The lawyers of Intel Corp. and the Federal Trade Commission have reportedly reached a settlement agreement. The world's largest chipmaker will not be fined, but will be forced to change some of its business tactics.

Reuters news-agency reports that the preliminary deal between Intel and the FTC has been reached and it does not involve any payments, but will require it to extend changes demanded under its November agreement with Advanced Micro Devices to graphics chips. The deal will also adjust Intel's use of volume discounts for both microprocessors and graphics processors

While FTC lawyers reached a preliminary agreement with Intel, the five-member commission continues to talk about it. Friday is the target date for a final ruling, although that date could be pushed back or, as with any deal, it could fall apart altogether.

At present it is unclear which of FTC's recommendations to Intel will be enforced. One of the things proposed by the FTC was to make it easier for third-party chipset vendors to obtain license to build and sell core-logic sets compatible with Intel microprocessors.

Neither Intel nor FTC commented on the news-story.

Tags: , Intel, FTC, Business, AMD, Nvidia