intel

Rambus needs more controversy and scandal like the Internet needs more bloggers and porn. As mired in legal trouble as this company is, you've really got to do something egregious to get noticed.

According to a story by The Recorder, a California legal paper, the wife of Rambus CEO Harold Hughes did just that. Nancy Hughes anonymously posted 170 messages on a popular investor message board over a 10-month period. In her posts, clarissamehitable--alias Nancy Hughes--vigorously defended her embattled husband, and criticized current and former members of the company's management team.

Nancy's posts were so obviously those of a Rambus insider that they aroused not only the suspicion of other posters on the board, but company officials, as well. Rambus brought in outside legal counsel to head up an investigation, which ultimately turned up none other than Hughes' wife.

According to a company spokeswoman, Rambus' board of directors concluded that there was no wrongdoing on the part of either Hughes.

What's troubling is that Nancy was pegged as an insider for good reason. If some of her posts were not inside information, they certainly appear to come razor close to crossing the line. And there's evidence that someone may have removed some of her posts from the message board.

Full disclosure: I was an executive officer of Rambus from 2002 to 2003 and I am a shareholder. I have never posted on an investor message board and neither has my wife...as far as I know.… Read more

It's much easier to analyze data when you've already determined what you want to conclude.

The author of the "economic study" produced by the ERS Group on behalf of AMD's antitrust lawyers, O'Melveny & Myers, said that his analysis of Intel's profits over the last 10 years assumed from the start that Intel was guilty of anticompetitive behavior, rather than reaching that conclusion based on the data. Michael Williams, director of the ERS Group, calculated that Intel has pocketed $60 billion in ill-gained profits after a thorough exercise that seems to have been … Read more

I bumped into Dirk Hohndel, Intel's Chief Linux and Open Source Technologist, at OSCON last week and started probing him on Intel's open-source activities. As it turns out, for a hardware company, Intel writes a heck of a lot of software. Dirk and I found time to talk about Intel's open-source involvement in depth. This interview was born.

I've known Dirk for a few years, first bumping into him at OSBC 2004. He was annoyed with the WiFi (or lack thereof), and set about to fixing it. He did, and gained immediate respect from me for that feat. I've been an admirer ever since.

In this interview, Dirk goes deep and broad in his analysis of Intel's open-source activities. Read on for more....… Read more

Nvidia painted a pretty picture in the graphics market during the second quarter.

The company's market share soared by 81 percent compared with a year ago, as it overtook AMD's ATI division and erased some of Intel's lead in the market for PC graphics, according to new data from Jon Peddie Research. Intel held 37.6 percent of the market in the second quarter, while Nvidia garnered 32.6 percent and AMD had 19.5 percent.

Intel holds the lead in graphics by virtue of its integrated graphics chipsets, which ship with low-end desktops and lots of … Read more

AMD has managed to push past the effects of a disastrous inventory problem last quarter, but not all the way.

Mercury Research reports that AMD gained back four of the six points of market share it lost in the first quarter after an inventory screwup. Intel shipped 76.3 percent of all x86 chips for the desktop, notebook and server markets in the second quarter, while AMD shipped 22.9 percent. Intel hit 80 percent in the first quarter of this year, but that was an anomaly based on AMD's supply-chain troubles, said Dean McCarron, principal analyst at Mercury … Read more

Intel recently hired Christopher Guest (of "This Is Spinal Tap" fame) to direct two music videos in support of a company ad campaign. (The videos are on YouTube, here and here.)

Genuine computer-security guru Bruce Schneier mentioned one of these videos in his blog (here), but apparently couldn't bring himself to comment further.

I covered security products for Microprocessor Report, and I've been following the subject for about 25 years. I even won a CNET-sponsored contest by writing about hardware-based computer security and got a free trip to speak at Esther Dyson's PC Forum 2005 (… Read more

Intel's legal team will be very busy for the next 10 weeks.

That's how long the world's largest chipmaker has to come up with an explanation for business practices that the European Commission has declared "abuse of a dominant market position." The Directorate-General for Competition on Thursday sent Intel a "statement of objections," which sounds like a polite way of doing business but is quite serious.

The EC cited three examples of objectionable conduct after it investigated Intel's practices and the European PC market at the request of AMD. First, it said … Read more

Maybe it took extra long, 'cause it was so hard to get these giant things on the truck. In any event, the 20-inch HP HDX--a massive multimedia laptop we previewed extensively back in May--comes with some cool new hardware tweaks and is finally ready to hit dorm rooms and CEO offices around the country.

One of the first systems to be announced with Intel's revamped Centrino Duo platform, the HDX won us over with its huge 20-inch display (which moves back and forth on a giant hinged arm), touch-sensitive media control buttons, pop-out remote control, and gamer-worthy specs. … Read more

SUNNYVALE, Calif.--Apparently sometimes, you just can't say no, even when you know it's going to hurt.

That seems to be where AMD finds itself, as it tries to reconcile a draining price war against the high demand for its chips. Intel has been squeezing AMD's margins for over a year through processor price cuts, but AMD has still managed to expand its foothold inside customers like Dell and gain new customers like Toshiba.

The problem is that much of that growth is coming at the low end of the market, where less profits can be had. … Read more