The Justice Department is investigating Advanced Micro Devices Inc. and Nvidia Corp. in a federal probe of possible antitrust violations in the computer graphics card industry.
Both Silicon Valley companies, the two leading makers of PC graphics cards, said they have received subpoenas from the Justice Department, although the agency has not made any specific allegations.
In separate statements, AMD and Nvidia said they were cooperating with the investigation.
Michael Hara, vice president of corporate communications at Nvidia, said the Justice Department requested documents going back eight or nine years.
“It’s a broad range of documents relating to customers, competitors, product stack, prices, market studies — everything, pretty much,” he said. “Our position now is to comply with their request and get them what they need.”
Gina Talamona, a spokeswoman for the Justice Department, said the agency does not comment on specific companies under investigation.
“I will confirm that the antitrust division is investigating the possibility of anticompetitive practices involving the graphics processing units and cards industry,” she said in an e-mail.
Founded in 1993, Nvidia of Santa Clara is one of the top sellers of programmable graphics processors, many of which are used in video games.
AMD is one of the biggest makers of semiconductors and the main rival of Intel Corp., the dominant player in the chip industry.
The Sunnyvale company became a stronger competitor in the graphics card processor industry after its $5.4 billion acquisition of ATI Technologies, one of the leading makers of computer graphics cards.
The merger was completed in October.
Although the nature of the federal probe is still unclear, analyst Crawford Del Prete of International Data Corp. said the investigation is not surprising.
“I am not surprised that (the Justice Department) is looking into this as there are few suppliers left, which aggregates pricing power,” he said in an e-mail.
But another IDC analyst, Bob O’Donnell, said he is puzzled by the Justice Department probe.
“What’s behind this? That’s really the question everyone is trying to make sense of,” he said. “Based on very limited information, it does not make a great deal of sense. There’s been no dramatic change in the market, except for the purchase of ATI by AMD.”
AMD shares dipped 88 cents, or 4.08 percent, to $20.69 in after-hours trading Friday.
Nvidia stock dropped $1.45, or 3.92 percent, to $35.54.