AMD Calls Out Intel...We Think.

Second-place chipmaker Advanced Micro Devices added fuel to its anti-trust fire against Intel this week, filing a pre-trial brief with the court overseeing the company's anti-competition suit that claims...well, something we're pretty sure is salacious.

The reason we're not sure has to do with the public version of the brief strongly resembling Anthony Comstock's copy of Ulysses — because it reportedly names specific individuals at a number of large computer manufacturers, the brief has been heavily redacted. What remains legible hints at an interesting tale, with AMD alleging that Intel actually paid large manufacturers to blackball AMD chips — in one case, reportedly paying Hewlett-Packard to turn down 840,000 of 1,000,000 free processors offered by AMD. They've also alleged that Intel deliberately coded it's compilers to discriminate against AMD chips, even going so far as to cause whole system crashes.

Presumably, the information — when released from the pre-trial confidentiality order — will be of interest to investigators in New York and at the European Commission. If it's half as outrageous as it seems to be, it may even force Deborah Majoras, the stodgily pro-Intel FTC chairman, to bow to the demands of Congress and the other Commissioners and order an investigation. Then again, we could find that under all that black ink, it's just an ordinary day in Dublin...