• Class-action suit filed against AMD over advertised number of cores in its Bulldozer chips
    55 replies, posted
[url]http://www.neowin.net/news/amd-face-lawsuit-after-falsely-advertsing-the-number-of-cores-in-their-chips[/url] [quote=Neowin]Chip-maker AMD has been struck by a class action lawsuit, after it was revealed that they falsely advertised the number of cores in their Bulldozer processor range. The lawsuit from San Jose’s district court claims that while a Bulldozer processor may offer eight cores, these only function as four. AMD’s micro-architecture is largely to blame; due to how separate cores operate within the unit. While each processor may indeed offer eight cores, these cores have been modified, and cannot work independently as a result. In an eight core Bulldozer chip, eight cores are indeed present, however many surrounding components are shared by a second core. This is due to ‘module’ technology adapted by AMD, where two cores work alongside one another with improved optimization.[/quote]
So, wait. Correct me if I'm wrong here. Is this proposing that the Bulldozer chip has eight physical cores, but they only behave like four logical cores? Like, the opposite of Intel's hyperthreading, with four physical cores behaving like eight logical cores? What the hell is this? Hypothreading? :v:
[QUOTE=Gmod4ever;49081290]So, wait. Correct me if I'm wrong here. Is this proposing that the Bulldozer chip has eight physical cores, but they only behave like four logical cores? Like, the opposite of Intel's hyperthreading, with four physical cores behaving like eight logical cores? What the hell is this? Hypothreading? :v:[/QUOTE] exactly right
[QUOTE=Gmod4ever;49081290]So, wait. Correct me if I'm wrong here. Is this proposing that the Bulldozer chip has eight physical cores, but they only behave like four logical cores? Like, the opposite of Intel's hyperthreading, with four physical cores behaving like eight logical cores? What the hell is this? Hypothreading? :v:[/QUOTE] Not really. The deal with the bulldozer chips is pretty simple, there are 8 cores but each two core set shares a few components with eachother, the float calc on each chip is one example. Dont know whether the class action suit should really go through or not.
This is pretty much the last thing AMD needs assuming it goes anywhere.
If the judge is competent I think they'll say "AMD's right, they didn't say 8 [I]physical[/I] cores, 4 physical + 4 logical still = 8 total cores" and toss the case. The scandal surrounding NVIDIA's GTX 970 (and by association the 660 ti since it too has something similar) comes to mind. Although .5 GB may be slower than the rest, 3.5 GB (1.5 in the case of the 660 ti) + .5 GB still = 4 total GB (2 on 660 ti).
Amd advertised eight cores and it got eight cores. Not much to it.
They are technically correct, in the same way that you can advertise something with 8 cores but have 4 of them dummies and still be correct. Is there any precedent for this kind of thing though?
Can we not kill AMD please, Intel having 100% market share would kinda suck for us lowly consumers.
So a pair of Bulldozer cores shares resources. Hyperthreading means a physical core allows its resources to be used in parallel by 2 logical cores. Same shit, different approaches.
[QUOTE=Dracon;49081298]exactly right[/QUOTE] Nah, exactly wrong. For the all jokes about "more coars!!!!" bulldozer is still a pretty sophsticated architecture - even the "1.5" core per core explanation is pretty bad. Either way this should go no where, it's basically assuming a core needs both an integer and an fpu to be a core, which isn't really necessarily "right". CPUs have been sold without floating point units at all.
128 SIMD, or 32/64/128 bit float operations can be executed by both cores on a module at once. Its only 256bit SIMD operations that can't be executed by both cores at once, which is only used on all cores at once, in applications like raytracers or particle simulations. Its common for CPUs to have certain SIMD operations take more/less cycles then others or compute multiple at once. The FPU on Haswell for example, has 2 multiplication modules, and 1 floating point add module, per core, and in theory can use all at once. You need to look at its real-life benchmarks, and never ever base anything off the amount of cores.
So basically its like suing a car company for falsely advertising a car having 4 wheels when only two of them are the drive wwheels?
[QUOTE=RayvenQ;49081832]So basically its like suing a car company for falsely advertising a car having 4 wheels when only two of them are the drive wwheels?[/QUOTE] We really need this emote back: [IMG]http://fpair.net/images/smilies/emot-iiaca.gif[/IMG] But yeah, I'd say that's pretty close. You have some functionality on the last two wheels that you don't have on the first two.
[QUOTE=vercas;49081646]So a pair of Bulldozer cores shares resources. Hyperthreading means a physical core allows its resources to be used in parallel by 2 logical cores. Same shit, different approaches.[/QUOTE] But Intel sells it as a Quad core with Hyperthreading, while AMD says its an Octo Core. [IMG]http://ic.tweakimg.net/ext/i/imagenormal/1318259668.png[/IMG] This lawsuit is more about the definition of a core, than anything else.
