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AMD Sued Over Allegedly Misleading Bulldozer Core Count
An anonymous reader writes: A class action suit accuses AMD of misleading buyers about the number of cores in its Bulldozer-based CPUs. The complaint claims that the chips effectively had only four cores, while AMD claims there are eight. According to Ars: "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."
http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/217672-analysis-amd-lawsuit-over-false-bulldozer-chip-marketing-is-without-merit
AMD's CPU architecture has a similar purpose as hyperthreading -- to share hardware resources between what looks to the OS like independent cores -- but the tradeoff is different. Intel's hyperthreading approach only works to cover memory latency, because the hyperthreads share so many physical resources (I think basically everything except register files and hyperthreading-related state). AMD's is somewhat different in that each "module" has two independent integer ALUs, register files, and L1 data caches. The module has one L1 instruction cache, one L2 data cache, one FPU, and one instruction fetch/decode unit.
But AMD has always been pretty up-front about this architecture. There is maybe a cause of action against resellers who package the AMD chips into systems and do gloss over which aspects each "core" shares with another core, but AMD publicly presented the core-vs-module distinction well before the chips were released.
An i5 has 4 physical cores without HT, dummy.
Why is this even reported? This suit isn't going to go anywhere (unless AMD's lawyers are extremely incompetent, and the judge is extremely incapable of understanding basics about computer architecture and ISAs).
The AMD cores shared an FPU, sure, but sharing a resource doesn't mean that cores cannot execute simultaneously. The AMD cores still have independent integer-based execution units (instruction registers, register files, ALUs, branch counters, etc.), after all, and are fully capable of executing integer instructions simultaneously (which accounts for the vast majority of instructions under typical loading).
"Is not a sentence" is not a sentence. Well damn.
The sooner AMD goes down the toilet, the sooner someone competent takes over, the sooner Intel and Nvidia get competitive again.
At the moment, consumers and society as a whole are suffering from this beating of a dead horse. We need its death accelerated to the whole industry back on its toes again.
Why do you think AMD going bust would magically mean someone new stepping up to the plate? There are effing ginormous obstacles for a start-up to come and compete in the x86-scene, so much so that it's nearly impossible, and if Intel got a monopoly on the market even for a brief moment the situation would become even worse!
No, the better option is that AMD gets their shit together, never giving Intel full monopoly on the x86-market even for a bit.
i5 is just branding, it doesn't describe physical features. Broadwell desktop i5 has 4 cores no threads, mobile has 2 cores as 4 threads,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broadwell_(microarchitecture)#Mobile_processors
I was shopping for VCRs about 20 years back and asked the Future Shop guy how much better it was for having (quoting from the card beside the VCR) a "19 micron tape head". Turns out they ALL had 19 micron tape-heads (whatever the hell that *meant*) as it was the spec for a VCR tape head, at the time, at least. It was just another bit of science-y sounding technobabble to put on the card.
Buying based on core count is like buying for the 19-micron thing; it's either a fast machine for your purposes or not. Absolutely the only way to tell that for sure is a test. The only thing that was ever useful with, say, "megahertz" was that it had for a decade or so there a correlation with the performance you'd get in real use. I've never found "cores" to have anything of the sort.
You're right! They're a joke! Hopefully they go bankrupt so you can buy an i5 for the price of a Xeon!
Regardless of how many cores you have, 90% of the crap that 90% of people do doesn't even benefit from having more than two cpu cores, and it only benefits from that because you can use one core for "the app you're running in the foreground" and one core for literally all other background tasks so your system doesn't lock up if you really need to use 100% of a core, AMD can throw more cores at their CPUs but end users won't see real world performance benefits except in limited scenarios. Intel's super cheap Pentium G3220 at 3ghz (and with only two cores) beats everything AMD sells except for hand-picked benchmarks where AMD's core advantage overcomes its brutal per-clock disadvantage. Single threaded performance is whats king and you'd have to run an AMD cpu at like 5ghz to overcome its poor performance per clock to beat a 3ghz Intel (core-architecture) CPU. And its sad for me to say this because I bought nothing but AMD CPUs from like 2000 until 2014. I wish they could be competetive but the situation looks pretty bleak. I can't use their stuff when their 8 core 4.5ghz cpu is only "a little bit faster" than my 4 core 3ghz phenom from 2009, but my i7 4790k is like, a solid 3 times faster than that 2009 phenom in almost anything you throw at it.
