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The article is total nonsense.
If you want some total speculation without much information here is some. I saw what was apparently a current picture of Barrett and he did not look well to me. My wife thought the same thing. So, the question came to mind of whether Barrett is retiring because of health but I suspect that is not at all likely.
Upon further review, I can't find perpetual in the license. But AMD uses the phrase and perpetual is the equivalent of a life of patent license which the License Agreement delivers if the Agreement is not terminated and continues until expiration.
AMD can lose the Intel license grant if Intel terminates the License for cause (section 6.2) A change of control is specifically mentioned as a for termination (section 6.2(b)(7))
A redacted copy of the 2001 AMD Intel Patent License was filed with the SEC and a copy is online at FindLaw.
http://contracts.corporate.findlaw.com/agreements/amd/intel.license.2001.01.01.html
Check the license grant for the perpetual license grant which in effect provides a license for the life of the licensed patents. When the License Agreement expires the capture period ends and newly filed patent applications and any resulting patents.
The last company that I remember achieving the quarterly loss > revenue landmark was Transmeta. At this rate, AMD will enter BK the middle of this year.
If IBM micro expires about the only choice left that I can think of is TSMC with all its deficiencies. The result is that AMD is left with nothing but second rate process technology that is even further behind Intel than its current one plus year lag.
I think the reality is that AMD will not survive in its current form and will expire well before the possible threat of an end for IBM Micro.
Doing a critical deal with Samsung is like lying down to sleep with a giant python. You will end up getting squeezed to death.
Circuit City will be liquidated.
http://www.cnbc.com/id/28691870
Spansion does not have to wait for the expiration of the 30 day period to file a bankruptcy action. Probably it will file before then. The stock at 13 cents is already priced for a company in bankruptcy.
All of you need to take a deep breath and stop guessing about the legal protection of confidential information.
The Intel Confidential phrase is almost surely embedded in the PowerPoint template used to make the slides. When developed and first presented the presentation was probably considered confidential. Handouts are routinely converted to pdf format and the posting by HP is a pdf document.
Intel can at a later time can release the confidential classification. Voila, what was confidential is now not confidential. HP may even have asked for and received permission to post the material on its web site. It is not a big surprise that the Intel Confidential label was not removed from a pdf document.
The material in the presentation is not high value stuff. To draw comparisons with red book and yellow book material does not make any sense. The values of the contents are entirely different.
Note that much of the material in a yellow book is revealed when a product is released in documents such as hardware and software reference manuals.
I have noticed a marked decline in quality of coverage from the mainstream media
You have just been watching too much Fox News and reading the WSJ editorial pages too often.
<ducking>
Who are the "they" that you suggest had to change the name of Global Warming? I suggested -- and so have others -- that a better name was Climate Change because it is a broader term that covers more effects than just increasing temperature.
One effect of Global Warming is changing weather that will produce droughts in now fertile growing regions. Droughts fit easily within the title of climate change.
Legitimate science passes will pass peer review. Science funded by Exxon-Mobil is advocacy of a self serving view..
There is legitimate debate about the nature and quantity of climate change but none about the principle that Global Warming exists.
If you have some peer reviewed studies or even studies by scientists trained in a relevant field, cite the study. Simply categorizing a view as "politically correct" is a terribly weak argument. The phrase means nothing more than "I disagree" with a snarl for emphasis.
The question of whether Global Warming or more accurately Climate Change caused by humans exists is no longer a subject of debate among legitimate scientists. There is a a political view held by the right wing that disputes the existence of Global Warming but that view in now clearly discredited and has no scientific basis.
The Globabl Warming denial view is heavily funded by Exxon-Mobil and promoted by James Inhofe (Senator - Oil Patch). His current list of "Scientists" who deny the existence of Global Warming is down to 400.
http://www.thedailygreen.com/environmental-news/latest/inhofe-global-warming-deniers-47011101
Inhofe's 400 Global Warming Deniers Debunked
List of "Scientists" Includes Economists, Amateurs, TV Weathermen and Industry Hacks
Michael Dell should tell his head of procurement to pull the qualification ticket for all AMD processors.
If Dell was feeling full of Holiday cheer he could also request an email notice to Hector and Dirk with an attached Merry Christmas greeting.
