Federal Trade Commission earlier announced that it had sued semiconductor giant Intel. Even though rival AMD swallowed its pride and made friends outside the court. The FTC on the other hand did not stop there but decided to take things to the next level and sue Intel , who was quick to reply.
The perhaps most interesting bit of the suit was the large weight put on Intel’s actions on the GPU market. Where NVIDIA is one of its biggest competitors.
NVIDIA VP Jen Hsun Huang holding up what was claimed to be a Fermi graphics card
Intel was accused of moving towards a monopoly-like operation on the GPU market and with illegal measures kept NVIDIA and AMD products out of the market.
NVIDIA’s VP Jen Hsun Huang, known for not holding back in his words against Intel, has explained to the company employees that FTC’s suit could be the start of a new market situation in an internal letter. The letter can be found below.
The U.S. government announced today that it has filed an antitrust lawsuit against Intel. This is an action the industry needs and one that consumers deserve. And it’s one that can completely transform the computer industry.
The facts are clear. The FTC has charged that Intel has used its monopoly illegally to stifle innovation, to keep prices for their products inflated, and to unfairly block competitors. The FTC believes that millions of consumers have paid more and received less quality in return–and that companies and their employees have been forced out of markets where Intel has been threatened.
Intel is fully aware that great graphics have become one of the most important features for consumer PCs, the fastest-growing segment of the PC market. Even more alarming to Intel is the revolutionary parallel computing technology in our GPUs that is being adopted by software developers across the world. The more successful we became, the bigger threat we were to Intel’s monopoly. Instead of creating competitive GPU solutions and competing on the merits of their products, Intel has resorted to unlawful acts to stop us. The FTC announced today that this isn’t acceptable.
Nothing this complicated gets decided quickly. It will take months for the FTC case to be heard by an administrative judge who will then recommend a ruling back to the FTC. And it’s possible that this decision could be appealed. But today is a huge step forward for all of us that will begin to re-level the playing field.
Today’s FTC announcement highlights the industry-changing impact of the GPU and the importance of our work. Our innovation is making the PC magical and amazing again. I can now imagine the day when Intel can no longer block consumers from enjoying our creation and experience computing in a way we know is possible.
Even if the case is not expected to reach court until the second half of next year and will most likely be thrown around between judges for some time there is a big shiny silver lining, says Jen Hsun.
