I’m still coming to terms with today’s news from Brussels. Wow.  I encourage you to read Nigel’s assessment which details how the fallout from Intel’s third straight conviction by government  watchdogs comes down to three issues: price, innovation and choice.  If you love technology and what it can do for people the way I do, perhaps the most exciting thing to emerge from yesterday’s ruling is the huge potential for a step change in the pace of innovation. Why?

I believe competition is the “secret sauce” that drives innovation. That’s true in any industry, and it’s also true in life. Would the U.S. have put a man on the moon if not for Sputnik? Maybe, but there’s no question that the Space Race and attending accelerated pace of innovationwas fueled by very high stakes competition between the US and the former Soviet Union.

Goliath with brass knuckles

At AMD we live to compete and innovate, and it starts by asking questions like “What will it take to deliver the next-generation computing experience?” And while innovation with impact is our calling card, it’s more than fair to say that AMD also loves a good fight. But hopefully the world now knows that we’ve fight an enormous opponent that rigs the game to ensure AMD can never fully win fair and square.

Like Nigel said, competition investigators have for a third time (Japan, Korea, European Union) collected evidence showing that especially when AMD opens commanding product leads on Intel and we take those innovations to the marketplace, Intel uses bribery and coercive tactics to block those innovations. Whole AMD customer segments and sales channels are effectively shutdown by Intel.That’s Don Corleone type stuff, folks. That’s David versus Goliath, with Goliath packing brass knuckles on one hand and a brick-filled sock in the other.

The AMD Critic: “AMD should innovate, not litigate”

I’ve heard the Intel apologists say: “AMD should innovate instead of litigate.” If you doubt we fear an innovation fight with Intel or that  we can truly compete with Intel, remember that we have proven that we can out-innovate or remain competitive against Intel, a company with about 10x the resources. We are champing at the bit to attack an open, competitive marketplace that is no longer artificially manipulated by Goliath.

You may be sitting there saying, “OK Pat – that’s your opinion, and a biased opinion at that!” Fair enough. If that was opinion, here are 10 facts that should do some of the talking for AMD in terms of theinnovation chops we have under our roof:

Fact #1

Billions of financial transactions are conducted quickly and efficiently every day by major stock exchanges around the world on AMD-based servers.

Fact #2

All 50 Million Wii gaming consoles shipped to date run on AMD technology (ATI Hollywood GPU).

Fact #3

7 of the 10 fastest supercomputers in the world are powered by AMD processors.

Fact #4

AMD processors were trusted to power crash safety test simulations for almost 2 million new cars that hit the road in the US in 2008.

Fact #5

Realistic special effects powered by AMD technology have helped Hollywood amass more than $5.4 billion in worldwide box office revenue.

Fact #6

AMD processors in the Top500 supercomputer list account for more than 4.029 petaflops of computing power (that’s more than four thousand trillion calculations per second).

Fact #7

50% of Internet DNS traffic is efficiently and quickly routed via AMD-powered servers.

Fact #8

Musicians and producers who have collectively won 70 Grammy awards currently rely on AMD technology for their cutting edge digital music production.

Fact #9

Every month nearly 23 million travelers find their ideal trip using online travel services powered by AMD-based hardware.

Fact #10

AMD graphics and slot machine are a winning combination.  More than 75% of new slot machines in Vegas use AMD graphics to power their visually stunning imagery, and more than half of those machines also use an AMD CPU.

So to borrow from our corporate philosophy, I’m more than happy to combine these facts with our employees’ passion for innovation. And I’ve never felt better about the future of innovation than I do today.  What do you think?

Pat Moorhead is Vice President of Advanced Marketing at AMD. His postings are his own opinions and may not represent AMD’s positions, strategies or opinions. Links to third party sites are provided for convenience and unless explicitly stated, AMD is not responsible for the contents of such linked sites and no endorsement is implied.