Why don't you just calm down and go have a nice big cup of coffee?
http://humour.200ok.com.au/image_nicebigcup.html
Maybe you could run a Koolbox like race car drivers use
http://koolboxproducts.com/Koolbox_IV.php
If you don't like the data, attack the paper it is printed on. Great analytical skill there.
If you were paying attention you might have noticed that the article indicated the data "comes from the car companies themselves... Wall Street analysts have done similar calculations".
The Big 3 does have a cost problem but the article shows that the current cost of labor is a minor part of the cost problem. A big factor is the fixed cost of under utilized factories.
The Big 3 have suffered big losses in market share to the foreign competition. I saw some data showing a GM decrease in market share from 50% to a current level of about 20% Ford and Chrysler also suffered big losses of market share.
The current crisis for the Big 3 is the recession and tough economy. People are not buying cars from the Big 3 Toyota or anybody else because they are reducing spending. The purchase of a car is a discretionary item that can generally be delayed and is therefore one of the first cuts for most people.
One report I remember showed GM sales down by 40% while Toyota sales were down by 35%. Both are very bad numbers
It's generally accepted among economists that FDR's policies prolonged the depression.
Wrong again. You are repeating a right-wing "deliberate misrepresentation of the facts"
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/10/opinion/10krugman.html
Now, there’s a whole intellectual industry, mainly operating out of right-wing think tanks, devoted to propagating the idea that F.D.R. actually made the Depression worse. So it’s important to know that most of what you hear along those lines is based on deliberate misrepresentation of the facts.
GM is in a lot of trouble but not because it pays its workers $73 an hour.
Big 3 auto workers in the US make about $28 an hour compared to about $25 an hour for foreign company auto workers in the US. Those rates are pretty close.
In order to get to the $73 an hour number you have to throw in a lot of costs including about $30 an hour for the costs of retired workers.
The NY Times has a recent article on the break down of the $73 hour that gives one take on labor costs. There are other breakdowns running around but this is about the best I have seen.
[T]he main problem facing Detroit, overwhelmingly, is not the pay gap. That’s unfortunate because fixing the pay gap would be fairly straightforward.
The real problem is that many people don’t want to buy the cars that Detroit makes. Fixing this problem won’t be nearly so easy.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/10/business/economy/10leonhardt.html?scp=2&sq=David%20Leonhardt&st=cse
$73 an Hour: Adding It Up
Seventy-three dollars an hour.
That figure — repeated on television and in newspapers as the average pay of a Big Three autoworker — has become a big symbol in the fight over what should happen to Detroit. To critics, it is a neat encapsulation of everything that’s wrong with bloated car companies and their entitled workers.
To the Big Three’s defenders, meanwhile, the number has become proof positive that autoworkers are being unfairly blamed for Detroit’s decline. “We’ve heard this garbage about 73 bucks an hour,” Senator Bob Casey, a Pennsylvania Democrat, said last week. “It’s a total lie. I think some people have perpetrated that deliberately, in a calculated way, to mislead the American people about what we’re doing here.”
So what is the reality behind the number? Detroit’s defenders are right that the number is basically wrong. Big Three workers aren’t making anything close to $73 an hour (which would translate to about $150,000 a year).
But the defenders are not right to suggest, as many have, that Detroit has solved its wage problem. General Motors, Ford and Chrysler workers make significantly more than their counterparts at Toyota, Honda and Nissan plants in this country. Last year’s concessions by the United Automobile Workers, which mostly apply to new workers, will not change that anytime soon.
And yet the main problem facing Detroit, overwhelmingly, is not the pay gap. That’s unfortunate because fixing the pay gap would be fairly straightforward.
The real problem is that many people don’t want to buy the cars that Detroit makes. Fixing this problem won’t be nearly so easy.
The success of any bailout is probably going to come down to Washington’s willingness to acknowledge as much.
Let’s start with the numbers. The $73-an-hour figure comes from the car companies themselves. As part of their public relations strategy during labor negotiations, the companies put out various charts and reports explaining what they paid their workers. Wall Street analysts have done similar calculations.
The calculations show, accurately enough, that for every hour a unionized worker puts in, one of the Big Three really does spend about $73 on compensation. So the number isn’t made up. But it is the combination of three very different categories.
[See the article for the details of the breakdown.]
Do you realize that the data you have is false? Big 3 Auto workers do not make $73 an hour.
You are just repeating propaganda from the anti-union crowd.
