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AMD Readies "Lottery-Core" CPUs
Barence writes "AMD has announced a radical shake-up of its CPU strategy, in an exclusive interview with PC Pro. The company has revealed that the next generation (codenamed Tyche) will be offered as a single 'lottery-core' SKU, with the number of functional cores in each part left for the customer to discover. 'We know gaming is very important to our customers,' explained regional marketing manager Ffwl Ebrill, 'and we're innovating to bring that win-or-lose experience out of the virtual world and into the marketplace.' Anyone discovering more than ten functional cores could consider themselves 'a lottery winner,' while unfortunates discovering their new CPU had no working cores at all would be encouraged to 'roll again.'"
How about you get the number of cores proportional to the post number? FIRST!
Wait a sec...holding off on this one...
Okay, I know it's a joke, but isn't it kinda true? Grab one of AMD's chips with disabled cores, and it truly is random how many cores (if any) you might be able to unlock using ACC. :P
It is by my will alone my thoughts acquire motion; it is by the juice of the coffee bean that the thoughts acquire speed
No no. Seems completely legit to me.
Om, nomnomnom...
The thing about lotteries is that they defy physics. Take a machine designed to give out specific units of force, and balls designed to weigh the same weight they are prescribed, and you've got a very predictable physical system.
So, how do they avoid drawing the same numbers every time? They let a computer mess up the given statuses... do they use Set 1, Set 2, or Set 3 of balls? Do they put the balls in numerical order? When does the machine start moving?
The thing is... you can't let humans decide these variables because eventually they'll spot the patterns and be able to rig the result. So, they do what the computer tells them to... yep, that's right, your state lottery is just as random as the PRNG at headquarters.
Didn't go over so well. Just ask newegg.
Stop with the April fools posts already!
Agreed. Best first post I've seen in a while.
DRM: Terminator crops for your mind!
Actually it would probably work as long as the cpu had enough cores to be worth the cost. I would go for it!
Take a machine designed to give out specific units of force, and balls designed to weigh the same weight they are prescribed, and you've got a very predictable physical system.
Even if it is predictable, it isn't necessarily tractable. The air inside one of those table tennis ball blenders, for instance, is a chaotic system. The "specific units of force" aren't always constant given fluctuations in power supply.
your state lottery is just as random as the PRNG at headquarters.
More likely, the PRNG that dictates exactly how long the machine runs isn't entirely pseudo but instead tied to an entropy-gathering process such as hashing room noise received through the microphone.
And I lost, it had fewer working MBs than it was advertised. ;/ So this is very real actually.
Ezekiel 23:20
Those jokes aren't even funny nor interesting.
They are just bad.
Except the youtube 1/4 that thing was good !
Intel got there first, years ago.
Why, without your clothes, you're naked, Miss Dudley!
April first :|
The above comments are the ravings of a lunatic and should be ignored completely.
It is all fun and 1 of April games until someone gets a 0-core processor.
You can't handle the truth.
that was already how they determined processor speed: http://www.pcguide.com/ref/cpu/char/mfg_Rating.htm
Terrorists can attack freedom, but only Congress can destroy it.
It's such a completely humorless waste of time. Yes, that's right-Bah humbug.
Enough already. It's done to death and not funny.
At least the OMGPONIES joke was fun, since it didn't rely on an endless avalanche of stupid fake news stories.
To whomever decided to add the 'dontruinitwithtags' tag ...
IT WAS RUINED ALREADY WITH THE OTHER 9 GOD DAMN APRIL FOOLS POSTS. ENOUGH ALREADY.
I get excited at a glimmer of hope of something to read while I sit here and wait for this batch to run ... only to find out another moronic April Fools post was made ... because 10 in one day just isn't enough.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
This is in no way unique.
You can essentially 'overclock' everything in existence to some extent.
It generally doesn't happen outside of PCs because most people realize that you're trading off something else.
In the case of overclocking you're giving up reliability and data integrity in exchange for a marginal speed boost because you were too cheap to buy the better chip or you're just going nuts trying to see just how far you can push it.
Overall though, unless you're 15 and still inschool with no job, Overclocking is always a waste of money long term. The chip may be cheaper, but any gains you made are lost almost immediately with all the fucking around you have to do to get it to work. Your time has to be worth less than minimum wage for it to make sense to overclock for anything more than a 'I made my chip run at 6ghz' factor.
There is a reason the chips are slowed down and cores are disabled, they don't pass the required tests for better performance. I guess the other reason legitimate reason for doing it would be gather entropy for a PRNG, using the psuedo random errors introduced by the chip itself to add entropy, but its far easier to just wire up a Geiger counter or a microphone and use background radiation.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
Isn't there a tech site that sells a daily "Bag of Crap"? People buy it, every day. Sometimes it's full of nice stuff. Often it's crap. People buy it. Because the price is right.
