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The company has issued fifteen subpoenas to companies throughout the US ranging from the biggest manufacturers including Dell, Hewlett-Packard, Dell, and IBM through to distributors and retailers such as Best Buy, Circuit City, CompUSA and Fry's Electronics.

Earlier this year AMD issued a lawsuit against Intel naming 38 firms that AMD alleges have been victims of coercion by Intel, including large scale computer-makers, small system-builders, wholesale distributors and retailers, 'through seven types of illegality across three continents.

Last month Intel hit back claiming that its practices

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were both fair and lawful and that the kind of predatory pricing alleged by AMD was merely the cost cutting which has driven the microprocessor industry for 30 years.

Many of the companies named in the suit have now complied with requests for information and AMD is now issuing subpoenas to hand over emails and other documents from 1st January 2000 onwards which support its case. AMD is requesting information to with the purchase of microprocessors and any communications to do with the 'Intel Inside' campaign or other financial inducements. The companies have 30 days to respond.

AMD has long accused Intel of a dirty tricks campaign to prevent it from gaining a foothold in the x88 marketplace. The company says that Intel has threatened to raise the prices or even cut supplies to those who buy from AMD.

Those who have been following the case will remember that this is not the first time that AMD has been rummaging through other companies communications in a bid to find evidence against Intel. In July 2004 AMD successfully appealed to the Supreme Court in a bid to release some 600,000 documents to the European Commission to assist its investigations into Intel.