon.
