Friday, November 6th 2015
AMD Dragged to Court over Core Count on "Bulldozer"
This had to happen eventually. AMD has been dragged to court over misrepresentation of its CPU core count in its "Bulldozer" architecture. Tony Dickey, representing himself in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, accused AMD of falsely advertising the core count in its latest CPUs, and contended that because of they way they're physically structured, AMD's 8-core "Bulldozer" chips really only have four cores.
The lawsuit alleges that Bulldozer processors were designed 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. Due to this, AMD Bulldozer cannot perform eight instructions simultaneously and independently as claimed, or the way a true 8-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.
Source:
LegalNewsOnline
The lawsuit alleges that Bulldozer processors were designed 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. Due to this, AMD Bulldozer cannot perform eight instructions simultaneously and independently as claimed, or the way a true 8-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.
511 Comments on AMD Dragged to Court over Core Count on "Bulldozer"
I would say that under a dictatorship, AMD's marketing department would have been shoot and everyone would be celebrating that decision. Even if there where rebels fighting that dictatorship, they would have also celebrated that decision.
Under a democracy the question is, do these people still work at AMD?
I should imagine AMD will win. It's all semantics when they can show thread heavy tasks in a 4 core, 8 module chip, being as good (close enough) as a 4 core, 8 threaded chip (i7 2600).
There's plenty of graphs to support performance. The dick in court is probably pissed at it's sub standard single threaded performance.
Holding a fork in a world of soup, comes to mind.
"filed a class-action lawsuit on Oct. 26 in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California"
SOURCE
or here?
etc
I'm not saying it has 8 cores but I am saying it matches an 8 threaded CPU. Semantics.
And I'm an Intel/Nvidia guy.
I just think this case is all about a fucking douchebag trying to make money. Now, if I could sue Lisa Su (or whoever said it) for an overclocker's dream comment at Fiji's launch. Unless by dream, they meant nightmare???
That reminds me Intel's motorcycle vs tricycle ad. loved it.
It matches a 4 core CPU with hyper-threading, not an 8 core.
Intel doesn't market the i7-2600K as having 8 physical cores, contrary to AMD's marketing of the FX-8150.
Over-all there's no doubt that AMD's marketing of Bulldozer is very misleading.
Computers can operate without a dedicated FPU, they can't without integer cores.
Well, I suppose you technically could if you multiplied all of the floats by several million and divided to convert back. Rounding errors would be aplenty and performance would be poor by comparison. Everything that decodes it would also need special libraries for a non-IEEE754-compliant processor.
FYI, IEEE 754 was defined in 1985, the same year that 80386 debuted. Intel didn't have the FPU hardware available yet to process IEEE 754. 80486DX was the first processor to be IEEE 754 compliant. Because of IEEE 754, JPEG was made possible and created in 1987.
Finally now I know they are really also 4 cores and am actually quite impressed that AMD could "keep up" with intel.
Their marketing team should have been shoot.
His case can be argued away quite easily by the block diagram of the integer cluster of two cores per module. Four modules = eight bulldozer cores irrespective of performance. The design parameter and AMD's naming of such can't be used against them in a court of law. Without wishing to digress, fundamentally this (if the plaintiff won) would mean Nvidia with the GTX970 will lose any similar lawsuit on advertised units of 'x'.
To prove the point, if i can demonstrate that my '4 core' bulldozer part is not as good as my '8 core' bulldozer part and that my 8 core bulldozer part matches an 8 threaded Intel part (and remember, the 8 cores in BD are 8, not sold as 16) then I can prove function is apparent. The technical breakdown of workloads, as being espoused eloquently above is irrelevant in a court room with people who will be utterly lost in the language.
It doesn't matter how badly it performed in certain cases, all AMD has to do to win is show it performs a heavily threaded workload (due to it's 8 'cores') as well as an 8 threaded Intel CPU. AMD never sold it as hyper-threaded, they used 'cores' instead. 4 modules, each model has 2 cores, therefore it HAS 8 cores (as AMD defined them). The case isn't about what it can and cannot do it's about if it has 8 cores. And it technically does. Same way a GTX 970 has 4 GB of VRam.
This thread isn't about performance as such, its about a nomenclature and it's pretty damn hard to prove there are not 8 integer 'cores' in a 4 module BD part.
From Wiki (forgive me, I'm a tech noob but I know logic, or should it be 'Law'gic)So it's there, each module has two integer cluster cores. Doesn't matter if FP is equal to single core - that's a design limitation. It has two cores per module..... It really is all in a name.
EDIT: I had comically and erroneously called myself a tech 'nob' but have since rephrased to the correct tech noob - sue me :laugh:
AMD won't win because AMD's 8-core processors isn't the same as Intel, IBM, Qualcomm, etc. 8-core processors and they never bothered to explain why to the same sheeple that will be hearing the case.
Seagate should have been open and shut (Microsoft is lying to you because they divide by 2^30) and they still lost; AMD's case is far from open and shut--they don't stand a chance. Just look at how many words you're using to try to explain it. Now imagine being cut off by someone saying "objection" every three words. Courts don't do technical; they do testimony by a technical expert.i7-3930K is a 6-core versus FX-8150...
Spoiler alert: 3930K won everything except a Photoshop benchmark (reviewer says it is because 8150 has higher clocks).
As far as lies go - when the hell will smartphones stop being sold with 'x' GB of memory then? OS always takes up room that cannot be used by the consumer so it should be sold as space.
Editted for wrong bet
Anyway, one last thing. big.LITTLE. It is advertised as an eight core design, but only four of them are used at once.