| It is a fair bet that more than half of
the PCs bought this Christmas in America for less than $1 000 will have AMD
rather than Intel inside. Not content with this seasonal miracle, Advanced Micro
Devices is bidding to loosen Intel's grip on the more profitable high end of the
market too. It could well succeed. For most of its existence, AMD has lived in the shadow of the deal that it did with Intel in 1982. To power its PCs, IBM had decided to buy Intel's new x-86 chips, but wanted a second supplier to keep Intel under control. Under the terms of the agreement, Intel got the contract, but had to share its intellectual property with the smaller AMD. Intel broke the arrangement, AMD started a lawsuit, and thus began nearly a decade of bitter legal battles between the two companies. The conflict misrepresented AMD's business, absorbed management energy and weakened investor confidence. By selling cheap Intel clones(克隆产品), AMD staggered (蹒跚，摇晃) on, sometimes quite successfully, especially if Intel was late to market with a new product. But despite the support of computer makers complaining under Intel's dominance, trying to get a lift on the back of an ill-tempered 8001b gorilla(大猩猩) was proving a risky form of existence. Eventually, under a settlement in 1995, AMD gave up any rights to Intel microcode. It was confident that its home-grown k5 would give Intel's Pentium a run for its money, while a new $1.8 billion plant in Texas would meet demand and match Intel's manufacturing skills. It did not. Design faults put the k5 more than two years behind the Pentium, and the Austin plant lay largely idle. |