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AMD Chip Fraud Delays Release of New Chipset
rocketman768 writes "According to internetnews.com a workshop in Taipei has been re-labeling nearly a million AMD Athlon XPs. It seems AMD is spending more time investigating this than on releasing their new Alchemy chipset which boasts direct transfer of video from digital video recorders to portable players without the need to transcode through a PC."
Talk about authenticity.. and AMD's worried?? :-P
I guess noone noticed their chips were manafactured by "Advanced Moocro Devices".
they're just doing the overclocking for you! saves the customer time, really.
That's something they have to be pretty agressive about. They're starting to get a really good name among the PHB's and average joe's. So, they have to really fight to keep their reputation growing. Their new reputation is almost to the point where it's a selling point. They just need to keep it there, and then they have a cash cow.
Erm...
When a chip is labelled, it is usually a cheaper slower chip remarked as a faster chip.
Now, when this chip is sold and fails/fizzles/burns up, its AMD's reputation on the line.
This has no parallels with copyrights and the like. AMD is doing what it must to protect its name and its profits (doh!)
Online backup with Mozy, sounds like Ozzie, but more!
It seems AMD is spending more time investigating this than on releasing their new Alchemy chipset which boasts direct transfer of video from digital video recorders to portable players without the need to transcode through a PC."
Funny, I didn't read that or infer that from the article. Perhaps you have special glasses that let you read invisible ink?
Si tacuisses philosophus mansisses. If you had kept quiet, you would have remained a philosopher.
"This has no parallels with copyrights and the like. "
Trademark.
It seems AMD is spending more time investigating this than on releasing their new Alchemy chipset
Yes, I'm sure they've taken their fab plant workers and assigned them to detective jobs instead.
Now AMD will be forced to investigate new ways of preventing chips being overclocked to stop this from happening again.
Wouldn't the BIOS detect this and display it right when a system boots up, you would think even a not-so-clever user would start to notice that the numbers on the package and the numbers on the screen don't match up
A simple cat /proc/cpuinfo on a GNU/Linux system for experienced users should expose the farce too, correct me if I'm wrong.
Gosh, before I can even hit reply and you get flamebait. Gotta love the consensus reality here...
Anyway, could you explain how fraud and piracy are even remotely related, except for, you know, making a complete non-point?
AMD Alchemy(TM) Au1200(TM) Processor
maybe it's a good thing I decided to post that as AC.
Hardly meant as a troll, I've been afraid of what I thought had happened when overclocking *my* 2600/333 t'bred.
Submitter? Editor? Anyone read this? It said "shadowed" and "put a damper on." There is no assertion anywhere that the fraud caused a chipset delay.
It seems AMD is spending more time investigating this than on releasing their new Alchemy chipset which boasts direct transfer of video from digital video recorders to portable players without the need to transcode through a PC."
Can I make a wild guess, rocketman768, from the flow of your logic that you are also a press spokesman for the Democratic Party?
How did AMD not notice this before a million chips were relabeled?
i agree, i think a caining is in order to the perpetrator, then a nice long jail sentenence and a mark on this guys record that prevents him from obtaining a job of such responsability...
"The news has put a damper on the release of Alchemy, the company's new processor.".
The author evidently thought this quote meant that AMD was slowing down the release of the processor, instead of realizing that it just means that it dulled some of AMD's excitement over the new product release. The story even states that AMD is already selling "large quantities" of the chipset. Sounds like they are releasing it just fine, no delays.
And as you tread the halls of sanity, You feel so glad to be, Unable to go beyond. I have a message, From another time..
This just shows that AMD has reached a point Intel was at 5 or 6 years ago. I worked for a hardware reseller, that got burned by a lot of hotwired, Pentium II's. It was so bad that we were raided by the FEDs'. That freaked me out. Try coming to work one day, walk into the Shop and Agent Smith, flips a Badge and ask you to step into the Boss's Office, for an Interview.