Full disclosure was made.
It's more like the difference between 1000 and 1024 but actually spelling out which one you are using rather than leaving it for the end user to make an assumption that benefits the seller.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
No, the better option is that AMD gets their shit together, never giving Intel full monopoly on the x86-market even for a bit.
Myself and a friend have been AMD fanboys for 20 years. I built my first system on AMD 133mhz '486. Since then he abandoned AMD on his last workstation build and went all Intel. I have a FX-8150 and a FX-8350 in my builds right now. He has given up on AMD and I'm not far behind. I'm looking at my next workstation build sometime in 2016. I'm not ready to completely abandon AMD. I'm gong to wait and see what the specs on the AM4 bring to the table but I expect to be disappointed.
A few months back we looked to see who might be interested in buying AMD and keeping as a whole. We didn't come up with any one. What we got was a list of people that might be interested in parts of AMD. Sony or Microsoft might buy their chip facilities since they do use AMD chips as the CPU/GPU in their consoles. AMD has a few patents that both Nvidia and Intel might be interested in picking up.
Realistically AMD is to far behind the technological curve in so many areas. Even looking at the specs to the new AM4 systems I can tell they are behind Intel in almost every aspect. AMD has always been behind Intel in the performance area for most of its life. But they where never so far behind that their lower prices didn't make up for. That is not true with the FX chips. The performance gap is not worth the lower cost.
Lets hope AMD gets their shit together. As I've said before. The fat lady hasn't sung yet on AMD but she is warming up in the bullpit. Lets hope that as she waddles up on stage AMD pulls a rabbit out of the hat and she falls off the stage into a tuba.
Supporting World Peace Through Nuclear Pacification
Concur. The design of the bulldozer modules was abundantly clear. The fact that the "cores" share an FPU was clearly disclosed and part of any diagram of the parts. The shared FPUs played a huge role in assessing bulldozer-based CPUs for high performance computing workloads. For HPC, the usual benchmark is HPL (a.k.a., high performance LINPACK), which is a measure of double precision floating point performance for a particular matrix operation called DGEMM. The fact that the FPU was doing double-duty for two "cores" on a module meant that the peak theoretical performance was limited by the number of FPUs in a CPU, not the number of cores or modules or anything else.
As others have noted, hyperthreading via Intel can have exactly the same impact: the threads share various components, including the FPU.
Another aspect that can have a major impact on performance is the number of memory channels, and how things like cache coherency is handled. Among other things, AMD's hyper-transport exhibits different scalability characteristics depending on the number of sockets. In a four or eight-socket configuration, latency due to cache coherency operations can have a big impact on performance.
- gbn
No, the better option is that AMD gets their shit together, never giving Intel full monopoly on the x86-market even for a bit.
Unfortunately its less about AMD getting their shit together, and Intel not being punished enough for their behaviour 10-20 years ago which blocked AMD. At this point unless AMD gets lucky (or skilled whatever) in a future architecture which places them ahead or on par with Intel, and Intel doesn't get a pass on monopolistic behaviour AMD is never going to be more than a niche pick.
AMD has always been behind Intel in the performance area for most of its life.
Well, there was the Athlon - era where they were sweeping the floors with Intel; the classic Athlons and Athlon XPs were phenomenal CPUs at the time and highly overclockable. It was glorious, but yeah, I think that was pretty much the only time they beat Intel.
Lets hope AMD gets their shit together. As I've said before. The fat lady hasn't sung yet on AMD but she is warming up in the bullpit. Lets hope that as she waddles up on stage AMD pulls a rabbit out of the hat and she falls off the stage into a tuba.
I really, *REALLY* hope they can manage to do it, but.. I just haven't heard any promising news in that regards anywhere. There's quite literally nothing to indicate that AMD has in any way or form stopped digging even further down the hole they are already in. I do dread the day when Intel becomes the sole x86 - vendor and can practically demand whatever they want, do whatever they want and laugh all the way to the bank.
Cant be, as the PS4 and Xbox One use Puma derived cores, a completely different Architecture than the Buldozer derived Desktop CPU.
The Puma Cores do NOT share the FPU. Puma CPU use a special low power Design that doesn`t scale up well above about 2 GHz
AMD dying off would effectively make Intel the sole producer of high-performance x86/64 CPUs in the market. Sure, you have VIA as well, but good luck trying to crunch numbers on an C7 core.
