Posted on Thursday, December 03 2009 @ 21:18 CET by Thomas De Maesschalck
Hexus
writes the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is still gathering information that could lead to antitrust action against Intel. One of the new developments in the case is that the FTC has expanded its investigation to the disputes between Intel and NVIDIA.
Another focus for the FTC's investigation is Intel's claim, made at the start of this year, that the chipset licensing agreement it has with NVIDIA doesn't apply to Intel CPUs that have integrated memory controllers. As Intel CPUs are increasingly of this variety, NVIDIA was not happy at being denied the opportunity to develop chipsets for them, and promptly counter-sued.
The Business Week report claims FTC insiders have confirmed this NVIDIA focus as well as the fact that it continues to ask AMD for information. "The FTC is looking at how Intel uses various levers at its disposal to stop competition against it," said the un-named FTC source, although there is no official FTC statement on the matter.