My cat's picked up a Hammer. HEY! Put down that Hammer. Put Down that Hamm...THUNK!
The person was talking about the hypothetical link to release delays, not about the existence of the chipset.
And as you tread the halls of sanity, You feel so glad to be, Unable to go beyond. I have a message, From another time..
"Try coming to work one day, walk into the Shop and Agent Smith, flips a Badge and ask you to step into the Boss's Office, for an Interview."
And now "CygnusXII" works for the Feds.
Consider what you're implying...
You are claiming that your God is unable to protect even an infant.
The reason AMD are so well renowned amongst geeks is _because_ they are over clockable, are they willing to risk this? It's one of their selling points surely.
A friend of mine bought a "Bolex" on the street in New York. We placed bets on how long it would last. Surprisingly, it went strong for several months until it was accidentally left in a pocket. The washing machine tore the plastic faceplate out and revealed the cardboard interior. . .
That was a dang good watch, while it worked.
You mean the numbers on those chips don't designate their clock speed?!?
"What's the frequency Kenneth?"
The head was inside the uterus, how did the scissors get through the back of the head? I see a lie!
If the mother's life is in danger than I support it as well, althrough a c-section might be more ethical if the fetus is viable (althrough cost might make this impossible on a large scale).
You're thinking Singapore, not Taiwan.
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
was just a re-labeled Athlon! (CPU-Z even reads it as one)
Give a man fire, and you warm him for the night. Set a man on fire, and you warm him for the rest of his life.
In that case give him a sex change and force him to become a massage tranny.
The head was inside the uterus, how did the scissors get through the back of the head? I see a lie!
The doctor kept the baby's head just inside the uterus.Want to see the diagram?
Did you even read the rest of the sig? YHBT, HTH, HAND. Proof that a low /. UID does not denote intelligence.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
The new 90nm chips are clock locked.
-Charlie
Now AMD will be spending more time investigating misinformation by Slashdot than on releasing their new Alchemy chipset.
Where will it end? Won't somebody think of the engineers?
Indeed, RTFA. It said the low life was taking factory REJECTS (as in ones targeted for destruction) not merely remarking slower "good" parts as faster "more expensive" parts.
ELOI, ELOI, LAMA SABACHTHANI!?
AMD has even filed a patent for it. They are calling it Enterprise Level Preemptive Multitasking.
Taiwan has been remarking CPUs for at least 10 years. I remember back in the days of the 486 chips with multipliers... most of the chips available were remarked chips, and all anyone cared about was: (1) "can I actually run it at that frequency?" and (2) how much?
Has anything changed?
Relabling is counterfeiting, just like pasting the corners from $10 bills on a $1. It doesn't really matter that you are starting from legitimately produced materials.
I was hoping somehow there was like a new cpu manufacturer who made a socket A compatible chip :(
We need some indie CPU manufacturers.
You completely misrepresent things. The countermeasures are not elaborate or half assed. Intel has already been down this road. Fixed clock multipliers, having BIOS vendors display the embedded brand string that includes the performance index, etc. Overclocking on AMD is endangered by large scale counterfeiting.
If you have an AMD 1300+ and upgrade to what you think is a 2600+ (but is really a 2200+) would you really notice?
Sure. Intel and AMD embed brand strings in the CPU that indicate speed or performance rating. When the machine starts up and BIOS displays this string it would say 2200+ rather than 2600+.
I think he was saying that God shouldn't have to protect the infants... they should be treated as people.
I support requiring at least one partial birth abortion for every female that gets pregnant.
I also support raising children using the following method: every time they eat, beat them in the head. Lightly, of course, when they are newborns, but harder as they get older.
I feel this is equal to teaching children that sex is wrong, since it seems the American (and maybe some other places, too) way is to make sure that kids realize that sex is a dirty, terrible thing you can only do with someone you love.
It is my hope, nay, my dream, that someday human children will equate an activity necessary for survival with horrifying, sharp pain.
