Accusations AMD processor-trickery – digi.no

Back in 2011, AMD launched its first processors based on x86 architecture called Bulldozer. These were aimed at CPUs for use in powerful servers and PCs.

Block diagram of Bulldozer topology. Photo: AMD

Even then, it was known that the sharing of resources was a key element in this microarchitecture:

Processor cores occur in pairs in separate modules. The two cores of one such module parts including the L2 cache memory and FPU unit for calculating the flow interim operations. The module also common units for fetching and decoding of instructions.

All this techno talk like ordinary consumers does not understand, argue a lot of lawsuits now brought against AMD by a court in San Jose, California.

Here, AMD accused of having lied about the number of cores in some of the company’s Opteron and FX processors.

Products AMD has marketed with either four, eight or sixteen processor cores had in fact only half the number of cores, it is noted. This is stated in court documents site The Register has been obtained.

Number of cores used for marketing purposes

Freedom from the lawsuit:

– For many years, the products of AMD and Intel compared against each other based on clock speed, measured in megahertz and gigahertz later. In recent times, these actors however passed to the number of cores as the new unit of measurement.

– An eight-cored CPU can for example perform eight calculations simultaneously and independently.

According to the disgruntled AMD customer Andy Dickey, who is behind the lawsuit, then you are not the two pairs of cores considered real cores, since they can not always calculate independently.

Maintains that tens of thousands were fooled

Specifically claim action that “AMD built Bulldozer processors by removing components from the two cores and combine the remainder to a single” module “. However, by removing certain components from two cores to create a module, so did the core no longer independent of each other “.

– The result is poorer performance and that Bulldozer processors could perform eight simultaneous instructions simultaneously, so AMD has claimed, according to the lawsuit where it also says:

– Because AMD is not published exact specifications, then tens of thousands of consumers misled into buying Bulldozer CPUs that are not in accordance with promotion of AMD, which has worse performance than a true eight-way processor would delivered (ie at eight simultaneous calculations).

The question the court must decide, unless the case is dismissed or ends with settlement, the defining what actually constitutes a processor core.