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AMD faces Lawsuit over Core Count on Bulldozer
AMD faces a lawsuit over the core count on Bulldozer processors, reports legalnewsline.com In claiming that its Bulldozer CPU had “8-cores”. The suit alleges AMD built the Bulldozer processors by stripping away components from two cores and combining what was left to make a single “module.” In doing so, however, the cores no longer work independently.
As legalnewsline.com describes: AMD allegedly tricked consumers into buying its Bulldozer processors by overstating the number of cores contained in these chips.
Tony Dickey, on behalf of himself and others similarly situated, filed a class-action lawsuit on Oct. 26 in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, San Jose Division against Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. (AMD) for alleged violations of the Consumer Legal Remedies Act, California’s Unfair Competition Law, false advertising, fraud, breach of express warrant, negligent misrepresentation and unjust enrichment.
As a result, Dickey argues that AMD’s Bulldozer CPUs suffer from material performance degradation, and cannot perform eight instructions simultaneously and independently as claimed. He alleges that average consumers in the market for computer CPUs lack the requisite technical expertise to understand the design of AMD's processors and trust the company to convey accurate specifications regarding its CPUs. Because AMD did not convey accurate specifications, Dickey argues that tens of thousands of consumers have been misled into buying Bulldozer CPUs that cannot perform the way a true eight-core CPU would.
Dickey is suing for damages, including statutory and punitive damages, litigation expenses, pre- and post-judgment interest, as well as other injunctive and declaratory relief as is deemed reasonable. He is represented by Samuel M. Lasser from Edelson PC in San Francisco, California; and Rafey S. Balabanian, Alexander T.H. Nguyen and Amir C. Missaghi from Edelson PC in Chicago, Illinois.
U.S. District Court For the Northern District of California, San Jose Division Case number 5:15-cv-04922-PSG
vbetts
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#5184264 Posted on: 11/06/2015 03:08 PM
Yes, but AMD themselves market the processors as 8-core processors which is clearly not true. It's not as bad as if Intel would say that the 6700k is an 8-core, but it's still not very accurate.
To expand CPC_RedDawn's answer, AMD's FX-8350 (we'll take this as an example) is not a true 8-core processor. A core needs (among other things) one ALU and one FPU (else it cannot be classified as a full core by today's standards). AMD's cores in the FX-8350 do not have one FPU per core, but one FPU per 2 cores.
If we put this in perspective, the FX-8350 has 8 ALUs and 4 FPUs. You can see how this is misleading. They are not 8 full cores. They are going to have the arithmetic performance of 8 cores, but the floating-point performance of 4 cores.
I believe this is what the lawsuit is referring to but it's quite vaguely explained.
In the brief part of the article I read, the complaint was the 8 "cores" do not work independently. While they do share the same FPU per module and other resources, these cores can still scale individually. Meaning that they do operate as 8 cores technically. On my i7, 2 threads on the same core operate the same in terms of scaling.
I do not think AMD is going to get hurt by this, I think this will pretty much just blow over. In a way I would not be surprised to see Intel speak for AMD here sooner or later.
Yes, but AMD themselves market the processors as 8-core processors which is clearly not true. It's not as bad as if Intel would say that the 6700k is an 8-core, but it's still not very accurate.
To expand CPC_RedDawn's answer, AMD's FX-8350 (we'll take this as an example) is not a true 8-core processor. A core needs (among other things) one ALU and one FPU (else it cannot be classified as a full core by today's standards). AMD's cores in the FX-8350 do not have one FPU per core, but one FPU per 2 cores.
If we put this in perspective, the FX-8350 has 8 ALUs and 4 FPUs. You can see how this is misleading. They are not 8 full cores. They are going to have the arithmetic performance of 8 cores, but the floating-point performance of 4 cores.
I believe this is what the lawsuit is referring to but it's quite vaguely explained.
In the brief part of the article I read, the complaint was the 8 "cores" do not work independently. While they do share the same FPU per module and other resources, these cores can still scale individually. Meaning that they do operate as 8 cores technically. On my i7, 2 threads on the same core operate the same in terms of scaling.
I do not think AMD is going to get hurt by this, I think this will pretty much just blow over. In a way I would not be surprised to see Intel speak for AMD here sooner or later.
Kaarme
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#5184267 Posted on: 11/06/2015 03:11 PM
Dickey and his two PC stores will lose this, obviously. I reckon the US justice system isn't as poor as the US patent office, so it looks like a clear case. Who knows why they even bother to try.
Dickey and his two PC stores will lose this, obviously. I reckon the US justice system isn't as poor as the US patent office, so it looks like a clear case. Who knows why they even bother to try.
Fox2232
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#5184272 Posted on: 11/06/2015 03:14 PM
People saw all those SH*TTY results of initial benchmarks. Most of us were pretty disappointed with single threaded performance and very few of us had use for all 8 cores.
There are 2 types of people:
1st) people who made informed decision, had use for Bulldozer and bought it. Or bought intel as Bulldozer was not been good enough for them.
2nd) incompetent idiots who shopped randomly without smallest of efforts put towards knowing product.
One should note that Total performance per $ was better than i5s upon release.
People saw all those SH*TTY results of initial benchmarks. Most of us were pretty disappointed with single threaded performance and very few of us had use for all 8 cores.
There are 2 types of people:
1st) people who made informed decision, had use for Bulldozer and bought it. Or bought intel as Bulldozer was not been good enough for them.
2nd) incompetent idiots who shopped randomly without smallest of efforts put towards knowing product.
One should note that Total performance per $ was better than i5s upon release.
xIcarus
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Posts: 989
Joined: 2010-08-24
#5184276 Posted on: 11/06/2015 03:17 PM
In the brief part of the article I read, the complaint was the 8 "cores" do not work independently. While they do share the same FPU per module and other resources, these cores can still scale individually. Meaning that they do operate as 8 cores technically. On my i7, 2 threads on the same core operate the same in terms of scaling.
I do not think AMD is going to get hurt by this, I think this will pretty much just blow over. In a way I would not be surprised to see Intel speak for AMD here sooner or later.
They will operate independently, but they will be limited in case of carrying out 256-bit AVX instructions (I've added a PS in my post that you quoted in order to clarify).
For all intents and purposes it does indeed work like an 8-core processor, minus what I mentioned.
I believe the article is either not very well explained, or the lawsuit is not referring to what I think it refers to? I mean the only 'issues' with the CPU that they could point out are the shared FPUs, I really don't know of any other 'faults' with that processor.
@Illnino: can you please put the image in a spoiler tag? It disrupts the page's layout. Thanks mate
.
In the brief part of the article I read, the complaint was the 8 "cores" do not work independently. While they do share the same FPU per module and other resources, these cores can still scale individually. Meaning that they do operate as 8 cores technically. On my i7, 2 threads on the same core operate the same in terms of scaling.
I do not think AMD is going to get hurt by this, I think this will pretty much just blow over. In a way I would not be surprised to see Intel speak for AMD here sooner or later.
They will operate independently, but they will be limited in case of carrying out 256-bit AVX instructions (I've added a PS in my post that you quoted in order to clarify).
For all intents and purposes it does indeed work like an 8-core processor, minus what I mentioned.
I believe the article is either not very well explained, or the lawsuit is not referring to what I think it refers to? I mean the only 'issues' with the CPU that they could point out are the shared FPUs, I really don't know of any other 'faults' with that processor.
@Illnino: can you please put the image in a spoiler tag? It disrupts the page's layout. Thanks mate
.
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Better call Saul...
I know a guy who knows a guy that has a true 8 core CPU.