Just downloaded the Au1200 databook and had a look at the media accelerator chapter. The Media Acceleration Engine (MAE) is a hardware accelerator that provides IDCT and Motion Compensation similar to that of the ATI Rage 128 / Radeon series. There is full documentation on the internal operation of the MAE together with listings of all the registers. This means that it won't be long before it'll be supported under Linux.
Contrast this with ATI who refuse to release documentation on the IDCT unit. And even worse - Broadcom who make competing CPUs won't release ANY databook unless under NDA.
AMD has announced the Alchemy Au1200 for Personal Media Players on 3 JAN, including price and date for availability... This CPU provides a DVD-quality display that can be scaled directly to larger screens. The Au1200 processor is designed to support industry-standard media formats, including MPEG2, MPEG4, WMV9, H.263 and DivX.
If you weren't posting anonymously, I'd add you to my friends list.
Because in Korea 2005 is for old people.
Is there some kind of guide comparing mislabeled AMD processors to the real deal?
Job? I don't have time to get a job! Who will sit around and bitch about being broke and unemployed then?
Oh yeah! Clearly AMD's engineers are tied up doing this investigation...
</sarcasm>
as offtopic or flamebait?
It is most certainly ON-topic, and nobody is flaming.
rocketman768 writes "According to internetnews.com a workshop in Taipei has been re-labeling nearly a million AMD Athlon XPs. It seems AMD is spending more time investigating this than on releasing their new Alchemy chipset which boasts direct transfer of video from digital video recorders to portable players without the need to transcode through a PC."
Yes rocketman768, AMD has one guy that designs chipsets and manages their legal department. While his skills are incredible, he has not been managing his time well lately. This has resulted in the Alchemy being delayed. I will forward your message to HR and let them know about your concerns.
Your headline is a display of intellectualism that can only be rivaled by an autistic sea monkey. For that, the Internet thanks you.
Let's get 'em!
DigiTimes reports that "Over a million re-marked AMD CPUs have allegedly been shipped to Germany and China, the Chinese-language Liberty Times reported Saturday, ..."
DigiTimes ~ Taiwan police seize 60,000 suspect AMD CPUs
http://slashdot.org/~2TecTom/journal/94553
Words to men, as air to birds.
During the HardOCP presentation, a pretty significant guy from AMD discussed this matter. He said AMD is not against hobbyists overclocking their chips. He said they're upset over an 'asian company' buffing off their labelling, overclocking the chips, and relabelling the chips. I had just bought an Athlon XP 3200 "OEM" chip and was curious if it might be one of the bootlegged CPUs. I talked to an engineer at their booth and showed him the chip. AMD, like several other QuakeCon sponsors, had real-deal engineers on hand to address technical queries. Not just booth babes handing out shirts. The guy I talked to said he had never seen a 3200 made with a green PCB. He also gave me the contact info for an FBI agent who is investigating this phenomena. Later on, I asked a friend of mine who works at AMD about the green-vs-gold PCB issue. His co-workers were likewise skeptical of a 3200 mounted on a green PCB. So now I'm going to contact that FBI agent and see what he thinks.
$5 / month hosted VPS on linux = awesome!
My first thought was that this submitter was trying to increase chances for story acceptance by sensationalizing the counterfitting story with the Alchemy chip delay... But, I will entertain the notion that the engineers might be having to redesign alchemy to make overclocking more difficult to thwart these folks in Taiwan.
When I was at QuakeCon this year, an AMD rep speaking during the [H]ardOCP presentation said they didn't care if hobbyists overclocked their chips. They were bothered by these jokers doing it and reselling the chips as faster clocked chips.
$5 / month hosted VPS on linux = awesome!
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The stockyard allows the vicious Cattle Processing Unit (CPU) to access the cattle more efficiently than having to fetch each cow individually from the open range when it's needed to be the subject of one vile torture or another.
Oh, wait, that's not a "cash cow"; that's a "cow cache".