Sony or Microsoft might buy their chip facilities since they do use AMD chips as the CPU/GPU in their consoles
Given that AMD spun off its chip facilities a few years ago, I think we can probably ignore your market analysis.
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You realize x86-64, the architecture nearly every PC uses was made by AMD, right?
Intel doesn't want AMD to die off because that would subject its practices to monopoly scrutiny. It shares just enough patent information with AMD to allow it to trail a bit behind (in exchange for access to AMD patents, of course) and not completely collapse. The one time that AMD managed to move ahead of Intel (when the Athlon was the king of the hill), Intel pulled out all the stops to prevent it getting a solid foothold in the PC market until Intel's Core 2 Duo could come along and put Intel technologically back in the lead. AMD hasn't had the money to effectively compete since then in part because Intel ensured that its bank accounts couldn't build up too far.
You can never go home again... but I guess you can shop there.
I don't see how this issue can affect PS-4 and Xbox One consoles. Both those are marketed with out disclosure to the public on how many cores their processors have. Most people that buy games consoles don't care about that as long as their a radical performance increase over their last console.
I doubt that ether microsoft or sony will have anything to say ether. Both their engineering teams crawled all over the cpu designs they where planning to put in the console. They didn't just point at a cpu and said that one is good. They knew exactly what they where putting into those consoles.
Supporting World Peace Through Nuclear Pacification
I built a few workstations a few years back out of those VIA parts. God what a piece of shit. These where for low end office work too. We couldn't get off those things fast enough.
Supporting World Peace Through Nuclear Pacification
If slow processors get the work done fast enough, and they allow the device to be smaller, generate less heat, and run longer on a given mass of battery, then I'll take the slow processors.
I understand they're very popular on the embedded market due to their low cost, but i can't honestly tell why. Any half decent ARM platform will run circles around it.
i3, i5, and i7 represent "good", "better", and "best" respectively. That's it. A *particular* SKU with an i5 mark may have 4 physical cores, but 4 physical cores is not a requirement to receive the mark.
For example, this i5 has 4 physical cores: http://ark.intel.com/products/... while this i5 has 2 physical cores http://ark.intel.com/products/...
Was it so wrong of me?!
Yes
What answer did you want here. The only people this actually affects, know all about it already.
Think of it this way. Those trucks with the dualies on them? They have six tires right? Why? More traction and more wight capacity. Even if they only have two axles like the standard four tire variants. So what would be better, a dualie or a truck with three axles so you can still carry that weight? Well you get the dualie. You dont really need another axle you just need capacity and traction. The other axle duplicates parts that you don't need duplicated. Do you really want to maintain extra drive shafts, bearings, differentials?
It is the same thing with the AMD processor. You do not need extra FPU units, because most people will never benefit from them. So whats better, a hotter, more power hungry, more expensive chip, or one without the parts you don't need saving you money?
Anyways, they NEVER HID THIS. It is your job to do the research if you need something in particular. Depending on the advertising material for the computer manufacturer or what the dumb kid at best buy tells you makes this 100% completely your bad. If you did research on benchmarks they show you what speed it gets, so are you not getting what you looked up? If it accomplishes it as fast as the benchmarks show, then what are you bitching about? Do you really care how it does this? Fuck I don't care if the processor contains an evil demon that is being forced to accomplish all of this via black magic, it's not like I can fix it if it breaks either way. As long as it accomplishes what it claims to in the amount of time that is similar to the benchmarks, why exactly do you care?
They made one and it sucked so much that they gave up on it and used AMD's.
Err except with HT there is one execution unit, and with AMD there are two.
They are real cores, that share instruction decode and a FPU.
Actual execution is parallel (unlike HT which is more interleaved).
HT isn't similar to Bulldozer modules in any sense.
Then perhaps AMD, Intel, Microsoft, and Oracle need to sit down and negotiate what constitutes a core for the purpose of licensing proprietary software.
and Juries are really, really unpredictable. Even if the outcome is legally obvious it doesn't mean the jury won't get dazzled into blaming AMD.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Intel's cores since Nehalem have nothing of the sort. There's one set of ALUs, one FPU, one front-end, one each of L1i and L1d caches, and one peak of the memory hierarchy per core. However the front-end can decode two threads concurrently, tracking two sets of ISA regs at the same time, and sharing all resources between the two. But there are still ony one set of ALUs, and one FPU, per core.