The AMD material is important enough that the EC apparently cited the material in the charges against Intel. If true, then there is no doubt that Intel is entitled to review the documents and other material to prepare its defense.
The EC theory of "trust us", we have correctly analyzed the AMD documents and they are not useful for Intel's reply is nonsense. The most basic concepts of fairness in any legal system allow the accused to inspect and challenge the evidence being used against them.
It has been apparent for some time that the first opportunity for Intel to receive a fair hearing would take place in the formal Court system where actual rules of law apply. The basic philosophy of the EC is that they want to give Intel a fair hearing so they can get on the with hanging.
I think that it is great strategy for Intel to launch an action in the Court system and challenge the basic operation of the EC. It is far better to go on offense instead of playing the rigged EC game and then appealing an adverse decision. The failure of the EC to allow Intel to review the source material for its charges presents a hugely vulnerable target for Intel to attack.
NBER: U.S. In Recession That Began Last December
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/12/01/AR2008120101365.html?nav=rss_email/components
It's official: The United States is in a recession -- and it started a year ago.
The nation's economy peaked, and the recession began, in December 2007, the National Bureau of Economic Research announced today.
The group's Business Cycle Dating Committee, the semi-official arbiter of these things, defines a recession as "a significant decline in economic activity spread across the economy, lasting more than a few months, normally visible in production, employment, real income, and other indicators."
While analysts have been all but certain that a recession has been underway for months, there has been some debate over exactly when it began. Last winter, employers started cutting jobs and growth slowed significantly, but the decline appears to have accelerated over the summer.
The committee concluded that the start of the recession was December 2007 -- due in large part, it said in a statement, to the decline in jobs that began that month. But it noted that many other data points confirm the diagnosis.
"The committee determined that the decline in economic activity in 2008 met the standard for a recession," the group said in its statement. "Evidence other than the ambiguous movements of the quarterly product-side measure of domestic production confirmed that conclusion. Many of these indicators, including monthly data on the largest component of GDP, consumption, have declined sharply in recent months."
The NBER committee could eventually conclude that the recession has already ended. However, economists outside the group think that is unlikely, given that most economic data released in recent weeks have been getting worse, not better.
The NBER is a private, nonprofit group based in Cambridge, Mass. Its Business Cycle Dating Committee currently includes seven leading macroeconomists, and they made the recession call in a conference call Friday night, according to the group's statement.
An eighth member of the committee, Christina Romer, an economist at the University of California at Berkeley, resigned last week; she has been named chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers in the Obama administration. Her husband, fellow Berkeley economist David Romer, remained on the committee.
There is an old saying in that applies to articles as well as computer data: Bull$hit in and Bull$shit out.
Sun is a possible category 2 survivor but it must quickly change to a software and services oriented company that sells Intel based hardware -- Xeon and IPF.
AMD is a clear member of the walking dead. The only part of AMD that will survive is the already severed Dubai Foundry Company. Even then, DFC will only survive as long as Abu Dhabi wants to cover its losses as it tries to compete with TSMC. Probably, 5 years or so from now the financial support will end for DFC and it will follow AMD swirling down the drain.
The fastest Core i7, the 965 Extreme, is more than 2.6 times as fast as AMD’s current flagship CPU
Nehalem presents: a new AMD anthem.
http://www.newgrounds.com/audio/listen/73792
The sleezebag headed to jail was indeed one of the attorneys at the Milberg firm that filed the class action against Dell and Intel charging that Dell received unlawful discounts from Intel. The action was dismissed and never refiled.
AMD asserts that having 50% of the seats on the TFC Board makes TFC a subsidiary under the definition in the License Agreement. If AMD is correct, then the source of funds for the NY fab are irrelevant.
When thinking about the need for a patent license from Intel, think about a semiconductor business and not just X86 processors. Any semiconductor company that runs advance processes needs a license from Intel. If you choose to make a modern, complex microprocessor then you will need some of Intel's architecture design patents Out of Order Execution, cache design, etc. that do not necessarily depand on a particular instruction set.
The patents on a lot of the quirks unique to the X86 architecture are quickly disappearing into the past. New features specific to the X86 architecture do exist but represent a small part of the larger picture.
If AMD wants to obtain the benefit of the 2001-2010 License Agreement during the running out period of the patents it will have to continue to meet the terms of the Agreement. Therefore, TFC will have to remain a Subsidiary for AMD to use the license to cover the TFC foundry manufacture.
