Show us your paperwork - AMD

Freshly baked subpoenas

AMD vs Intel AMD continues to push forward in its anti-trust battle against Intel, announcing today that it has shifted from customer document preservation mode to customer document production mode.

The law permits AMD to ask companies that it either does business with, or has tried to do business with, to hold onto their e-mails, papers and anything else relevant. That means the likes of Dell, IBM, Sun Microsystems and Sony. AMD made such requests earlier this year and has now moved to ask these companies to start turning over their documentation.

Even though it's not an AMD customer, Dell has already agreed to comply with the earlier subpoenas.

In an Oct. 4 filing, AMD asked that Gateway, Sony, Toshiba, Rackable Systems, NEC, CompUSA, Office Depot, Egenera, Hewlett Packard, Dell, Sun, IBM, Fujitsu, Supermicro, Circuit City and others send in their files.

Some of these names prove more interesting than others.

Rackable Systems, for example, has enjoyed a booming Opteron-based server business in tandem with HP, although you don't hear much about this from HP. For its part, Supermicro broke from the Intel-only camp in May but refused to tell the public about it. The AMD/Intel war can trigger the oddest sales tactics.

Then, of course, you have Dell which remains in the Intel-only camp, meaning it has had to watch all of it major rivals ship faster, dual-core Opteron powered servers for months while it waits for Intel to develop a similar product.

AMD has charged Intel with using dirty tactics to keep customers from picking up the Athlon and Opteron chips. Intel denies any wrongdoing and says the market will decide which company makes the better processor.

Fun stuff. ®