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Date: November 22nd, 2009

 

Last week's landmark settlement between Intel and AMD ended with Intel paying AMD $1.25 billion and signing a royalty-free x86 license. We asked our contacts how come that AMD made such a settlement and those answers was right ahead of us:

• AMD's x86 cross-license agreement was expiring in 2010, meaning AMD would not be able to continue with CPU production.
• Intel could not ban AMD from manufacturing CPUs due to x86's monopolistic microprocessor market share, but the company would have to initiate another legal case that would depend on AMD vs. Intel anti-trust lawsuit
• In the case of the suit, it would probably end in 2012, with Intel paying AMD 3.5-4.0 billion US. AMD would probably have to pay anywhere between 1.5 and 2 billion dollars for manufacturing CPUs in 2011 and 2012 without a valid license from Intel
• AMD's had almost two billion dollars of debt due in 2012, meaning the timing of the anti-trust lawsuit and the debt payoff would be inconveniently "too close to call" .
• Intel lost all anti-trust legal cases so far, part of which Intel's legal chief decided to "retire" from Intel...only to show up in Apple's HQ less than 48 hours later.