AMD Faces Lawsuit Over Bulldozer Cores

[zola25]

Whilst I imagine nothing too serious will come of this, I do hope that it's not too trying for AMD when they have a genuine chance of regaining their place as a contender next year.

It will be interesting to see what comes out, although enthusiasts have long known the limitations of these CPUs, they are very much branded as having 8 cores IMO.

Source:
http://www.guru3d.com/news-story/amd-faces-lawsuit-over-core-count-on-bulldozer.html

 

[humbug]

This basically comes down to how one interprets a core.


Is a Core the integer unit inside the module or is it the whole module?


People can interprate that how they like but common wisdom has it at "the integer unit"


There is confusion about what is a module and what is a core.
I think the best way to explain that would be this, a (single Core CPU) would have:

1x Integer Unit (its Core)
1x L1
1x L2
1x L3


The Bulldozer architecture looks like this.

8 Integer units (Cores)
8x L1 Cache
8x L2 128Bit Cache Floating Point calc / 4x L2 256Bit Cache Integer Calc
1x L3 Cache


So by architectural definition Bulldozer does indeed have 8 cores. BUT, and this is where the argument originates; The 2 Cores inside each of Bulldozers Modules while separate are not fully independent from each-other because for Integer calc they share the L2 Cache.


IMO this is a somewhat far fetched argument to present as "deliberately misleading" and yet because people do smell blood from AMD they fancy their chances, no doubt.

 

[lordzargon]

I have one of these - I wasn't "mis-led", it was made clear on the specs how the architecture worked...

 

[humbug]

I have one of these - I wasn't "mis-led", it was made clear on the specs how the architecture worked...

Yeah, read signature, How the architecture works was published all over, AMD were proud of the architectural design and its programmable flexibility which is derived from the way in which its designed.

With that one cannot sue someone for ones own ignorance, but then this is America.

 

[AMDJoe]

Open and closed. Hope Tony Dickey saved up for this pricey 15 minutes of fame!

 

[pastymuncher]

Do people not read reviews before buying something? If they did they would have known what they were getting. Bloody yanks!!

 

[zola25]

^ Indeed that would seem to be the biggest part of the problem. Although the definition of a core/module is perhaps not as clear cut as it has been with previous designs, a short amount of research would give any prospective buyer the relevant information.

 

[PooKer]

Poor Judge that gets to rule on this. But soon as I saw it was american I had "MURICAAAAA" in my head....

 

[Jarrastafari]

Nonesense, hope he and his liar lose big time on this...

 

[pandem0nium]

Nonesense, hope he and his liar lose big time on this...

 

[humbug]

Open and closed. Hope Tony Dickey saved up for this pricey 15 minutes of fame!

+1, AMD do need to fight this, there may be temptation to settle out of court but that would not be a good signal to send

He's looking for some money and thinks AMD are an easy target, prove him wrong.

 

[drunkenmaster]

I got bored of reading after the "it couldn't do 8 instructions at one time" twaddle. Take any Intel core, old AMD core or future cores, most have multiple potential instructions but can't utilise all of them in one clock, it's a fairly fundamental way cpus are designed. They aren't inherently supposed to calculate one of each type of instruction or a load on every clock cycle so using that as a reason it's not full cores is bogus because full cores don't do it either.

Bulldozer was as someone else said, fully explained and also has significantly better scaling than HT precisely because they are real integer cores rather than filling up the existing ones better. Case will get nowhere at all.

 

[Cyanide]

Every piece of software sees and displays an 8 core AMD as 8 cores. Will he be suing software companies too for falsely representing AMD chips?

 

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

It has 8 integer cores,and 4 FPUs and if you go back to older CPUs in the past,the FPUs were not always part of the CPU themselves or even enabled IIRC.

 

[Hagar]

Might as well sue Intel for the 80286 as only having half a core, no FPU.

EDIT snap Cat

 

[kaku]

I guess he's just chancing it hoping for a quick buck with how weak AMD are looking.

I do think it was a poor choice to advertise them as "8-core" processors though. It's like saying an i7 is an "octo-core" because it shows up as 8 processors in Windows.

Just a thought: in the unlikely event that he walks away with a win, it could have a knock-on effect for the mobile industry. A lot of SoC manufacturers advertise them as "8-core", but due to the configuration only 4 are active at a time (see ARM's big.LITTLE architecture).

 

[humbug]

I guess he's just chancing it hoping for a quick buck with how weak AMD are looking.

I do think it was a poor choice to advertise them as "8-core" processors though. It's like saying an i7 is an "octo-core" because it shows up as 8 processors in Windows.

Just a thought: in the unlikely event that he walks away with a win, it could have a knock-on effect for the mobile industry. A lot of SoC manufacturers advertise them as "8-core", but due to the configuration only 4 are active at a time (see ARM's big.LITTLE architecture).

Thats because the i7 is a 4 core, it has 4 integer units, Bulldozer has 8.
To advertise Bulldozer as a 4 core would have been wrong.

 

[Martini1991]

AMD did mislead with bulldozer, but in their YouTube video where they called an i5 2500k an i7 980 and had their bulldozer beating it.

Being mislead about the cores is a none starter lol.

 

[lude1962]

Every piece of software sees and displays an 8 core AMD as 8 cores. Will he be suing software companies too for falsely representing AMD chips?

apart from adobe flash player, only uses half cores on an fx6100 ie 3, but 4 on an i5

 

[h4rm0ny]

If we allow people to sue for their own stupidity, we're going to be up to our necks in lawsuits by lunchtime.

Stupid is not in short supply.