Judge Allows Lawsuit Over AMD's FX Processors to Continue

[Audherbagn]

Remember that old FX lawsuit over core count? Well it is back. 

 

Cotext: The AMD FX series high end chips were launched as 8 core processors, but due to shared cache channels, they work more like hyperthreaded quad cores. People saw the opportunity to sue and did (as they should), but AMD didn't want to be sued. As a result of not wanting to be sued, AMD decided to try and get the case dropped claiming that the plantiffs knew the structure of the fx core before they bought them, due to their official definition of a core being changed. Now, a judge blocked that and the case can finally go forward. 

Link

[.Apex.]

2 minutes ago, Audherbagn said:

Remember that old FX lawsuit over core count? Well it is back.

Link

good, AMD should feel bad for that abomination of a processor.

[Glenwing]

Please read the post pinned at the top of the section titled "Posting Guidelines - READ BEFORE POSTING" before posting in this section.

 

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[Radium_Angel]

4 minutes ago, syn2112 said:

good, AMD should feel bad for that abomination of a processor.

I know for many years, decades even, AMD was behind Intel on CPU speeds/core/wattage/etc. but without AMD as a competitor, even an inferior one (at the time anyway) Intel would not have improved as much as they did, not keep their prices in line.

 

I say this as someone who prefers Intel, but have had a number of AMD systems, including an FX-6300 which worked just fine as a gaming rig.

 

Having said that, if AMD cheated on core count, then they should be rightly hauled into court over it. 

[Drak3]

7 minutes ago, Radium_Angel said:

if AMD cheated on core count

Which they didn't. Despite core pairs sharing some resources, Bulldozer CPUs do have 2, 4, 6, and 8 cores.

[Brooksie359]

Honestly unless there was some formal definition of cores that the fx cores did not fit I don't see the merit in such a case. 

[.Apex.]

13 minutes ago, Radium_Angel said:

I know for many years, decades even, AMD was behind Intel on CPU speeds/core/wattage/etc. but without AMD as a competitor, even an inferior one (at the time anyway) Intel would not have improved as much as they did, not keep their prices in line.

 

I say this as someone who prefers Intel, but have had a number of AMD systems, including an FX-6300 which worked just fine as a gaming rig.

 

Having said that, if AMD cheated on core count, then they should be rightly hauled into court over it. 

love AMD, and i know their importance in the market, but i really can't excuse them for the bulldozer architecture which i might add they kept refreshing for 6 god damn years with 0 improvements, just different names, i understand they probably had to do that because they failed with bulldozer, but it's just deceptive.

 

I came from an E5400 overclocked to 4Ghz, to an A8-6600K, wasn't the upgrade i was hoping for considering it's "double" the cores and 4 years apart, it definitely wasn't double the performance.

[Fasauceome]

Oh leave them alone. Isn't it obvious they've atoned for their sin with Ryzen?

[poochyena]

42 minutes ago, syn2112 said:

good, AMD should feel bad for that abomination of a processor.

they barely made any money from them, so they are already pained from it.

the lawsuit probably won't go anywhere since what a core is isn't a set definition.

[thorhammerz]

3 minutes ago, poochyena said:

since what a core is isn't a set definition.

That's also exactly why the lawsuit even exists (and continues to live) in the first place.

[dalekphalm]

As others have mentioned, there's no clearcut definition of a "core". 2 cores with a Shared cache does not inherently mean they aren't separate cores.

 

I can't imagine that AMD will lose this.

[porina]

19 minutes ago, Drak3 said:

Which they didn't. Despite core pairs sharing some resources, Bulldozer CPUs do have 2, 4, 6, and 8 cores.

From an outside perspective, if we didn't know what was going on inside the CPU, it would appear to have the claimed number of cores. I've never owned or tested one, but if I understand correctly, these were modules, each module containing two integer units (cores) and one shared FP unit. If you run only integer code, it scaled with cores. If you run FP code one per module, it would scale with module. Beyond that, sharing becomes a limit and you don't see further uplift. It isn't that code doesn't work at all, but a question of performance.

 

We can look back to Intel in the 386 and earlier era, where the FPU was not a standard inclusion in the CPU. I'm not sure without looking it up, it wasn't until either 486 or Pentium that a FPU was included as standard. So we kinda have some precedent to a CPU core not needed a FPU and still be counted as such. For those CPUs without FPU, the instructions were emulated at significantly lower performance.

 

The only danger to this argument is that multi-threading within a single CPU core also looks kinda similar, although in this case the performance may drop for any code sharing the same core.

18 minutes ago, Brooksie359 said:

Honestly unless there was some formal definition of cores that the fx cores did not fit I don't see the merit in such a case. 

When it comes to legal cases, it will be won or lost on legal interpretations, not common sense ones. Like the successful lawsuits against HD manufacturers for correctly using size modifiers, whereas the fault of the misunderstanding was the way operating systems reported capacity.

[dalekphalm]

Just now, thorhammerz said:

That's also exactly why the lawsuit even exists (and continues to live) in the first place.

So you're implying the lawsuit exists because there's no definition? Source for that claim?

[Nowak]

So, depending on how this goes, there may be a "proper" definition of a core, huh?

[dalekphalm]

1 minute ago, Nowak said:

So, depending on how this goes, there may be a "proper" definition of a core, huh?

Well, a legal definition, anyway. Personally I'd rather the industry develop a definition on their own, rather than having one forced on us by a court which likely has only the most basic (as in, less than us here on the forums) understanding of a CPU to begin with.

