Intel Pulls Out $1.25B to Settle All AMD Problems

Hell has frozen over.

Let it snow let it snow.

*Throws a snowball @jazzmain*

So by "5-year cross license agreement" does that mean AMD has access to all Intel's patents and whatnot?

This is interesting! I wonder if they'll use any of that money for a tour of Bill Gates house...

Maybe this is from the Yes Men.

How much of the 1.25b is left after AMD has to pay their lawyers?

Money. The problem -and- the solution to all life's problems.
-Homer (except he said Beer)

"AMD will also withdraw all of its regulatory complaints worldwide."

So does this mean that Intel is off the hook for all the anti-competitive crap they've been getting in trouble with over the last year or so... If so, $1.25 billion sounds on the light side... didn't they give Dell $6 billion over a period of 5 years?

Poor lawers behind all that... They can kiss their christmast bonus goodbye

Should have been more than 1.25 billion because Intel kept AMD from making potential financial gains. And AMD would be in much better position to compete in the market during this recession .... that were still in.

So who won? Did AMD get the better end of the deal? I doubt Intel would have settled like this if it hadn't been getting pressured by the EU, Korea, and New York.

AMD could have gotten a LOT more. I'd have given them 10 billion if I were on a jury. Nice move Intel.

If this was the quickie settlement, I wonder how much Intel would stand to owe AMD if all of the legal disputes were allowed to play out over the years!

We will be back here in 4 years once the new patent cross license agreement is due to expire. Until then prepare to pay higher prices on CPUs. Intel will recover $1.25B from you and AMD will enjoy the higher prices also.

I guess this means all that B.S. about GlobalFoundries not having permission to produce x86 chips is gone too. I can't believe AMD settled for so little. According to another article I read, they still have over $3-billion in debt, this doesn't even cover half that.

And I agree clemaaron. Intel paid dell $6-billion to not sell AMD chips, but now AMD gets only $1.25 billion as an "oops, our bad" apology? Maybe the figure was reduced because AMD admitted some fault of their own.

Don't know. Either way, we have 5 years until more dirt turns up on Intel and they go into another "everything belongs to us" tirade against their competitors.

In the meantime, I'm going to wait and see how much they end up paying Nvidia to settle those claims.

Probably not ALL of them, but enough that, for example, Intel can't sue AMD for using x86 and AMD can't sue Intel for using x86-64.

I sure would like to be the lawyer who took a percentage cut out of the 1.25 billion dollars.

There is an additional information that isn't made clear in this article, and a very important one, I might say: AMD is now able to go completely fabless, and even to the length of being able to choose where to produce it's chips, it doesn't have to be only Globalfoundries. Anandtech has more information on it.

This wont stop "over" zealous prosecuting attorneys from charging Intel with Antitrust lawsuits. It's a win-win for AMD.

no details yet in the cross-license agreement, but hopefully it's a nice smooth transition so BOTH companies can get back to work and actually compete fairly.

Hmm, wonder what this does for the NY State AG Cuomo's antitrust investigation? If he has to drop it, would be a blow to his political aspirations .

thank god! i don't want amd to die! it keeps intel's processors cheap

To quote the NY Times, "However, the Intel-AMD settlement does not end separate antitrust actions against Intel by government bodies in the Europe, Asia and the United States."

This is Intel's way of getting AMD off their backs for another 5 years or so, and is more or less a tacit admission that they would lose a legal battle in the end - one that could potentially be more costly than the $1.25 billion they are shelling out here. In fact, they stated that themselves:

"The final negotiating point, Mr. Otellini said, was how much Intel would pay A.M.D. He said that it pained him to write such a big check, but $1.2 billion might well be a 'small multiple' of the company’s potential liability if it lost a jury trial in Delaware."

But no, it certainly doesn't affect the antitrust lawsuits already filed by government entities (Korea, the European Union, and now New York).

Granted, it's hard to try and recoup losses from bygone years, regardless of how ill-gotten those gains might have been. I think AMD acknowledges that the only way they will get market share back is to focus more on development and their new GlobalFoundries fab. The government antitrust lawsuits don't funnel any money into AMD anyways - it would just be in the form of fines that would go straight back into government coffers.

In other words, AMD will gladly take that money and run with it, and let Intel continue to be caught up with government watchdogs.

Looks like AMD is really short of cash. Hope that 1.25B will keep it alive for a while.

Just like presidenteody said... we need AMD to push Intel and keep the CPU price low!

I guess that's how AMD makes a profit these days... lol

Agreed. It's unrealistic to think AMD could have scored a multi-billion dollar judgment in the next 5 years, and even if they did, Intel would appeal and it'd be another 10 years before that would be resolved. For Intel, 1.25 billion is a bargain. It's more the perception that Intel caved and now AMD's claims are validated. Intel looks like a bully and now virtually every government is watching them like a hawk.

I think the clincher for AMD in this deal, isn't the money, its the agrrement from intel to drop their requirement that AMD produce the majority (or any) of their chips in-house. Which is THE most important part of the deal as it allows AMD to pursue the business model they have wanted to for a number of years now. I can't believe Tom's didn't even mention this! shocking.

The new cross license deal is essentially renewing the old one, but with this one major omission from it.

as said above Anandtech has an excellent article on this.

Does the cross licensing include graphics or just CPU? Core i11 6 core cpu with 400, 800, 1600 stream processors?

Intel probably could have bought AMD for that much? AMTEL CPUs anyone?

AMD needs the money NOW. Don't underestimate 1.2B. This money will give them over 5.2B liquid, and they owe about 2.1B in short-term debt. The extra will enable AMD to pay debt service for their longer term debt of 5.2B. On paper AMD will actually show a NET POSITIVE Balance Sheet for the first time in a long time.

In 5 years, we will all have affordable 22nm (and probably 16 or 32 cores) with an effort already in the works for 2 years hitting the 16nm mark. By this time, a completely different architecture of CPU may need to be designed since you can't keep shrinking much passed 16nm. Quantum computing with the manipulation of electron spin would be awesome. Your desktop would essentially be what we call a supercomputer today.

Does AMD now have access to Intels High K Metal gate (or whatever it's called) technology??

Or rather, how much is left for the company after the lawyers get paid and the Big Wigs get their bonuses? (You remember what happened with the "bailout" don't you?)