Dell will comply with AMD subpoena

AMD vs Intel Dell has told the US District Court of Delaware it will comply with AMD's request for documents that the upstart chip maker believes will prove Intel engaged in anti-competitive business practices.

The PC giant filed notice of its intentions with the court earlier this week. The filing notes the company's plan to make "good-faith efforts" to retrieve email and other documents requested by AMD in a broad subpoena served on Dell in July.

AMD launched its action against Intel in June, and quickly followed it up by serving document preservation and presentation requests on more than 30 companies. So far, only NEC and UK retail chain Dixons have objected to AMD's orders.

NEC told the court in July that it believes AMD's requests are "vague and overly broad", and "seek materials irrelevant to the subject matter of this litigation".

Dixons has denounced AMD's allegations as "poorly researched and false".

Dell is the only major PC vendor not to buy processors from AMD as well as Intel. As such, its business dealings with the chip giant will be closely examined by AMD for hints that Intel went beyond the boundaries of good business practice to keep Dell Intel-only.

Certainly it is a widely held belief that Intel makes it worth Dell's while to source microprocessors only from Intel. It is also believed that such benefits helped persuade Apple to turn to Intel when it decided to migrate the Mac from PowerPC to x86 processors.

For its part, Dell maintains bringing AMD on board would increase its costs, according to comments made by company executives in the past.

Intel last week formally rejected AMD's allegations, paving the way for the trial. In three weeks' time, the Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation will meet to judge a request that AMD's litigation be joined to a number of other anti-Intel class action lawsuits and transferred to the US District Court of Northern California. AMD has filed its disapproval of such a move. ®