Those who sacrifice security to condemn liberty deserve to repeat history or something. - Benjamin Santayana
I wasn't sure how to moderate that so I think I'll just comment on it. Is this really an AMD Engineer without a sense of hummor? He seems a bit slow as well. Maybe he just needs a bigger heatsink strapped to his head. Or perhaps his clock rating was relabled by the very same Taiwanese shop! Those bastads! Purposefully, overrating engineer's heads so that they wouldn't figure our they were also relabeling their chips! The brilliance!
Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
And you are thinking of Thailand... Or possibly your mum.
This article brings to mind an incident I had with an Athlon I'd bought last year for my computer... I bought a 2200+ from a shop in Sydney, Australia, but when I started up the computer the BIOS recognised it as a 1800+, although it displayed it as a 2200+ when I took the computer back to the shop and the shop guy did 'Load Optimised Defaults' in the BIOS. Has anyone else here had similar experiences? ~Aly~
I've just bought a 400fsb AthlonXP 3200+ (arrived today). It's on green pcb, instead of the expected brown. I suspect it may be one of these knock-offs, but is there any concrete way of telling? model numbers etc. all seem to indicate it is the real deal.
If it does turn out to be a dodgy cpu, can I legitimately complain to the company I bought it from? After all they have technically sold me a 3200 athlon...
Could you please read the same FA, that I did. here
The practice, as "re-marking," involves resellers and/or distributors who may purchase less expensive processors that are rated at lower clock frequencies and then re-mark them at higher clock frequencies for resale.
Based on tips provided by Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) Taiwan, the police Friday raided an electronics company located in Tainan, southern Taiwan, and seized a total of 60,000 suspect AMD CPUs, according to the police and sources at AMD Taiwan.
The suspect AMD CPUs, including K7 and K8 models, were defective CPUs that would normally have been destroyed. However, market sources said that the CPUs might have been stolen from one of AMD's three packaging and testing plants in Asia and shipped to Taiwan for re-marking. The possible source of the defective chips could be one of AMD's packaging and testing plants in Singapore or Malaysia, or in Suzhou, Jiangsu Province (China), said the sources.
Over a million re-marked AMD CPUs have allegedly been shipped to Germany and China, the Chinese-language Liberty Times reported Saturday, adding that the value of the seized CPUs would be about NT$300 million (about US$9.46 million).
Sources at AMD Taiwan confirmed that the 60,000 seized in Taiwan are defective CPUs rejected by the company, however, the company has officially refused to comment on the seized products in Taiwan or the alleged one million shipped to Germany and China, stating that the company will release an official statement when the police investigation has concluded.
The company from which the suspect product was seized is called Hao Hwa Technology (transliterated from Chinese).
Taiwan police seize 60,000 suspect AMD CPUs
Charles Chou and outside sources, Taipei; Steve Shen, DigiTimes.com [Monday 3 January 2005]
Words to men, as air to birds.
For instance, News.com posted this in an article way back in May of 2003: "The move comes amid the discovery of a remarked chip market earlier this year. In February, AMD embarked of a series of raids in the Philippines."
AMD combats chip fraud in Asia
Words to men, as air to birds.
Don't you know that on /. it's no longer politically correct to mock or deride Microsoft?
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
"Well, rocketman768 says they can't do X because they are doing Y."
Now THAT's good!
Are these utilities of any use?a lResou rces/0,,30_182_871_2364,00.html
http://www.amd.com/us-en/Processors/Technic
I guess a serial number you could actually call and check with AMD about would cause the privacy worriers to shit themselves, but it would be useful in this case.
Now before I get modded down, I be to remind whoever might read this that what I am saying is FACT. - bogaboga
On at least half the machines I regularly use, the monitor takes long enough to warm up that you can't see the POST, or it's only visible for a small faction of the time. You could very easily do this and probably get away with it for quite some time, if you didn't stay in any one spot for too long. But of course it's a lot better of a strategy if you can rebrand them more completely.
