[Ars] AMD sued over allegedly misleading Bulldozer core count

[NTMBK]

http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2015/11/amd-sued-over-allegedly-misleading-bulldozer-core-count/

A class action lawsuit has been filed against chip-maker AMD for allegedly tricking consumers into buying its Bulldozer processors by overstating the number of cores contained in the chips. The suit claims that while Bulldozer was advertised as having eight cores, functionally it actually only had four.

I really hope this gets thrown out.

 

[master_shake_]

it has 8 integer cores.

are they going to use intels definition of cores?

do they know that amd and intel have different architectures.

 

[desprado]

How many lawsuit AMD is going to get this year? I think there 3 right now including this new one.

 

[ShintaiDK]

Silly lawsuit. But it was a huge PR blunder to sell them as 8 cores to begin with.

Today the result is i3 dual core with HT beats 6 FX cores. i3 dual core with HT beating 3 FX cores wouldn't have an equally bad wording today.

 

[SlowSpyder]

Silly lawsuit. But it was a huge PR blunder to sell them as 8 cores to begin with.

Today the result is i3 dual core with HT beats 6 FX cores. i3 dual core with HT beating 3 FX cores wouldn't have an equally bad wording today.

Depends on the workload. AMD's cores are older now and can still beat an i3, sometimes even higher depending on the job. But that's neither here nor there, not sure why you brought it up. I think this lawsuit is silly, not that different than Nvidia and AMD marketing the core count on their GPU's.

 

[NTMBK]

It's not like AMD were even the first to demonstrate this concept. Sun's cancelled Rock CPU used 4-CPU clusters, with 2 FPUs per cluster: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rock_(processor)

 

[Arachnotronic]

Dumb lawsuit. I think it was smart of AMD to market the chips as it did.

 

[PhonakV30]

Why do they compare to Intel ? it has four Module and can handle up to 8 threat ( 8 in Integer core or 8 FPU if 128 bit or 4 FPU 256bit).

Yes It's 8 core but if you want to use Intel's definition No it's not 8 Core nor 4 Core.First you should Define "Core" then you go on.

 

[waffleironhead]

How many lawsuit AMD is going to get this year? I think there 3 right now including this new one.

Which 3? Links?

 

[Subyman]

Just saw this over at ars. Really dumb law suit. The hyenas are circling.

 

[TheELF]

They should get a lawsuit for advertizing 12 "compute" core laptop cpu's.
Or for their APU turbo mode false frequencies.
They do everything and anything to confuse the customer base.

 

[waffleironhead]

They should get a lawsuit for advertizing 12 "compute" core laptop cpu's.
Or for their APU turbo mode false frequencies.
They do everything and anything to confuse the customer base.

Does that mean I can sue Intel because my i7-4510u never hits 3.1 ghz turbo ever, or that it consistently drops below its 2.0 base clock. The highest it ever hits is 2.9 and during load drops to 1.8.

 

[NTMBK]

Does that mean I can sue Intel because my i7-4510u never hits 3.1 ghz turbo ever, or that it consistently drops below its 2.0 base clock. The highest it ever hits is 2.9 and during load drops to 1.8.

Go ahead and sue them, it's a free country. Doesn't mean you'll win

 

[frozentundra123456]

They should get a lawsuit for advertizing 12 "compute" core laptop cpu's.
Or for their APU turbo mode false frequencies.
They do everything and anything to confuse the customer base.

You mean like intel "pentium" and "celeron" atoms, and now they are trying to identify with big core by branding atom x5 and x7. Or like AMD labelling cat cores and big core APUs with the A series, or both makers rebranding 2 or 3 generations of dgpus? Just saying, confusing nomenclature is rampant with Intel, nVidia, and AMD.

Granted though the "compute" cores thing is pretty crazy.

Back on topic, the lawsuit is ridiculous. AMD is entitled to call a "core" whatever it wants. Its not like there weren't plenty of benchmarks for consumers to look up and see what the real performance is.

 

[waffleironhead]

Go ahead and sue them, it's a free country. Doesn't mean you'll win

Will let the ambulance chasers do their worst. Ill sign up to get my $5 check if it gets anywhere.
Realistically though, boost is managed by the system maker and their choice of cooling solution. Probably have to sue lenovo.

 

[LTC8K6]

Does that mean I can sue Intel because my i7-4510u never hits 3.1 ghz turbo ever, or that it consistently drops below its 2.0 base clock. The highest it ever hits is 2.9 and during load drops to 1.8.

Not sue, but you could certainly get some relief if the chip is actually the problem.

 

[gdansk]

It's not misleading, that's the architecture. Would have it been more acceptable to lie about the architecture? Probably.

 

[LTC8K6]

Does that mean I can sue Intel because my i7-4510u never hits 3.1 ghz turbo ever, or that it consistently drops below its 2.0 base clock. The highest it ever hits is 2.9 and during load drops to 1.8.

I take it that you have tried the common solution?

correction: it is the "C3/C6 states support" feature that modulates the maximum multiplier:

disabled: max multi=21 for both Win7 and Win10

enabled: max multi=24 for both Win7 and Win10

auto: max multi=24 for Win7 - but 21 for Win10 !!!

 

[frozentundra123456]

Not sure any cpu maker or OEM "guarantees" any frequency. I think there would be more grounds for a suit if the chip didnt throttle and destroyed itself.

 

[thesmokingman]

Was it a CL by intel fanboys? It doesn't seem logical.

 

[Tsavo]

What is a core, anyway?

 

[crashtech]

I don't agree with the filing of frivolous lawsuits, but the BD cores aren't really full cores in the customary traditional sense. When expectations are adjusted by considering one AMD module with CMT as being similar to one Intel core with HT, the AMD CPUs start to look a lot better, imo. That's the way I chose to group them in the Cinebench 11.5 thread, because that description is far more appropriate to their performance level.

 

[Hi-Fi Man]

Traditional "cores" didn't even have FPUs on the CPU itself, the FPU was a co-processor. In fact on many RISC embedded designs the FPU is optional! So this lawsuit is silly and probably won't go any where.

 

[Dribble]

Seems pretty weak to me - there is no universally recognised definition of what a core is really. As for consumers, they want to know how fast it will run their programmes, talking about cores doesn't really tell you that. AMD will still have to waste money defending it however.

 

[Zodiark1593]

While the architecture was ill-suited to most modern workloads, a lawsuit is simply silly. AMD should counter-sue.