NVIDIA: Intel's Atom pricing is anti-competitive

NVIDIA: Intel’s Atom pricing is anti-competitive

Intel charges customers that want Intel Atom chips without the accompanying 945GSE chipset a higher price. Or to put it bluntly, the Intel Atom chip in NVIDIA Ion-based systems costs more than the Atom CPU in netbooks based around Intel’s chipset. So not only will customers wind up paying more for NVIDIA Ion comptuers because of the higher performance graphics processor, but they’ll also have to help foot the bill for more expensive Atom processors.

That’s all old news. What’s new today is that NVIDIA CEO Jen-Hsun Huang told the press that he thinks the pricing is unfair… but that he doesn’t plan to lodge an antitrust complaint. Not yet anyway.

Oh, and Huang also confirmed just how deep Intel’s discount on the whole three-chip set is. He says you can buy the CPU plus chipset for $25, while the CPU itself costs $45.

Posted on Wednesday, May 20th, 2009, 2:21 am by Brad Linder | 15 Comments

oddone

They've got guts over at Intel, I'll give them that. This pricing, and then the new integrated chipsets coming later this year….how on earth can they *not* expect regulators to look at this unfavorably?
Polpus

Can't they just buy the CPU-Chipset combos, discard the chipset, and end up with $25 chipset-free Atoms?

Or does the CPU come hardwired to the thing?
newb

I think it was reported that he said that when you bought the Atom and the chipset, you got the Atom for $25 (no chipset cost was mentioned).
When you bought the Atom by itself, then it was $45.
BoloMKXXVIII

I love the smell of lawsuits in the morning.
pauli

intel's atom pricing is the *essence* of competition.
Steven522

Yeah, if the combo was a total of say $99, then buying a Atom alone would be better than trowing away a $75 chipset just to save $20.
brian

Intel should only advert 2 prices…atom by itself & atom/945 combo. I wonder if they really are doing the line item deal or not.

Seems this all becomes a moot issue when pineview comes out.
TrackSmart

From what I've read, it would cost companies a non-trivial amount of money to remove the processor from the chipset solution. This seems to imply that the chips require more than simple “unplugging”.

Even if it wasn't hard-wired, you can image having to carefully unplug the atom chip by hand. And then having to carefully wash the old thermal compound off by hand. Given the only $20 savings, that alone might make this operation unprofitable…
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http://www.good-win-racing.com/ Brian Goodwin

Yet Intel can't understand why they are getting hit with record fines and being sued all over the globe.

From just a week ago: “EU regulators on Wednesday slapped a record 1.06 billion euro ($1.45 billion) fine on Intel Corp for antitrust violations and ordered it to halt illegal efforts to squeeze out arch-foe AMD….
The decision may also force U.S. regulators to act, analysts say, with South Korea and Japan already accusing the company of antitrust violations.”
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ken dryden

I cant wait till the first half decent ARM, MIPS and other architectured netbooks come in an byte them in the ass while AMD sits with their thumbs up their fartholes (two anal comments in one sentence might indicate Im gay.).

We need competition.
ken dryden

I cant wait till the first half decent ARM, MIPS and other architectured netbooks come in an byte them in the ass while AMD sits with their thumbs up their fartholes (two anal comments in one sentence might indicate Im gay.).

We need competition.
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I think it was reported that he said that when you bought the Atom and the chipset

NVIDIA: Intel’s Atom pricing is anti-competitive

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