Spat with AMD gets nastier

AMD takes delight in needling its rival around the time IDF is held, when developers and journalists from all over the world descend on San Francisco to get the lowdown on the latest Intel high technology. But this year the spat between the two became increasingly vitriolic.
On the day the forum opened, AMD took out full-page advertisements in major US papers challenging its rival to a public duel between a
dual-core Opteron server and an Intel equivalent.
Intel scornfully declined the challenge ­ and days later filed a splenetic 63-page rebuttal of an equally bitter, if not quite as long, list of complaints in an anti-trust suit AMD filed in June. In this AMD accused its rival of using ‘financial incentives’ and threats to stop big system builders from using non-Intel chips.
The gist of Intel’s response was that AMD had a reputation as an unreliable supplier and brought the troubles of which it complained on itself.
But critics said the document was short on answers to specific AMD accusations. Former policy director of the Federal Trade Commission David Balto told the LA Times that Intel was blaming the victim. He mockingly paraphrased the Intel response as like that of a child: ‘We’re not going to talk about whether we’ve engaged in anti-trust activities, but AMD’s a stinky firm.’
Balto added: ‘Under anti-trust law, that rarely carries a lot of weight.’

See also these reports from IDF:
Intel drive for frugal chips
Cool ways to cut power drain
Viiv PC is built to entertain 
Express bus to double speed
UK superchip trounces Xeons