Intel gets more oomph per core this way. AMD merely took the other road, but their process tech was behind and their R&D hamstrung by budget cuts, so the things that would've made Bulldozer properly competitive only materialized in Piledriver, and then AMD was firmly in the "cheapo" tier already.
The "pretend multicore" is a throwback to the first hyperthreaded Netburst family chips, where it was offered precisely as a substitute for AMD's genuine single-chip "SMP in a socket" multicore.
Ah yes, yepping of the disbeliever. We'll I guess I'm not. I guess the fact that my workstation is a fx-8150 and my linux box is a fx-8350. I have a A-5350 in my htpc and my old workstation is a Phenom II 965. The rig I build for my daughter is only a AMD 6300. I won't talk about the 9950, 9850, 1440XP, and the T'bird 950 before that. Yup your correct, I've never been a AMD fanboy.
Look, your little toy box is nice but if you want to run with the big dogs you best know what you're talking about. I'm glad it works for you but some of us don't live in denial. When I upgrade I plan to go Intel. I will give AMD a chance with its new platform but I'm expecting disappointment.
Supporting World Peace Through Nuclear Pacification
Sigh, does nobody know how the BD/PD arch works here? It CAN share the FPU but absolutely does NOT "have to". Allow me to quote from Wikipedia: "."Two symmetrical 128-bit FMAC (fused multiplyâ"add capability) floating-point pipelines per module that can be unified into one large 256-bit-wide unit if one of the integer cores dispatches AVX instruction and two symmetrical x87/MMX/SSE capable FPPs for backward compatibility with SSE2 non-optimized software."
So each core DOES have an FPU, they simply used a simpler 128bit FPU that CAN be joined together to make a single 256bit FPU for use with AVX instructions and ya know what? The majority of users will NEVER NOTICE as every program and game Joe Average runs will run great on an AMD chip. I myself run an FX-8320E which I upgraded from a Phenom II X6 (which according to the lawsuit is a "full" core compared to mine) and the FX blows through transcodes and multieffects layering a good 40% faster than the P II X6. And if his BS was true how does he explain the fact that the 6350 and 1100T are equal in performance despite the fact that according to him its a triple core versus a hexacore?
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
If you're a consumer, you can't base your buying decision based on a single specification. You have to look at your needs vs what is important to you. For some people performance/$ is important. For others, performance $/watt is more important. You have to compare based on the applications that are important to you. If you, as a typical desktop/laptop user, mostly use application A and price is the main consideration, it doesn't matter if the CPU runs at 3 or 4 GHz, 4 threads or 8 threads, etc. What matters is performance/$. If you have $200 to spend on a cpu, it really doesn't matter who makes the better $700 cpu.
There are plenty of resources available to help people make decisions. Only relying on marketing department information is just plain dumb.
You should be able to host as many VMs as you have memory for.
Cores should not be an issue.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
It is not hyperthreading at all. It is two full integer CPUs sharing one FPU. Hyperthreading gives you one additional brain-damaged CPU at maybe 40% the main speed. For integer loads, AMD gives you the performance of 8 full cores.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
You are not too smart. 4 HARDWARE THREADS in an I5. Get it?
Not all i5's have 4 physical cores. Neither do all i7's (5500u for example).
I browse on +1 so AC's need not respond, I won't see it.
Sony or Microsoft might buy their chip facilities since they do use AMD chips as the CPU/GPU in their consoles
Given that AMD spun off its chip facilities a few years ago, I think we can probably ignore your market analysis.
Personally I think AMD should give up and sell their assets under bankruptacy to Samsung or Realtek or some ARM cpu manufacturer who is component and knows what they are doing and can write decent drivers. :-(
AMD is damaged goods man and you know why they suck? No one including global foundaries wants to invest making chips that are not 2012 era technology! Global foundaries said there is no demand for AMD chips and their new cutting edge .18 NM plants only make chips for cell phones for Apple, LG, etc. Once they go out of date and are slow and big like .28 microns they use them for AMD chips. ... meanwhile Intel's skylake is .14 NM and moving forward. How can you compete with that? They are toast. I would still buy ATI graphics cards if people would not keep dropping them like Falcon Northwest (I think that was the one) whose customer service reps demanded they only support NVidia as 80% of callers had ATI problems with the drivers.
