The US competition regulator changed the demands made in the litigation with Intel. The Federal Trade Commission granted the manufacturer an exception to market the Oak Trail platform by 2013 without support for the PCI Express standard.
After this date, the number one of the processors will have to add the interface to the «version» of the Atom intended for tablets, as was stipulated for all Intel platforms last August, in the agreement that determined the conclusion of the process where it was accused of abuse of a dominant position.
The international press advances that the reasons that justify the decision are purely technical, since the development of the platform, which will appear on the market from next year, was too advanced for it to be possible to go back and incorporate the interface.
The lawsuit filed by the FTC with Intel dates back to the end of 2009 and the manufacturer is accused of having resorted to anti-competitive practices during the last 10 years, namely with artificial pricing, threats to PC manufacturers and the offer of bundles or other measures designed to encourage exclusivity agreements, for example.
The charges covered not only the market for processors (CPUs) but also the market for chips intended for graphics processing (GPUs).
