Going public
It's very difficult for the media to report comprehensively on this matter without full access to the details of the cross license agreement. Currently it's only published in redacted from, i.e. with key details deleted. We asked Silverman if AMD would be happy for the full agreement to be made public.
"AMD would be willing to make the full contents of the cross-license agreement public if Intel is willing to make details public around the US civil antitrust case into its' exclusionary business practices. There is no commercial reason to have those documents under seal," said Silverman.
Both AMD and GLOBALFOUNDRIES seem to believe this action by Intel is linked to the antitrust case that AMD has been pursuing against Intel for some time. AMD seems to perceive this latest action as an attempted piece of legal horse-trading by Intel, in which it seeks to improve its bargaining position for the eventual resolution of the antitrust case.
When AMD announced its first correspondence from Intel on this matter, it revealed that Intel was seeking a meeting with AMD to discuss these matters. We asked Silverman if this meeting had ever taken place. "This meeting did occur in advance of Intel's complaint," he said. "As evidenced by the letter AMD received from Intel, both parties left the meeting understanding one-another's point of view, but without a resolution."
To conclude, we asked what would happen to AMD if it was no longer able to make x86 processors. "We believe these are baseless claims and that AMD will be making X86 products for the foreseeable future," said Silverman.