If another company had some skin in the game they could use their chip designers to update their x86 line and give more up to date plants. Competing with Intel is like competing against Walmart these days. It can't be done.
http://saveie6.com/
Mod parent up. It is correct. Some i5's do have 2 cores. The original AC post near the top is also correct, which I notice the mods have knocked to -1 in the usual frenzy of "I disagree, although I am uninformed about the matter."
For a couple decades, "core" meant CPU. 4004, 1802, 8080, 6800, 6809, Z80, 68000... etc.
Then it meant CPU+MMU.
What's funny is that "core" now seems to mean CPU+MMU+FPU (which is great... I love me an FPU per core.) But some (often aimed at mobile or tablets or phones) also have GPUs.
So how long before we won't accept "core" except as a label for CPU+MMU+FPU+GPU?
Then it might be "Nah, that thing has no NPU (neural processing unit), that's not a "real core": CPU+MMU+FPU+GPU+NPU
Then perhaps it'll be "Nah, that thing has no QPU (quantum processing unit)", that's not a "real core": CPU+MMU+ FPU+GPU+NPU+QPU
Then... well, I have no idea. But I do think it'll be something. It's always something. :)
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
The fact that, years later, _WE_ are still arguing about this proves that the case has merit.
If WE can't come to a consensus about this... then how is Joe Scmoe supposed to figure it out?
The fact is: this was _misleading_ advertising. They could have easily come up with another name for it (like Intel did with Hyperthreads)... instead they consciously chose to call the extra ALUs _cores_... which does have a meaning to the typical consumer. They did this, on purpose, to muddy the waters... and they REALLY did.
Does that mean that people shouldn't be more careful about what they buy? Sure. But that doesn't absolve AMD from putting out misleading advertising.
Come now AC, I suspect you are being intentionally obtuse. Of course Intel could have come up with some sort of 64 bit x86 architecture by themselves (if they cared about their installed base and had actually wanted to); but as you said, they already had the IA-64 monstrosity. AMD did us all the service of providing an acceptable alternative to Intel's plan of forced obsolescence. And, technically, AMD64 turned out pretty well, not sure IA-64 would have done the same as the only desktop\server ISA as it looked like things were headed.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
"AMD64 was created as an alternative to the radically different IA-64 architecture, [by Intel and HP]. [...] AMD64 architecture was positioned by AMD from the beginning as an evolutionary way to add 64-bit computing capabilities to the existing x86 architecture, as opposed to Intel's approach of creating an entirely new 64-bit architecture with IA-64."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
"but with x86-64, roles were reversed: Intel found itself in the position of adopting the ISA which AMD had created as an extension to Intel's own x86 processor line. [...Yamhill] After several years of denying its existence, Intel announced at the February 2004 IDF that the project was indeed underway"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
"[...] Intel had originally hoped [Itanium] would find broader acceptance as a replacement for the original x86 architecture.
AMD chose a different direction, designing the less radical x86-64, a 64-bit extension to the existing x86 architecture, which Microsoft then supported, forcing Intel to introduce the same extensions in its own x86-based processors.[15] These designs can run existing 32-bit applications at native hardware speed, while offering support for 64-bit memory addressing and other enhancements to new applications.[6] This architecture has now become the predominant 64-bit architecture in the desktop and portable market."
So, I actually have an AMD FX 8320E eight core as the processor on my personal desktop.
This is what AMD says:
"The industry's only 8-core desktop processor", or "The industry's first and only native 8-core desktop processor for unmatched multitasking and pure core performance with "Bulldozer" architecture".
Now, I bought it knowing there was likely some behind the scenes tricks, and because I don't strictly need a high-level of sustained CPU intensive tasks. For me it was as much about letting multiple programs run without too much contention.
However, AMD isn't exactly jumping up and down to point out how this isn't quite 8 full cores.
So, me I bought it knowing that it wasn't likely to be a full 8-core CPU like the 8-core Xeons we have at work in some of the servers. But I think it's a little much to claim it's purely retailers making this claim. AMDs own marketing material isn't suggesting anything different.
For my purposes, having bought it knowing it wasn't "really" 8 cores, I'm still happy with the performance. But if you bought something thinking you could have sustained 8-core performance for specific tasks, I can see you'd be unhappy.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.