UPDATED: DoJ calls on AMD and Nvidia for graphics antitrust probe

 

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By Alun Williams

Posted on 1 Dec 2006 at 13:00

AMD is familiar with anti-trust spats, but they usually involve Intel and the processor market. The company, however, has now been dragged into an anti-trust suite involving graphics processors and cards.

The Sunnyvale chipmaker has received a subpoena from the US Department of Justice (DoJ) Antitrust Division, which is looking into potential antitrust violations in the market. AMD is involved because of its $5.4 billion acquisition of ATI Technologies, which was formally concluded only last month.

At this stage, the DoJ has not made any specific allegations against AMD or ATI, and the scope of the investigation is unclear. Such cases usually involve attempts at market rigging or anti-competitive price fixing.

For its part, AMD says in a brief statement that it intends to cooperate with the investigation.

ATI's main rival, Nvidia, has also confirmed today that it received a subpoena from the the DoJ as part of the same probe. Again, the company says that it plans to cooperate with the authorities.

At the time of writing there was no further comment available from AMD or Nvidia.