[GoldenLag]

5 minutes ago, dalekphalm said:

As others have mentioned, there's no clearcut definition of a "core". 2 cores with a Shared cache does not inherently mean they aren't separate cores.

 

I can't imagine that AMD will lose this.

at worst, since there is afaik no legal definition of a Processing core in silicon AMD will get tagged with a minor Fine and forced to change the name to execution units or something similar.

 

another note: if AMD fails this, wouldnt it also tag onto Nvidia with their Cuda Cores or is that a trademarked name and therefore can be put under lawsuit. because it is more debetable if theys should be named cores at all compared to bulldozer cores.

[Nowak]

Just now, dalekphalm said:

Well, a legal definition, anyway. Personally I'd rather the industry develop a definition on their own, rather than having one forced on us by a court which likely has only the most basic (as in, less than us here on the forums) understanding of a CPU to begin with.

Yeah, I guess that's true. Defining what a "core" is should be left up to the industry, not a court.

[Brooksie359]

4 minutes ago, porina said:

From an outside perspective, if we didn't know what was going on inside the CPU, it would appear to have the claimed number of cores. I've never owned or tested one, but if I understand correctly, these were modules, each module containing two integer units (cores) and one shared FP unit. If you run only integer code, it scaled with cores. If you run FP code one per module, it would scale with module. Beyond that, sharing becomes a limit and you don't see further uplift. It isn't that code doesn't work at all, but a question of performance.

 

We can look back to Intel in the 386 and earlier era, where the FPU was not a standard inclusion in the CPU. I'm not sure without looking it up, it wasn't until either 486 or Pentium that a FPU was included as standard. So we kinda have some precedent to a CPU core not needed a FPU and still be counted as such. For those CPUs without FPU, the instructions were emulated at significantly lower performance.

 

The only danger to this argument is that multi-threading within a single CPU core also looks kinda similar, although in this case the performance may drop for any code sharing the same core.

When it comes to legal cases, it will be won or lost on legal interpretations, not common sense ones. Like the successful lawsuits against HD manufacturers for correctly using size modifiers, whereas the fault of the misunderstanding was the way operating systems reported capacity.

All they need to prove is that their fx cores are indeed cores which I don't see any reason why they wouldn't be. Yeah they share resources but almost all multi core processors share resources to some extent. 

[dalekphalm]

1 minute ago, GoldenLag said:

at worst, since there is afaik no legal definition of a Processing core in silicon AMD will get tagged with a minor Fine and forced to change the name to execution units or something similar.

 

another note: if AMD fails this, wouldnt it also tag onto Nvidia with their Cuda Cores or is that a trademarked name and therefore can be put under lawsuit. because it is more debetable if theys should be named cores at all compared to bulldozer cores.

 

1 minute ago, Nowak said:

Yeah, I guess that's true. Defining what a "core" is should be left up to the industry, not a court.

 

Plus as computing evolves, what's actually inside a CPU core in, say, 10 years from now, might not even have any of the components inside one now (obviously this is a bit of a stretch, but you get the idea).

 

If someone wants to sue AMD for a shit processor that failed to deliver promised performance? All the power to them. But suing them over "Your 8 cores are different than Intel's cores!" is just stupid to me.

[Nowak]

Just now, dalekphalm said:

If someone wants to sue AMD for a shit processor that failed to deliver promised performance? All the power to them. But suing them over "Your 8 cores are different than Intel's cores!" is just stupid to me.

Even then, this isn't the dumbest lawsuit I've seen - I've seen someone sue McDonalds over getting burned after they spilled coffee in their lap 

 

But yeah. Suing AMD because their cores on an older CPU work differently than Intel cores is pretty dumb.

[GoldenLag]

1 minute ago, Brooksie359 said:

All they need to prove is that their fx cores are indeed cores which I don't see any reason why they wouldn't be. Yeah they share resources but almost all multi core processors share resources to some extent. 

well, it is then a question of where do you draw the line. 

 

Is a  Ryzen 7 1700 a 2 core, 8 execution unit, 16 thread processor?

 

in the case of bulldozer its slightly different with each 2 cores having a single pipeline feeding them

[dalekphalm]

Just now, Nowak said:

Even then, this isn't the dumbest lawsuit I've seen - I've seen someone sue McDonalds over getting burned after they spilled coffee in their lap 

 

But yeah. Suing AMD because their cores on an older CPU work differently than Intel cores is pretty dumb.

To be fair, everyone misunderstands the whole "Lady sued mcdonalds for hot coffee" thing.

 

The coffee was being brewed at higher than industry standard temperatures, and she suffered 3rd degree burns all over her body.

[Nowak]

Just now, dalekphalm said:

To be fair, everyone misunderstands the whole "Lady sued mcdonalds for hot coffee" thing.

 

The coffee was being brewed at higher than industry standard temperatures, and she suffered 3rd degree burns all over her body.

That's also true.

[JoeCoke]

As much as the FX CPUs sucked (I type this from a FX 8320 @ 4.5ghz), this is bullshit. There are 8 physical cores in the CPU, you can't change or deny that fact. Yes, they share resources, but there are, in fact, 8 physical cores. What's next, are we gonna claim the 2990WX only has 16 cores because of the way half the cores access RAM?

[GoldenLag]

Just now, dalekphalm said:

To be fair, everyone misunderstands the whole "Lady sued mcdonalds for hot coffee" thing.

 

The coffee was being brewed at higher than industry standard temperatures, and she suffered 3rd degree burns all over her body.

while bulldozer was hot. AMD didnt exactly do anything wrong in calling them cores. Because they sort of are, but sort of arent.