Animation software, Album maker, Video converter

Edited by Yuzhesoft, Aug. 5, 2010

 

The Federal Trade Commission and Intel today announced a settlement of the charges. This information has been confirmed today by the Federal Trade Commission. Eventually, Intel’s antitrust tangle with the Federal Trade Commission is over.

Undoubtly, it is a good news for the alternatives of Intel. Last December, the Federal Trade Commission sued Intel that it forced Dell, HP, IBM through threat, lure and price binding to buy Intel chips. Now, the settlement prohibits Intel from offering computer makers benefits to buy its chips exclusively and bans it from retaliating against other computer makers if they do business with non-Intel suppliers.

In addition, the FTC settlement order will require Intel to:

• Modify its intellectual property agreements with AMD, Nvidia and Via so that those companies have more freedom to consider mergers or joint ventures with other companies, without the threat of being sued by Intel for patent infringement.
• Offer to extend Via’s x86 licensing agreement for five years beyond the current agreement, which expires in 2013.
• Maintain a key interface, known as the PCI Express Bus, for at least six years in a way that will not limit the performance of graphics-processing chips. These assurances will provide incentives to manufacturers of complementary, and potentially competitive, products to Intel CPUs to continue to innovate.
• Disclose to software developers that Intel computer compilers discriminate between Intel chips and non-Intel chips, and that they may not register all the features of non-Intel chips. Intel also will have to reimburse all software vendors who want to recompile their software using a non-Intel compiler.

Professor Nicholas Economides of New York University’s Stern School of Business said the settlement should benefit computer users.
"I believe that the settlement will decrease prices for microprocessors and graphics chips, and that will translate to lower prices for computers,"Economides said in an e-mail. "Intel’s past practices were artificially disadvantaging competitors, and that kept prices high."