Yep, and that's been interpreted such that - just in case - we add a link on every page of software.intel.com to http://software.intel.com/en-us/articles/optimization-notice

Whether or not the current page has anything to do with compilers.

Also, judging by the URL they made it an 'article' instead of a 'page' again... I'll have to see if I can get someone to fix that.

Happy to see you guys are using Drupal. I usually remove article as one of the first steps in an install and replace with something that confuses people less and/or restrict permissions appropriately, but it's hard to always get people to always follow the right path.

I presume the notices are images so they can't be indexed by search engines?...

Not sure, more likely somebody got a zip file full of images from the lawyer(s) and decided to put those up exactly as provided.

The notice is only visible in Italian, Chinese, and Korean

Intel paid $10M into a pool to reimburse customers who purchased the Intel compiler. Intel later paid over $1B to AMD settling a number of cases with AMD and the US DOJ. Intel was also fined by the EU ca 2009.

> Since then Intel settled the lawsuit by paying $10M and agreeing to add the following disclaimer to their compilers

Is it just me or does that not actually fix the problem?

It fixes the legal problem. Intel isn't required to provide an optimized compiler for competitors' chips, but it is required to note that its compiler that is compatible with those chips doesn't optimize code for them.

I don't agree either, but it's a perfectly valid solution (and probably the best for Intel's bottom line).

I think that the fact that it fixes legal problem is itself a legal problem or rather legislation prolem.

A more effective place to put the notice would be to standard output when you're compiling for AMD.

You're compiling for x86, not AMD. The crippled AMD version is based on a runtime check.

There are several benchmarks out there showing that the Intel compiler can give a boost for AMD chips over MS VC++ and MingG++ on Windows.

They should have originally used supported flags for different features instead of blacklisting the name, but it's still difficult to know what chips support what and whether it's worth using those features, due to different instruction latency, etc.

ICC get register dynamic code switching to different paths in the exe, so that if the chip supports AVX2, it'll use that code path.

intel paid more than 10M to lawyers so they could debate on legalities of the law instead of the intent of the law, hence not having to fix the problem.

they are not worried about fines. fines are cheap for those companies. they are worried about market control.

they are what they are thanks to phoenix reverse engineering IBM bios and the rise of the generic PC market. Now they fear anyone that can enter the market as easily as they entered and hope to not make the same mistake IBM did.