So, same here. I'd go for it. I'd pay $10 for a "Box of Crap" from AMD. It can have anywhere from 0 to 12 operational cores. As long as neither I nor AMD know ahead of time which it is, I'd buy it. I'm willing to gamble my $10 on the yield of AMD's production line.
'course, given their yield, the price would probably have to be higher than $10. They make quite a few usable chips. Lottery tickets are $1 because the yield is so low.
A boon for Overclockers really..
No longer are things priced by binning, now every one has an equal chance.
I would seriously buy one if the price was right. I mean I already own a C2D 1.8 I bought on the assumption that I could overclock the thing to 3.2 or whatever, and then was sorely dissapointed when it couldn't take an OC at all. I mean the ONLY reason I bought it was to OC it.
This would fill that niche. You don't have to sort or test them, heck, you don't even need to market them... what are you gonna say... erm we don't know how fast it will run, nor do we really know how many cores it contains... buy one and find out! Sure I will, just price 'em cheap and I would be all over that! (so long as your secretly not binning all the good ones and just selling rejects!)
I dunno, sounds find to me if the price is right. Overclockers everywhere would have a field day posting their finds! Not sure how you would do the package with a possible variable number of cores. I guess your MB would have to be uber compatible with everything...
Yes yes I know it is an April Fools joke. I still want one for fun though! :)
First, I am a fan of AMD and I'm glad they are being creative with how they might approach the market in the future.
But, this "lottery core" concept, if legal, is a very dangerous precedent pawned off to the consumer. Like atm transaction fees, or any financial transaction fees whatsoever, the only reason they persist is because no one has decided to sue for the practice; all those who might afford the lawsuit in some way benefit from the practice or the short changing effect has negligible effect on them to care.
Anyways, bottom line, is this seems to be an attempt to circumvent all consumer merchandise laws, lemon laws and all other business codes of transaction of goods and services with the justification that it's a "lottery system".
AMD get's away with selling defective products, with refusal of refund, what's to change anyone else from doing so? How would you like for to tell you that you either continue chasing the repair costs or buy another one of their cars? Who is going to regulate AMD to make sure they don't pump defective cores to encourage increased sales volumes (thus profit)? Real lotteries, licensed gambling establishments... even financial services like the stock exchange and investment ventures are all HEAVILY regulated, by organizations that are state/government sanctioned and have real teeth and have in the past used their teeth. AMD is simply a business... who is going to regulate them? Is the Nevada Gaming Commission going to govern all the gaming machines that determine which chips are lotto winners? Are they going to come in and close production lines indefinitely until the algorithms are fixed? Are they going to make sure there are no back-doors? Are they going to prosecute whoever if fraud is found? What about all the merchantability laws that protect consumers purchasing goods?
This concept is not new... real lotteries exist. What is new more or less is to expand this as a means justify pawning defective goods off on the consumer as a 'lottery system' based purchase.
I strongly condemn this proposal and I hope to god this is an April Fools joke.
But the triple cores truly are a lottery.
If you're going to fabricate a bunch of quad-core chips, you expect a certain number of them to end up with 1 bad core, a certain number to have 2 bad cores, and some will have 3 bad cores, and some will just be garbage. That's the nature of the beast. AMD is just smart enough to test them until they hit their desired yield of quad cores, then test until they have their desired yield of triples, and test the remaining ones and those either become double-core or get thrown out. I'm not sure if they have any single-core processors that started life as quads.
The benefit to the consumer is that, while the number of cores is lower, the cache is still high, so a quad core with two cores tied behind its back may still be faster than a purpose-built dual core. And, heck, it was a useless part as a quad due to one or more bad cores, so AMD is making some good money selling these "defective" parts as "partly good". They can charge a slight premium over purpose-built duals, and it's pretty much "found money" to them.
The other benefit is that, for some of those units, the triples (and maybe even the doubles) are not "tested bad", they are "untested". AMD needs a certain amount of doubles and triples in those lines to meet demand, so whatever is left once they meet demand for quads is a mix of tested-bad and untested chips.
So the "Lottery Core" CPU is not vaporware. It exists today.
"This post contains words, known to the State of California to cause thought. Wash brain thoroughly after reading."
It's probably 16 mebicores.
Why don't you just RTFA? It's maybecores...
Apple built a platform for their ideas, Google built one for everyone's.
I still like the odds better than my state lottery.
Chris Sheppard
Intel was already getting ready to roll out their own lottery-core However there was a bit of public backlash because units leaked out early.
The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions that I wish it to be always kept alive