At a press conference following yesterday's AMD Technology Analyst Day, the chipmaker's executive vice president of sales and marketing Henri Richard (pictured) further bemoaned Intel's atrocities.

Later that day, the European Union filed anti trust charges against Intel, adding to the firm's legal headache.

AMD alleges that Lenovo and German retail chain Media Markt are shunning AMD because Intel is essentially paying them to do so. It's for the same reason, Richard suggested, that Dell would only last year start shipping AMD desktops and servers, not because the computer maker was clueless about its customers.

28 Jul 2007

Intel had the computer industry in a choke hold, charged Richard. By withholding chip shipments, it could effectively cripple their businesses. The company also held its partners on a short leash by paying out discounts only at the end of the quarter and when vendors had met certain targets. Without the discount, profits were nearly impossible.

AMD however isn't as defenceless a victim as it claims to be. When confronted by the its slipping market share in the server space, Richard countered that Intel's lead would quickly dissolve one AMD shipped its own quad core processor. He then pointed to AMD's commanding market share lead in the four-way server space (systems with four CPUs).

That isn't a big surprise however, considering the fact that Intel doesn't offer any processors for the 4-way segment. And the sweet point is still in the the 2-way market.