AMD Settles Bulldozer Core Count Lawsuit for 12 Million - 35 bucks per chip

#5704921 Posted on: 08/28/2019 08:49 AM

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So do they pay $12.1M right away, or as bulldozer owners turn themselves in?

#5704925 Posted on: 08/28/2019 09:03 AM

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It reminds me of nvidia 970 vram settlement where nvidia agreed to pay up 30$ for every user.

#5704955 Posted on: 08/28/2019 10:17 AM

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Which was only for USA, if I am not wrong. Kinda wanted to jump on that bandbagon.

#5704958 Posted on: 08/28/2019 10:28 AM

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yes, as in most country, law said that it was 3.5 + 0.5 and so is still 4.
the problem was more a communication problem.


if they win they will earn easy money on the back of AMD and of course the consumer isn't in the center of this lawsuit, but the money is (anyway no one care about the result exept them )

#5704962 Posted on: 08/28/2019 10:36 AM

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Guess that I somehow missed my chance of becoming a lawyer. Everything I hear is settling, lawsuit and money.
Oh cramp, why invest so much in tech education?!

#5704970 Posted on: 08/28/2019 11:02 AM

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Guess that I somehow missed my chance of becoming a lawyer. Everything I hear is settling, lawsuit and money.
Oh cramp, why invest so much in tech education?!
As far as you can sleep at night without having any second thoughts of "stealing" money within the law

So they basically grabbed all the money, that people bought Bulldozer with for themselves, or they have to share it with "victims" or something else?
I honestly, still have no idea what is happening here and to whom the money goes.

#5704971 Posted on: 08/28/2019 11:04 AM

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So you didnt get your 30 bucks?

#5704973 Posted on: 08/28/2019 11:09 AM

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Lawsuits like this aren't bad, in my opinion. Companies are all about making money, so sometimes they need to be reminded of the customers' rights. I hope Intel will also lose due to the shameful security issues they have left untouched for years and too many generations of products.

yes, as in most country, law said that it was 3.5 + 0.5 and so is still 4.
the problem was more a communication problem.

If that was indeed tested in the court of law in some other countries and came back with such a conclusion, it would open interesting business opportunities for unscrupulous manufacturers, thus protected by the law. A good thing it didn't fly in the USA, at least.

#5704987 Posted on: 08/28/2019 11:46 AM

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I didn't live in USA

#5705003 Posted on: 08/28/2019 01:09 PM

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I said it the moment they started calling their garbage "cores"; they needed to be sued. What they're paying for their BS, in the end, is chump change, just the cost of doing business. But I suppose we shouldn't be too upset since in the grand scheme of things this is, by far, one of the least egregious things a large company has done then ended up paying squat for. I'm just glad AMD lost and had to pay up, even if it is just symbolic... and US only.

#5705097 Posted on: 08/28/2019 05:04 PM

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As much as I find it a bit of a douchey move to have sued AMD when this lawsuit first happened (they were already in debt and these lawyers decide to kick them while they're down and unlikely to pay out?), AMD also did a disservice to people in how they were marketing Bulldozer. Not only was it misleading, but it made the products seem a lot worse than they really were. Take the 8350 for example: its performance typically sat between the 3570K and 3770K, which totally makes sense: it was 4c/8t (which was more than the 3570K had to offer) but it had worse IPC (making it generally slower than the 3770K). As a 4c/8t CPU, it was actually decently competitive. It still left much to be desired (especially considering the wattage) but it wasn't a total disaster. But because AMD advertised it as an 8-core CPU, that made the cores seem a lot weaker than they really were. I think we all would've remembered Bulldozer very differently if it weren't for the marketing.


Anyway, I'm a little confused about the 12.1 million. Is that based on how many chips were sold in the US? Is that the maximum amount AMD owes, or literally how much they actually owe?

Also, apparently that comes out to roughly 345,741 chips.

#5705207 Posted on: 08/28/2019 09:43 PM

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I actually still have an 8350 in my system haven't had the chance to upgrade to Ryzen 3000 yet, waiting till they finally release the 16c/32 and see how it compares to the 12c/24t. But even as of right now the 3900x is out of stock in alot of places or just really marked up so couldn't get one if i wanted.

#5705222 Posted on: 08/28/2019 10:20 PM

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up next: AMD settles infinity fabric lawsuit, admitting it is finite, not infinite.

#5705258 Posted on: 08/29/2019 12:03 AM

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Lawsuits like this aren't bad, in my opinion. Companies are all about making money, so sometimes they need to be reminded of the customers' rights. I hope Intel will also lose due to the shameful security issues they have left untouched for years and too many generations of products.


That's not how the law works. Everyone owning an Intel chip can't do a massive class action. Every plaintiff must have standing in order to sue. Which means, you have to be able to prove intel's security flaws were the direct cause of you being hacked, and that hacking caused you financial losses. Such a lawsuit is far more difficult compared to the suit in question which is about AMD lying to consumers about how many processor cores their chips have. Everyone who bought a chip thinking it had X cores, when it only had Y cores, had standing.


In the case of AMD though, they definitely got off with a slap on the wrist. Maybe Intel should sue them for anti-competitive behavior since it's clear that many people according to this lawsuit bought AMD chips under false pretenses, and would have spent their money with Intel more than likely if they had known.

#5705278 Posted on: 08/29/2019 01:36 AM

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I've gathered from reading the criticism of the Bulldozer-design over the years that a single floating-point pipeline being shared between every two integer pipelines is the overwhelming reason these cannot possibly be considered "true" cores. While well before my time in personal computing, all of the x86 CPUs, from the 8086 through into at least some of the 80486 designs, had no floating-point pipeline whatsoever. So, I guess these were all examples of a "core-less" processor.

The fact that certain portions of the design are shared doesn't alter the fact that it can execute, in the case of the FX-8000 and 9000 chips, eight threads simultaneously, in actual silicon. While having a one-to-one integer and floating-point pipeline arrangement would have almost certainly improved performance, where is that requirement written down and mandated? AMD never kept the particulars of the processor's internals from the public; I haven't actually checked, but I suspect that if I were to go back and peruse Guru3D's review of the Zambezi, it would indicate just what was below the heat-spreader. It wasn't hidden from anyone who took 2-1/2 minutes to learn about it.

I think this was a lousy outcome. That is because you have a judge and twelve jurors, who I seriously doubt any of which have a degree in microprocessor engineering, essentially defining, going forward, what constitutes a processor "core." Or, at least, what does not. So, as an example, if, a decade from now, Intel, VIA or AMD produce a breakthrough design with 256 discrete floating-point pipelines and a single homogeneous blob of special sauce dubbed the "hive-mind" to handle all the integer what-not, it can still only be marketed as a single "core." At least within California.

AMD was wise to short-circuit this nonsense before both the plaintiff and defendant attorneys were forced to be even more creative in divesting income to prevent finding themselves in an even higher tax-bracket then they undoubtedly already are.