AMD sued over allegedly misleading Bulldozer core count

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AMD sued over allegedly misleading Bulldozer core count | Ars Technica UK

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.

AMD's multi-core Bulldozer chips use a unique design that combines the functions of what would normally be two discrete cores into a single package, which the company calls a module. Each module is identified as two separate cores in Windows, but the cores share a single floating point unit and instruction and execution resources. This is different from Intel's cores, which feature independent FPUs.

The suit claims that Bulldozer's design means its cores cannot work independently, and as a result, cannot perform eight instructions simultaneously and independently. This, the claim continues, results in performance degradation, and average consumers in the market for a CPU lack the technical expertise to understand the design of AMD's processors and trust the company to give accurate specifications regarding its CPUs.

Because AMD did not convey accurate specifications, the suit argues that tens of thousands of consumers were misled into buying a Bulldozer CPU that cannot perform in the same way as a true 8-core CPU. Allegedly, this would mean AMD violated the Consumer Legal Remedies Act, California’s Unfair Competition Law, and was guilty of false advertising, fraud, breach of express warranty, negligent misrepresentation, and unjust enrichment.

AMD is being sued 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.

Seriously? This is like punching holes in the Titanic.

AMD faces class action lawsuit over Bulldozer core count claims

Finally it happened :lol:

AMD faces class action lawsuit over Bulldozer core count claims | KitGuru

Good game, Well played.

Re: AMD faces class action lawsuit over Bulldozer core count claims

AMD - just die already.

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Re: AMD faces class action lawsuit over Bulldozer core count claims

Uneducated American Jury as always.

But who filed the complain? There's no mention of Intel. Is there any other regulatory monitoring such technical stuff?
Also, if people buy a processor without first reading benchmarks, is it really AMD's fault?

Vyom said:
But who filed the complain? There's no mention of Intel. Is there any other regulatory monitoring such technical stuff?
Also, if people buy a processor without first reading benchmarks, is it really AMD's fault?

Things do not work like that in real world, just because you and I know about it doesn't mean everyone will. Think about medical practice, one can sue the doctor or the hospital if they give inaccurate information (in USA of course), what if the doctors tell the person that they should have read the details of the procedure from internet?

Re: AMD faces class action lawsuit over Bulldozer core count claims

Geek-With-Lens said:
Uneducated American Jury as always.

It's better than the verdicts given by holier than thou judges in Indian Justice System.

So AMD is basically screwed if this went south.

Re: AMD faces class action lawsuit over Bulldozer core count claims

tkin said:
It's better than the verdicts given by holier than thou judges in Indian Justice System.

Well that's intense.

$hadow said:
So AMD is basically screwed if this went south.

It isn't already?

tkin said:
It isn't already?

I am still waiting for a AMD comeback but ain't gonna happen soon.

Eight bad performing cores with two cores sharing a FPU.

Re: AMD faces class action lawsuit over Bulldozer core count claims

seamon said:
AMD - just die already.

what's with hating AMD anyway?

D

Re: AMD faces class action lawsuit over Bulldozer core count claims

ico said:
what's with hating AMD anyway?

He is trying his hard to get into Nvidia as always. Nothing new here.

Re: AMD faces class action lawsuit over Bulldozer core count claims

Geek-With-Lens said:
He is trying his hard to get into Nvidia as always. Nothing new here.

lol, okay.

Re: AMD faces class action lawsuit over Bulldozer core count claims

Geek-With-Lens said:
He is trying his hard to get into Nvidia as always. Nothing new here.

i thought he wants nvidia to get into him.

Re: AMD faces class action lawsuit over Bulldozer core count claims

seamon said:
AMD - just die already.

Is amd really that bad?

Re: AMD faces class action lawsuit over Bulldozer core count claims

quicky008 said:
Is amd really that bad?

No, they were always priced competitively, you dont have to pay a premium to get high end computing power in case of AMD chips (Non gaming uses as well as gaming)

if amd dies,nvidia and intel will have monopoly in their respective sectors and it will turn into a shitstorm, no competition = any price these two companies can set and no one can do any **** to them

Re: AMD faces class action lawsuit over Bulldozer core count claims

quicky008 said:
Is amd really that bad?

A lot to desire on both ends now. Although the 30K laptops are good.

Re: AMD faces class action lawsuit over Bulldozer core count claims

Nerevarine said:
No, they were always priced competitively, you dont have to pay a premium to get high end computing power in case of AMD chips (Non gaming uses as well as gaming)

if amd dies,nvidia and intel will have monopoly in their respective sectors and it will turn into a shitstorm, no competition = any price these two companies can set and no one can do any **** to them

Not if EU has anything to do with it.

D

Re: AMD faces class action lawsuit over Bulldozer core count claims

tkin said:
Not if EU has anything to do with it.

But we need competition in any case. Union won't push the companies to innovate and deliver higher performance products.

Disappointed us AMD...shocked. :shock:

It's monoploy anyways in high end products. Don't see AMD changing the game in near future.

Hrishi said:
It's monoploy anyways in high end products. Don't see AMD changing the game in near future.

AMD should stop trying to fight in both the markets. Sell their GPU or CPU business or something like that and concentrate on only one.

seamon said:
AMD should stop trying to fight in both the markets. Sell their GPU or CPU business or something like that and concentrate on only one.

Either way it would mean diminishing the profit. As long as they are getting profits from both the streams , they will continue. Apparently , that's good from consumer's perspective too , otherwise consider the monopoly creeping into mainstream and low end products as well.
Only problem is getting an upper hand over Intel and Nvidia for the underdog.

R

Since there is not a proper definition of a core AMD can counter sue and should win.. It's like buying snapdragon 808 and complaining its not fast as apple a9.. Lol
And as for monopoly. Even without competition for many years (5 mayb?) Intel has priced the CPU's at sane levels. But on the other hand Nvidia will milk the consumers a lot.

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Also they cannot just sell their CPU divison. The x86 license it non-transferable.
While someone can buy the GPU division, they would not want to invest in the GPU market( probably that's why nobody has done it yet)

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rachitrt23 said:
Also they cannot just sell their CPU divison. The x86 license it non-transferable.
While someone can buy the GPU division, they would not want to invest in the GPU market( probably that's why nobody has done it yet)

Exactly. Also, the reason Intel's not ripping off consumers *yet* is because they are struggling in the mobile space and can't afford to lose even their PC user base because ARM based CPU's are good enough for the average user these days. Nvidia, on the other hand, knows that the hardcore gamer has nowhere else to go and has always been willing to pay a premium. Also, keeping AMD alive is in Intel's favour as it keeps the anti-competitive regulatory bodies off their back.

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Re: AMD faces class action lawsuit over Bulldozer core count claims

seamon said:
We haven't seen any phenomenal performance increases on Intel's iterations. There have been 5-10% improvements at best even with architectural improvements and die shrinks.

Thanks to lack of competition. Remember the P4 days when they played every dirty trick in the book to keep the far superior Athlon64's out of PCs until they had the Core architecture out. AMD lost out on billions and were awarded a paltry sum when Intel was proven guilty on all counts. Now, Intel doesn't feel the need to innovate in the PC space but are trying desperately to get a share of the mobile market from ARM. Nvidia is still kept on its toes despite being the giant in the GPU market because of a worthy competitor. That is why we need a healthy AMD and you should think twice before wishing for their death.

R

While that's true its not the complete picture. AMD sold all the athlons that they produced. So even if Intel hadn't used those tactics AMD wudn have got much more money.
As for 5-10% ipc increases.. Welcome to the future.. Until developers can use new extensions like AVX etc its impossible to see conrore like increase.
Only thing Intel can do is give us more cores for the same price

Re: AMD faces class action lawsuit over Bulldozer core count claims

bikramjitkar said:
Thanks to lack of competition. Remember the P4 days when they played every dirty trick in the book to keep the far superior Athlon64's out of PCs until they had the Core architecture out. AMD lost out on billions and were awarded a paltry sum when Intel was proven guilty on all counts. Now, Intel doesn't feel the need to innovate in the PC space but are trying desperately to get a share of the mobile market from ARM. Nvidia is still kept on its toes despite being the giant in the GPU market because of a worthy competitor. That is why we need a healthy AMD and you should think twice before wishing for their death.

I don't understand why people bring the Intel compiler IPC optimization up. As a company why would you optimize your own compiler for a competitor's product? If you want unbiased optimization use another compiler. Why use Intel compiler at all? And Intel paid the sum only to end the stupid court case. Because they were spending more on the court case itself.

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Re: AMD faces class action lawsuit over Bulldozer core count claims

chimera201 said:
I don't understand why people bring the Intel compiler IPC optimization up. As a company why would you optimize your own compiler for a competitor's product? If you want unbiased optimization use another compiler. Why use Intel compiler at all? And Intel paid the sum only to end the stupid court case. Because they were spending more on the court case itself.

No, I was referring to the fact that Intel bribed and threatened PC manufacturers not to use AMD cpus.

Intel stuck with $1.45 billion fine in Europe for unfair and damaging practices against AMD | ExtremeTech

The EU found, in part:

That Intel paid rebates to manufacturers on the condition that they would buy all (Dell) or nearly all of their CPUs from Intel.
That it paid retail stores rebates to only stock x86 parts.
That it paid computer manufacturers to halt or delay the launch of AMD hardware, including Dell, Acer, Lenovo, and NEC.
That it restricted sales of AMD CPUs based on business segment and market. OEMs were given permission to sell higher percentages of AMD desktop chips, but were required to buy up to 95% of business processors from Intel. At least one manufacturer was forbidden to sell AMD notebook chips at all.

Re: AMD faces class action lawsuit over Bulldozer core count claims

It's not about making your own compiler brilliant or IPC optimisations. More about creating an ecosystem through underhand ways where most synthetic benchmark software makers are using your 'biased' compiler.

If you can figure out if the processor supports SSE4, then run that on it. Don't have kill competitor performance through the dispatcher and force older SSE instruction path. iirc, this is what happened and it is completely different from optimising for your own architecture.

If anybody thinks this is okay, he is a moron. Optimising for your own and killing performance on others are two entirely different things. Software developer won't even realise that the compiler is doing this until they take a look at it more closely.

That said, AMD now isn't in trouble entirely due to this. They overpaid for ATi, we all know and they have delivery issues. Not sticking to schedule anymore.

The problem with AMD imho is that they are confused, they don't know exactly what to focus on, they can't stage a comeback. They need a comeback. They have lost focus. nVidia faced similar situations, but they manages to come back and are now branching off in various directions. That's what today's market values, diversity. No matter what people says desktop gaming is turning into a niche item, people are no longer interested to purchase high end gpus. The future lies in Mobile soc and Tablet/Laptop hybrids. AMD needs to enter the mobile GPU market if they can.

RiP AMD, will miss you......

I want AMD to live even if i am not a fan of AMD. Monopoly is never a good thing. In fact need more companies to design CPUs and GPUs. But i guess that will never happen due to the huge investment. And Intel and Nvidia keep their employees pretty satisfied that they would never leave and form their own company.

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One of AMD's biggest blunders (hard to point out a single one as they have made so many) was to sell ATi's mobile GPU division to Qualcomm. That could have actually saved them.

R

AMD took a gamble with Bulldozer and failed miserably.. Before that they overpaid for ATi (as pointed out by ico) and then had the Global Foundries fiasco(due to the cheating CEO).. All of this took away AMD's funds and now they are really short on money to launch a comeback.
Hopefully Zen and Arctic Islands will help them make some money otherwise Nvidia will milk the hell out of us

tkin said:
The problem with AMD imho is that they are confused, they don't know exactly what to focus on, they can't stage a comeback. They need a comeback. They have lost focus. nVidia faced similar situations, but they manages to come back and are now branching off in various directions. That's what today's market values, diversity. No matter what people says desktop gaming is turning into a niche item, people are no longer interested to purchase high end gpus. The future lies in Mobile soc and Tablet/Laptop hybrids. AMD needs to enter the mobile GPU market if they can.

Very True comment.
Wished and hoped for AMD on the Tablet and Hybrid space(Windows-OS based),but even those crappy Atoms are making a monopoly there. Don't know why AMD is so shy to enter India in the mobile/ultra-portables segment ecosystem of IT Hardware.

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tkin said:
The problem with AMD imho is that they are confused, they don't know exactly what to focus on, they can't stage a comeback. They need a comeback. They have lost focus. nVidia faced similar situations, but they manages to come back and are now branching off in various directions. That's what today's market values, diversity. No matter what people says desktop gaming is turning into a niche item, people are no longer interested to purchase high end gpus. The future lies in Mobile soc and Tablet/Laptop hybrids. AMD needs to enter the mobile GPU market if they can.

They need money. That's the reason they couldn't put out GCN1.2 cards for mobile.
That's the reason AMD was not able to increase efficiency like maxwell did

AMD needs a miracle now.............