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AMD Chip Fraud Delays Release of New Chipset

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the not-cricket dept.

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."

22 of 243 comments (clear)

  1. Yea by kaiser423 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

    1. Re:Yea by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Do you even know how a cash cow works?
      Their main product (only product?) is processors, how the hell is that a cash cow? They have to fight for market share just about every year, so no, this is not a cash cow for them, it's the company's good name at stake really.

    2. Re:Yea by kaiser423 · · Score: 2, Insightful

      In the past, people never got fired for buying IBM. Same goes for Microsoft and Intel and Oracle. That simple attitude is a cash cow. They could count on a decent chunk of money every quarter that they didn't really have to work for. That's a cash cow -- money rolling in just because you're there.

      I can see it starting to happen with AMD in certain arenas. It might not be some huge cash cow like MS Office is to Microsoft, but there's a growing segment out there who thinks that AMD gives you the most bang for the buck. Once that attitude filters into corporate hierarchy, they get to sit back and reap the benefits. Hopefully they'll continue to innovate once this happens.

  2. I need some magic glasses too by Magickcat · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

    1. Re:I need some magic glasses too by rlsnyder · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I second that thought. Does the submittor really think AMD takes their engineers and sends them out in the field to do legal and investigative work?

      I *think* AMD has more than one department.

      Is editorializing necessary on every darn news story?

    2. Re:I need some magic glasses too by Man+in+Spandex · · Score: 1, Insightful

      Every simpsons "fan" seems to get this wrong. get it right! It's

      "My Eyes! The goggles DO NOTHING ARGh..."

      There is no "they".

    3. Re:I need some magic glasses too by SpecBear · · Score: 3, Insightful

      The Slashdot editors have been paid by AMDs marketing department to insert these non sequiturs as part of an experimental advertising technique. Personally, I'd never heard of AMD's Alchemy chipset until I read about what a terrible job they were doing marketing it.

      Future /. posting: "Several critical IE vulnerabilities were announced this week. With the tech media focused on this, it's going to be impossible for the folks at Mozilla to get the word out about the latest Firefox release."

  3. Bad for overclockers by grahamsz · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Now AMD will be forced to investigate new ways of preventing chips being overclocked to stop this from happening again.

    1. Re:Bad for overclockers by the_mad_poster · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Doubtful. With the cost of fabs, it would probably be less expensive just to raid and shut down the illegal "producers" than to try and work out elaborate protection schemes.

      Remember - implementing half-assed software hacks to "protect" content on a CD is relatively cheap compared to the cost of imlpementing something similar to prevent overclocking in a complex computer chip.

      --
      Alito: A vote for Alito is a punch in the eye to put that bitch back in her place!
    2. Re:Bad for overclockers by confusion · · Score: 2, Insightful
      I sure hope not. Not that I've *ever* had any luck overclocking an AMD chip with any bit of stability.
      It seems that there should be a way to report what the chip actually is (much like SPD eprom with RAM), so that you cannot hide what the chip actually is, but you're still able to overclock it. As many others have pointed out, though, it's non-trivial to implement changes, but I'm betting they'll implement something in future versions of their chips.

      Jerry
      http://www.syslog.org/

    3. Re:Bad for overclockers by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

      Why the hell do you care what MHz it is? MHz is as arbitrary, if not more so, than the damned "performance rating" you're so against. You say that you "expect" a 2600 or 2200 MHz machine, when it clearly doesn't mention MHz in the number. It's a number, any expectations and preconceived notions you have about 4 random digits followed by a plus sign are your own business, but you really should look in to getting over your anger about those 4 numbers not being the same 4 numbers you seem to so desire.

      It's not difficult, at all, for anyone who cares to look up the MHz ratings of the processors. Should the Motorola 68030 be 68.03 KHz? MHz? GHz? Oh wait, it's a processor type, that doesn't work.. Ok, to you're saying that three processors lined up, 1.25 GHz G4, 1.25 GHz Athlon, and a 1.25 GHz P3 are all sitting there, and somehow knowing how many times some stupid crystal in the computer causes a psuedo-square wave to fluctuate is all you need to know to know which is better?

      MHz means nothing, except in the same stepping of the same processor.

    4. Re:Bad for overclockers by drinkypoo · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Uh, with the cost of fabs? What causes you to imagine that AMD would need to build a new fab to introduce nre anti-overclocking features? They might need to tape out some new chips - which they can do in the same fabs.

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
  4. cat /proc/cpuinfo by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

    1. Re:cat /proc/cpuinfo by 0racle · · Score: 4, Insightful

      ...you would think even a not-so-clever user would start to notice...
      I would doubt it. To most people the bios output is just a bunch of text, as long as there is text and it doesn't stop, the system is working. Most people don't look at what it says.

      --
      "I use a Mac because I'm just better than you are."
    2. Re:cat /proc/cpuinfo by turgid · · Score: 2, Insightful
      I would doubt it. To most people the bios output is just a bunch of text, as long as there is text and it doesn't stop, the system is working. Most people don't look at what it says.

      Some people think that lots of text scrolling past at boot time is the mark of a shoddy or "old-fashioned" system. I put Linux on an old PC for my neighbour a couple of weeks ago. He was most distressed by all the messages scrolling past before X and kdm started up.

      I also later made the mistake of using a command-line to do something quicky. "This is going back to the old DOS days," he said despondantly.

      --
      Stick Men
  5. Somebody please read the f___ing article by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

  6. Author didn't understand story, made up headline by Somegeek · · Score: 5, Insightful

    "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..
  7. Re:your sig by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

    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).

  8. Re:AMD by caino59 · · Score: 2, Insightful

    uh...yea...but it's still ILLEGAL.

    a million chips? say there's a 10 dollar difference between one chip model and the next speed up. That's quite a bit of pcket change.

  9. Re:Seriously.... by Wesley+Felter · · Score: 2, Insightful

    They are absolutely willing to risk the enthusiast market if it helps them in the mainstream desktop, business, and server markets.

  10. Re:How is this anything New? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

    I don't think you know when to use apostrophes, commas or capitalisation.

  11. Re:Seriously.... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

    The reason AMD is so well reknowned, is that they offer the best performance/cost.