Posted on Monday, May 25 2009 @ 0:20 CEST by Thomas De Maesschalck
CNET
wrote last week that AMD is complaining about a deal Intel reportedly struck with Apple in 2005. Tom McCoy, AMD's senior vice president of legal affairs, claims Intel has given Apple help to port PowerPC to x86 in return for exclusivity on the Apple platform.
McCoy said that a deal was struck when Apple moved from the PowerPC (IBM-Motorola) chip architecture to the x86 (Intel-AMD) architecture. The transition was announced by Steve Jobs at the Worldwide Developers Conference in 2005.
"They made a deal when they were porting over from PowerPC to x86 as to how much Intel was willing to pay for that port. My guess is that Intel asked for and won exclusivity in return for the help that they gave Apple to port," McCoy said.
McCoy continued: "That deal will not be exclusive forever and when that exclusivity is over, I'm sure they (Apple) will choose on the merits. We'll have a chance to compete for Apple's business when Apple is ready," he said. Intel denies this allegation.
