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 will need to turn off turbo boost and lock all the cores to the same speed. Did you do this when you tested it ford?
Update:
1 threads: 29.8149422
2 threads: 15.7981694
3 threads: 10.7508806
4 threads: 8.2506762
5 threads: 6.7012710
6 threads: 5.6937791
7 threads: 5.0004093
8 threads: 4.5316209
What was this 8-core by the way? I mean, model of the processor(s) so I can make it match.
This proves not only is the application extremely predictable, the curve you see where it deviates above 2-7 is mirrored in quad-core (deviates above on cores 2-3). This is deliberate, again, to account for the UI overhead that doesn't show until all of the physical cores are loaded.
I tested with turbo enabled. Turbo being enabled might explain why it is 20% and not, say 10%, because I'm using the single thread as the point of reference. If it overclocked that single core, it would exaggerate the single thread test making the multicore look worse. That said, I'm not really worried about it because FX processors would do the same.
Out of curiosity, is this octo-core system running about 3.246 GHz? My previous instructions didn't change the random seed. These instructions should get a more consistent result because that was a pretty big omission on my part.
You'll also get wild results if anything CPU intensive is running.
It will kind of be all over the place when running the same test over and over. A single test isn't really important... it's the trend that matters: generally shorter with each thread added. Exception: 4th and 8th (with SMT) thread quad-core processors may be about equal to preceding and the same goes for 8th and 16th (with SMT) thread on octo-core processors because of the UI thread.
:roll:
I added names + clockspeeds to spreadsheet.
Just wanted to throw that out there since this happened after the last post on the matter.
2. Granted 3. Granted because of #2.
4. Not addressed because of #2 and #3.
In other words, as observed before, the plaintiff doesn't understand the technology of it well enough to prosecute the case. I think he could win if he argued that the dispatcher can create blocking scenarios which degrades the performance of both integer clusters thereby proving they are not independent.
Example:
pds.ucdenver.edu/document/hardware/AMDbulldozer-IEEE-Computer-2011.pdf
The authors use "core" in contexts that are confusing and inconsistent.
It opens saying "It combines two independent cores intended to deliver high per-thread throughput with improved area and power efficiency." Core refers to the integer clusters (article usually refer to them as "interger cores") here. Also note the word "combines" which contradicts the word "independent." They were apart, but now they are together.
Look on page 9, it says "Figure 4 shows how the Bulldozer core uses these different mechanisms." Core refers to the AMD's so-called "module" here and it repeats in the Figure 4 text: "Multithreading model that shows how the Bulldozer core uses different mechanisms."
If a bunch of geeks are using the word "core" interchangeably to describe two very different things, how is Joe Public supposed to know the difference when they see "8-core" in marketing? AMD never made the distinction themselves on their products. I think someone could easily make this argument and win the lawsuit but Dickey doesn't understand the tech well enough to.
I believe the case is no longer being pressed because Dickey didn't motion to appeal within the 14 day limit.
Personally, I always thought those siamesed cores were a bit of a stretch to count them as two, because the operation of one hampered the other due to those shared resources, so I can see why the lawsuit happened. Whether it's enough to call it fraudulent and worthy of suing over I'm not so sure.
www.tomshardware.com/reviews/fx-8150-zambezi-bulldozer-990fx,3043.html
www.anandtech.com/show/4955/the-bulldozer-review-amd-fx8150-tested Because of the lack of standing (#1). They fixed that in this appeal and added a second plaintiff to bolster the case but they failed furnish evidence explain why calling it a "core" is misleading. Actually, it does, with any court case, standing has to be proven and they had to appeal to prove standing. The law firm that handled this was clearly treading in untested waters. A law firm that deals with class action suits regularly wouldn't make that novice mistake.
Dickey is not wrong: people see "8-core" and the price compared to Intel's 8-core offerings and they think it's a steal. AMD did that deliberately too. Largely irrelevant because that Bulldozer/Excavator/Piledriver were the beginning and end of that processor design. It's shit and I doubt any other chip manufacturer will revive it. Because this case wasn't dismissed on specific substance, it likely wouldn't be cited against future misleading designs.