Any third party foundry would be subject to the foundry limit, apparently 20%, that exists in the current Agreement.
GB is correct and the License Agreement provides a license that covers the life of the licensed patents. Look at the license grant and the termination sections and you can figure that out.
http://contracts.corporate.findlaw.com/agreements/amd/intel.license.2001.01.01.html
i'm not so sure amd would have something new and wonderful post 1/1/2011
This a very good point. It is virtually certain that Intel will have massive R&D in 2011 that will generate many patentable inventions in both processor design and silicon processing.
What kind of R&D will AMD have in 2011? Who knows. AMD will not have any silicon processing inventions because it will exist as a fabless design house. AMD may also have shrunk again so that it does not have the financial resources for much design R&D.
The negotiation after license expiration would be for a Renewal of the License Agreement to cover patents filed beginning Jan 1, 2011 and going forward. Assuming normal expiration all of the patents filed in before the end of the capture period at the end of 2010 are licensed for the life of the patents.
The License covering 2001 through 2010 is actually a 4th generation License Agreement. and it was negotiated and signed after the expiration of the 3rd generation license that covered the 1996 to 2000 period.
AMD would have to do more than point to a document that is titled Patent License Agreement. It would have to demonstrate that it actually has a license by proving that the terms of the license cover the conduct accused of patent infringement.
If a microprocessor is made by a 100% subsidiary such as AMD Saxony and sold by AMD, the Delaware corporation signing the Agreement, proving a license would be a trivial matter. But when the scope of the license is an issue as it will be for 44% owned TFC, then AMD will have to show that the manufacture by TFC is within the scope of the license.
Apparently, AMD is going to assert that TFC is a Subsidiary as defined in the Agreement. That will require establishing the correct meaning of the disputed definition of Subsidiary in the Agreement and proving that the actual TFC structure meets the definition. AMD will have the burden to prove, yes TMC actually is a Subsidiary and therefore the activity is licensed.
Intel would have to prove that AMD was infringing its patents. However, a license is a defense to patent infringement and AMD would have to prove that it had a license.
At present,it appears the key issue is whether TFC is a subsidiary. AMD will have structured the transaction to give them every advantage in proving their case.
I think that a major part of AMD's strategy is to run out the clock until the License Agreement terminates in 2010. The TFC transaction will not be complete until early 2009. A few quarters of stalling and shouting about the antitrust law suit will move the clock closer to the end of the 2010. Perhaps AMD will insist that the license issue should become part of the antitrust
After the Agreement terminates, AMD can then begin to negotiate a new license that will allow coverage for TFC and perhaps even other foundries. Throw in some protracted litigation and AMD should easily be able to kick the can down the road until it ceases to exist in its present form.
Edit: As you indicated in your message to GB, what does AMD have to lose? Nothing, and it buys some time.
If Intel files a patent infringement suit, then AMD would have the burden of proving a license as a defense. However, before filing a patent suit Intel would like to know whether AMD has a strong claim or just a flimsy pretext that TFC is a licensed subsidiary.
Almost certainly the choice of 50% instead of more than 50% is a result of negotiations.
The real question is whether "voting shares" for The Foundry Co exist. The actual structure of TFC is unknown and I am sure that AMD wants to keep it that way. Smoke and mirrors will work better for AMD than a full examination of the facts.
Co you have a source or more information?
This comment is 100% on target in my view.
“AMD, in our view, is likely violating the Intel x86 cross-license, but we suspect Intel may look the other way as it benefits Intel to have an AMD that will over time have increasing variable costs (good for ASPs),” Mosesmann wrote in an Oct. 7 research note. “Intel may choose to entice AMD to drop the anti-trust suits against Intel in return for this altruistic gesture (true realpolitik policy at play here).”
AMD already sold its "White House" in Sunnyvale and took a rent back so getting behind on the mortgage is a practiced gamble for them.
Yes, Intel and Microsoft have tons of cash. But that will not stop runs on commercial banks, investment banks or money market accounts.
Thiel is an idiot. The problem is that the financial system is heading for a total lock up.
A serious question that I have been asking myself is where does Intel keep its $12 billion in cash? With all of the bank failures, you can't reliably put a billion here and a billion there in just any old bank where it might disappear. You can't keep the stash in $100 bills in a vault in the Noyce building in Santa Clara.