Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD)

[bobs10]

you...

They have a chance, something they never had before. The lawsuit apparently made all the difference in the world.

me...

Yeah, of all the things that have happened over the last 8 years, that has to rank right up there with INTC's decision to go with the Itanium ISA over X86 as the biggest things effecting AMD’s success. Up until the suit the Opteron and Athlon64 receptions had been lukewarm at best. With the suit the floodgates were suddenly opened. From that point of view whether AMD succeeds in court or not is much less important. Just having INTC's coercive and predatory practices restricted makes the suit worth while.

Not that there haven't been lots of other milestones. The Fab30, fab36 decisions, the melding with IBM in technology development, the move to SOI, the bringing onboard of the DEC guys, the commitment to the X86 ISA, getting the German commitment for fab30/36. All these things and much, much more have had direct consequences, but the 2 listed above are to me the most important events in the success AMD is now reaping.