WHEN the FTC sued Intel for crimes that are similar to Microsoft's it was not yet known that Intel's actions go beyond bribery, destruction of evidence, and so forth (business/operations side). As it turns out, on the technical side too Intel is breaking the rules. From the news:

THE US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) apparently is interested in the fact that Intel's compiler deliberately cripples performance for non-Intel processors such as those made by AMD and VIA.

Writing in his blog, programming expert Agner Fog said that it appears that Chipzilla's compiler can produce different versions of pieces of code, with each version being optimised for a specific processor and/or instruction set. The system detects which CPU it's running on and chooses the optimal code path accordingly.

Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) processors will soon be available in two upcoming Lenovo ThinkPad models, breaking Intel's longtime monopoly on the notebook line.

• Intel-Microsoft Collusion in Sub-notebooks: A Smoking Gun
• Collusion Against GNU/Linux and Sub-notebooks: Part II