Good. Maybe some good old fashion corporate stamping will make them be a slight bit honest for once, or at least back off so that they can reestablish their technique.
Something about this story gives me a very strong sense of deja vu... Edit: Found [url=http://www.appleza.co.za/lawsuit-claims-amd-lied-about-the-number-of-cores-in-its-chips/]this[/url], but that's about it.
[QUOTE=Rossy167;49081623]Can we not kill AMD please, Intel having 100% market share would kinda suck for us lowly consumers.[/QUOTE] I agree but it's not like AMD has been making it hard for Intel.
AMD did some false advertisement here. They don't have 8 cores, its more like 1.5 cores 4x. It is also not the same as Intel's Hyperthreading and such can't be advertised as 8 cores. (I'm also not aware that Intel i7-CPU's (4C/8T) really get advertised as 8 cores, could be wrong tho.) AMDs "Bulldozer Modules" are not 2 real cores in ones. They have two integer units each, but share one cache and one floating point unit, thus in a strict sense are not 2 cores but could do a bit more than 1 core. The performance of Bulldozer is known to be pretty mediocre. And don't forget, they basically fooled a lot of average customers that way because when people buy a all-in-one PC they see AMD 8 Core and probably expect a lot more than what they got. 8 Core AMD sure looks better on a PC then an Intel 4 Core with "Hyperthreading".
If people are going to begin sueing company's about their cores, what about memory? With more modern memory you have your physical memory then you have your virtual memory.
[QUOTE=Passing;49081959]If people are going to begin sueing company's about their cores, what about memory? With more modern memory you have your physical memory then you have your virtual memory.[/QUOTE] What?
[QUOTE=Mitsuma;49081932]AMD did some false advertisement here. They don't have 8 cores, its more like 1.5 cores 4x. It is also not the same as Intel's Hyperthreading and such can't be advertised as 8 cores. (I'm also not aware that Intel i7-CPU's (4C/8T) really get advertised as 8 cores, could be wrong tho.) AMDs "Bulldozer Modules" are not 2 real cores in ones. They have two integer units each, but share one cache and one floating point unit, thus in a strict sense are not 2 cores but could do a bit more than 1 core. The performance of Bulldozer is known to be pretty mediocre. And don't forget, they basically fooled a lot of average customers that way because when people buy a all-in-one PC they see AMD 8 Core and probably expect a lot more than what they got. 8 Core AMD sure looks better on a PC then an Intel 4 Core with "Hyperthreading".[/QUOTE] Look at it this way, if every core had an FPU and that FPU ran at half the speed that it does now, it would be a worse performing processor but it would still be advertised as 8 cores and AVX capable, would that be okay?
[QUOTE=taipan;49082008]What?[/QUOTE] MY 500GB HDD ONLY HAS 480 WHAT THE FUCK WESTERN DIGITAL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
[QUOTE=Elexar;49082024]MY 500GB HDD ONLY HAS 480 WHAT THE FUCK WESTERN DIGITAL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!![/QUOTE] Mind you that's technically Microsoft's fault because of the way they calculate capacities in Windows. Apple instead does it in a way that's more WYSIWYG for OS X (after Snow Leopard) which they described here: [url]https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201402[/url]
[QUOTE=Elexar;49082024]MY 500GB HDD ONLY HAS 480 WHAT THE FUCK WESTERN DIGITAL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!![/QUOTE] No, your HDD has 500 GB, Windows just reports in GiB but tells you it's GB. [url]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Quantities_of_bytes[/url]
[QUOTE=Elexar;49082024]MY 500GB HDD ONLY HAS 480 WHAT THE FUCK WESTERN DIGITAL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!![/QUOTE] How dare people whine about things.
[QUOTE=taipan;49082008]What?[/QUOTE] Alright. How much memory does your computer have per stick?
[QUOTE=Passing;49082137]Alright. How much memory does your computer have per stick?[/QUOTE] 4 sticks of 4GiB?
AMD parts certainly have everything they need to be considered 8 functionally independent cores, after all one doesn't need a floating point unit to be considered a CPU. Their CPUs are certainly slow as hell compared to Intel parts due to that design choice but there really isnt any grounds for a lawsuit and this guy is trying to squeeze blood out of a stone.
[QUOTE=nintenman1;49083101]AMD parts certainly have everything they need to be considered 8 functionally independent cores, after all one doesn't need a floating point unit to be considered a CPU. Their CPUs are certainly slow as hell compared to Intel parts due to that design choice but there really isnt any grounds for a lawsuit and this guy is trying to squeeze blood out of a stone.[/QUOTE] Yeah, you could argue that the design greatly impacts performance, because it does, but by pretty much every engineering definition of a core it has 8. Though when explaining the drawbacks and benefits to those less knowledgeable I tend to refer to them by their module count and explain the module setup. It generally just helps people understand it better.
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