Don't be surprised if the lawsuit involves Intel and they demands AMD too due patents.
In few words, the perfect moment to abort Zen for good once at all.
In few words, the perfect moment to abort Zen for good once at all.
Silly lawsuit. But it was a huge PR blunder to sell them as 8 cores to begin with.
Architecturally Bulldozer is a significant departure from anything we've ever seen before. We'll go into greater detail later on in this piece, but the building block in AMD's latest architecture is the Bulldozer module. Each module features two integer cores and a shared floating point core. FP hardware is larger and used less frequently in desktop (and server workloads), so AMD decided to share it between every two cores rather than offer a 1:1 ratio between int/fp cores on Bulldozer. AMD advertises Bulldozer based FX parts based on the number of integer cores. Thus a two module Bulldozer CPU, has four integer cores (and 2 FP cores) and is thus sold as a quad-core CPU. A four module Bulldozer part with eight integer cores is called an eight-core CPU. There are obvious implications from a performance standpoint, but we'll get to those shortly.
It's not about what constitutes a core but about people expecting to get 8 identical "things" when hearing 8core (or n of anything) , but they don't they only get 4 identical things.The fundamental issue is that there is (as far as I know) no legal definition of what constitutes a "core" on a CPU. Without such a definition, I don't see how AMD's claim could be considered legally false and misleading.
It's not about what constitutes a core but about people expecting to get 8 identical "things" when hearing 8core (or n of anything) , but they don't they only get 4 identical things.
It is semantics but it does influence consumers since there are a lot of people that think that more cores equal more performance no matter what the rest of the specs are like.
It was a huge PR blunder to release Bulldozer in the first place, instead of just continuing to refine and die-shrink K10.
If anything is going to hold water, it would be the fact that AMD calls a 2 module 8 gpu compute unit APU a "12 core".
It's not about what constitutes a core but about people expecting to get 8 identical "things" when hearing 8core (or n of anything) , but they don't they only get 4 identical things.
It is semantics but it does influence consumers since there are a lot of people that think that more cores equal more performance no matter what the rest of the specs are like.
It's not about what constitutes a core but about people expecting to get 8 identical "things" when hearing 8core (or n of anything) , but they don't they only get 4 identical things.
It is semantics but it does influence consumers since there are a lot of people that think that more cores equal more performance no matter what the rest of the specs are like.
Well i guess this is why intel always says 4C/8T to avoid silly law suits like this.
No, they are only quads etc
Thuban had six cores. No argument. And then AMD really confused everybody with their interpretation of a core, also known as a module with the later released BD chips. People got confused, people got misled, eventually somebody decided to sue them. No surprise.Of course, each Intel core shares all its execution units between two threads.
On the Bulldozer, there are TWO separated Integer Execution Units.
So for the Intel they are Quad Cores, for AMD they are Quad Modules or 8-Cores since each Module has two separated Integer Execution Units.
Thuban had six cores. No argument. And then AMD really confused everybody with their interpretation of a core, also known as a module with the later released BD chips. People got confused, people got misled, eventually somebody decided to sue them. No surprise.
You see, Intel has been smart from day one. They never tried to market Hyperthreading as "doubling" cores. 1 core with Hyperthreading and so on and so forth, AMD marketed it as 8 cores. And what was next? You need Windows 8+ to unleash the full performance of our CPU. WTF? 8 cores not enough for Windows 7? Hah. People clearly were misled with these claims, especially those who upgraded their Thuban/Opterons to FX without doing their home work. Not so much of an upgrade it was. The first-gen Bulldozer was even slower in some workloads than their previous gen, partially due to the fact that it wasn't a real octa-core CPU. The rest is just semantics.People are ignorant/not informed and or uneducated about the AMD Bulldozer Architecture but not mislead.
If their 8 cores performed, nobody would give a damn about "how it was built". But if you can't walk the walk...I mean, CPU cores, such as in the single-cored AMD 386DX-40, didn't even have ANY FPU cores.
You see, Intel has been smart from day one. They never tried to market Hyperthreading as "doubling" cores. 1 core with Hyperthreading and so on and so forth, AMD marketed it as 8 cores. And what was next? You need Windows 8+ to unleash the full performance of our CPU. WTF? 8 cores not enough for Windows 7? Hah. People clearly were misled with these claims, especially those who upgraded their Thuban/Opterons to FX without doing their home work. Not so much of an upgrade it was. The first-gen Bulldozer was even slower in some workloads than their previous gen, partially due to the fact that it wasn't a real octa-core CPU. The rest is just semantics.
If their 8 cores performed, nobody would give a damn about "how it was built". But if you can't walk the walk...
Sorry but an 8-core Intel CPU is slower in some workloads (Single Thread) than last year Quad Core CPUs.
You should read and learn the difference between SMT and CMT and then you will understand why Bulldozer is called 8-core and the Intel Quads are not.
The 8150 was slower than Thuban in a number of MT loads.
If you are speaking of 5960X than yes, it was slower in ST due to lower clockspeed, but it wasn't as embarrassing as this:Sorry but an 8-core Intel CPU is slower in some workloads (Single Thread) than last year Quad Core CPUs.
I know what I need to know. The FX didn't perform as well as it talked.You should read and learn the difference between SMT and CMT and then you will understand why Bulldozer is called 8-core and the Intel Quads are not.
but it wasn't as embarrassing as this: