Processor manufacturer AMD is facing a class action lawsuit concerning how many cores it claimed to be in it’s Bulldozer series processors. Supposedly their 8 core processors do in actuality have only 4 cores.
This was first suspected when benchmarks didn’t show the expected results for an 8 core processor.
It (AMD) would advertise that a given processor had eight cores, for example, when it effectively had four — each core in AMD-speak was really half of a module, and couldn’t operate independently.
Technically speaking the processor does actually have 8 cores, however due to the design of the processors they can’t actually perform 8 simultaneous operations, like you would expect from a true 8 core processor.
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.
What this means for end users is that their 8 core processors might not be as fast as advertised. Or at least not as fast as an Intel or other 8 core processor.
Now if this meant a small difference in performance it might be acceptable. But since benchmarks have shown the Bulldozer processor to be only little faster than a quadcore CPU, I would be quite upset if I paid extra for something a product could not deliver.
Tony Dickey, on behalf of himself and others similarly situated, filed a class-action lawsuit on Oct. 26 in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, San Jose Division against Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. (AMD) for alleged violations of the Consumer Legal Remedies Act, California’s Unfair Competition Law, false advertising, fraud, breach of express warrant, negligent misrepresentation and unjust enrichment.
We will have to see how the lawsuit goes. But since it’s a class action lawsuit, and the claims seem solid, those who have bought the processor might be in for a refund.
Is this a joke? Everyone knows that the buldozer cores are not a real ones?!??! This is either sponsored by intel or by some retards.
So then your saying this isn’t true? Wow I sure hope AMD finds out this is a joke because the attorneys fees they are dropping for defending themselves for a joke must be huge. Intel must have also been responsible for removing 4 of the 8 FPU’s. They most likely sent an agent to work for AMD and screw them from the inside as well.
Or AMD designed each module to have only one shared FPU per module. Thus rendering each core unable to work independently and hoped the hyper-threading would make up for the loss in performance. But that sounds ridiculous. Has to be the first scenario.