AMD stated those stolen chips were due for destruction... Well they would do wouldn't they.. So the receivers of the stolen goods will not want them.
I was of the opine that scrap chips had a paint blob or broken on site, not set as a transportable item.
the word should be solution in the title (when you click the link)
Sex that is procreative and fully giving between husband and wife is a wonderful, beautiful thing. No child should be taught that sex is a dirty, terrible thing; the child should learn, however, that it is appropriate only to a husband and wife.
c als/documents/hf_p-vi_enc_25071968_humanae-vitae_e n.html
I feel this is equal to teaching children that sex is wrong, since it seems the American (and maybe some other places, too) way is to make sure that kids realize that sex is a dirty, terrible thing you can only do with someone you love.
Is this the American way? Seems to me that "Heather has two Mommies" and "Queer eye for the straight girl/guy" and "who wants to marry a millionaire" and the "Sunday night sex show", not to mention most spam, seems to indicate differently.
It is not right, however, to reduce *any* activity (sex included) to a way to pass the time regardless of the consequences that might follow.
Dare you read Humanae Vitae?
http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/paul_vi/encycli
Cool, what Firewire has been designed to do for, like, years?
From the IEEE1394 horse's mouth: " What does peer-to-peer mean? 1394 is a peer-to-peer interface. This allows dubbing from one camcorder to another without the need for a computer. It also allows multiple computers to share a given peripheral without any special support in the peripheral or the computers. It's another important reason why 1394 is the digital interface of choice and why its acceptance is growing.
Yeah, there is the issue of HW playback at the portable player level (which is not new at all, either), but PC-less "direct transfer" as the submitter remarks is something Firewire has been designed to do from its inception years ago. In comparison, USB is limited to PC-controlled operation and I don't think 2.0 has changed that.
Someone should beat the bitch with a basball bat!
>smaller country, such as Cuba, under the pretext of a military or governmental order.
Cuba has an embargo. Probably it is easier to rob the chips than to buy them as a cuban official, specially as a military order.
And do you think nobody would notice an order of 1 million chips in a small country?
Corruption is not just a matter of small countries. And governments in general are better controlled than private companies.
But of course it's a lot better of a strategy if you can rebrand them more completely
Just to be clear the string is burned into the electronics of the CPU, see the CPUID instructions. You can't really change that. You would have to have a BIOS that is participating in the fraud. However Windows and various utilities also display this CPUID string so a complete fraud would be very difficult.
and how many people would actually notice?
You only need one to alert the system integrator that unknowingly bought the counterfeit chips.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
YHBT.
YHL.
And, for christ's fucking sake, stop posting in this thread. If you keep this up much longer you're going to be posting at -1 entirely because you got trolled by a signature on Slashdot.
Alito: A vote for Alito is a punch in the eye to put that bitch back in her place!
Has anything changed?
Yeah. People who buy AMD expect to be able to overclock them (at least I do.) If I bought a 2500+ expecting a barton 2500+ and it turned out to be an overclocked t-bred, I'd be pissed. I already own an overclocked t-bred, and there's no way that's going to compete with a 3200+ like that 2500+ Barton will.
Of course the Socket A one must be based on the Athlon XP core. It would be very difficult to modify a Socket 754 processor (with built-in memory controller) to work in Socket A (where it's in the northbridge), not to mention the fact that the Athlon XP uses the EV6 bus, descended from the DEC Alpha, whereas the Opteron-derived processors have Hypertransport (a descendent of the technology in the Sun E10k) and all sorts of other fancy stuff.
Silly me :-)
Stick Men
Just to be clear the integrators and builders are the same outfit and they would probably not make such an assumption. They would fear mistakes where higher end CPUs were erroneously sold as lower end CPUs. A lower end CPU seeming to be where a higher end CPU should be would set off warning bells. These guys operate on razor thin margins and have to be very careful with their inventory.