The Intel Mafia?

[Viditor]

First, let me say that I don't really know if this is OT or not...if not, let me apologise in advance.
I read an article today in the Inquirer from April that really gave me the chills...

Intel Strong armed vendors

I can't help but flashing on all of those movies where the mobster asks the victim how his family is feeling...
And then I noticed all of the reports on a lack of motherboards for the Opteron and it sure seems like a flashback to the Athlon launch!
Has anyone else seen reports of this anywhere else?

 

[AnonymouseUser]

Yes, I remember a few sites with stories of this, but Intel has been doing this for quite some time. Check out this article at Tom's Hardware from 1997. Here is one concerning Intergraph from 1999.

 

[Quackmaster]

Is Intel the Mafia? Maybe. Only because of their near monopoly on the market in terms of total platform development. Otherwise it just seem like typical business practices to me. The business world is cutthroat, period.

Intel tries to prepare for the demands of our software. We need more bandwidth for video apps or video games or DB servers? They have their eyes and minds on the target long before the market deems the features to be necessary. They set, or are a huge market factor, in core logic, chipsets, mobos, RAM, networking, bus architecture and friggin' everything else. So they're totally like the mafia in that respect. They've got their hands in everything.

But ya gotta love how unlike the mafia, they can be forced into doing something they really don't wanna do. Rambus? Intel's plan had been for it to be THE memory for their ever-higher scaling CPUs and buses. Rambus is perfect for their long term strategy. But we said "get the f**k outta here with that Bullpucky!!" and Intel has done just that (for the moment anyway..).

Can you imagine if the mafia was told, "yeah, for years you've been planning on getting everyone to buy smak just from your dealers. Stuff that you helped develop and backed heavily. But take your smak and shove it. We're gonna buy from your competitors. Not because we don't think your smak is good. But because it's too expensive, you're trying too hard to force it on us, and well....we just don't feel like it."

Gotta love JEDEC, AMD and the especially the tawainese mobo makers. Intel threatened them (remember how Asus had the best KX133 board, but wouldn't post it on their website 'cuz of Intel's threats to mobo makers?

), and they just did what the market wanted. Competition is a goooood thing

 

[Viditor]

Thanks for the link on Tom's, my how times have changed for THG!

Quakmaster: I can't really go along with your Rambus analogy...not even the mafia strongarms it's victims in the harsh light of public opinion, they do it behind closed doors. Intel tried VERY hard to do just that with Rambus but to no avail...the reason was that Via was able to backdoor it's rights to the P3 bus and offer a far more competitive alternative (though Intel fought like crazy to suppress it...).
Calling Intel's tactics "cutthroat business practices", is like calling a terrorist "someone who needs a nap" IMHO...
As to Intel trying to "prepare for the demands of our software", I guess we see it differently...I see Intel more trying to define what kind of software we will have...sort of like Microsoft (if we build it, they MUST come...).
I guess I see Intel's practices more as exstortion rather than technological innovation, and what scares me is that they might just succeed...they certainly aren't worried about any reprocussions!
JMHO