AMD faces class action suit over Bulldozer missrepresentation

[ICantThinkOfAnyGoodName]

Says I.

 

Cores always had symmetrical floating point and integer math capability. If you make a CPU effectively a 4 core for floating point operations, and an 8 core for integer calculations, you have a 4 core. Rule of weakest link.

Early CPUs didn't have FPUs, so by that definition those CPUs would have zero cores. See the problem with your definition?

[patrickjp93]

Early CPUs didn't have FPUs, so by that definition those CPUs would have zero cores. See the problem with your definition?

I will play devil's advocate and say the definitions of words in any language change with time, but if he were to apply the symmetrical rule to Haswell, Intel wouldn't be able to claim 4 cores for the 4790K (2 dedicated integer, one vector unit for both integer and float, and a dedicated FPU).

 

Each core should have a dedicated FPU imho, but that means very little to legal scholars. The result of any trial which may proceed will be interesting nevertheless.

 

I find myself thinking I'm more fun when I'm posting while buzzed, which means I'm also criticizing myself as being less fun while totally sober... I'm in an odd state right now...

[TechGod]

For a year or two... Nvidia's happy to accept Intel's payments for GPU IP, which the blue beast resents but has no alternative to go after since AMD and Nvidia are the two biggest owners of GPU IP and are patent trolls nearly on par with Apple when it comes to GPU IP (and since AMD refused to license Radeon tech to Intel bak in 2010). Intel's perfectly happy to keep AMD on life support to prevent the FTC from forcing it to sell the x86 license to someone other than VIA. Nvidia's happy to keep AMD barely alive so it doesn't have to duel Intel in graphics card price wars.

 

AMD makes a 1-year comeback with the cash to last another 10. Suddenly Icelake (rumored Cannonlake replacement) and Volta move in with absolutely unprecedented performance increases, and AMD's left alive but scrambling and struggling, with no one to push Nvidia and Intel to keep shedding blood to keep customers happy (Intel has IBM and Nvidia to contend with on the highest end of the server side as we all know, but that's not to say a lack of strong competition elsewhere would be good for consumers).

You're actually crazy to believe this. Whatever AMD makes this year WILL be thrown at R&D for Zen+ and the successor to Arctic Islands. AMD is near their deathbed atm and they know now that if they ever become arrogant again and let someone else take the lead or if they make one more false move, they're toast. They're gonna manage they're cash reserves to ENSURE that they won't be slaughtered by IceLake and Volta. Mark my words. Skylake and Kabylake are very small performance boosts ( I don't expect Kabylake to bring more performance to the table) so AMD WILL claw back some market share from Intel and Nvidia in the consumer and server markets. It WILL happen. Youcan put this quote in your sig and if I'm wrong over the next year or two, you can rub it in that you were right. 

[TechGod]

I will play devil's advocate and say the definitions of words in any language change with time, but if he were to apply the symmetrical rule to Haswell, Intel wouldn't be able to claim 4 cores for the 4790K (2 dedicated integer, one vector unit for both integer and float, and a dedicated FPU).

 

Each core should have a dedicated FPU imho, but that means very little to legal scholars. The result of any trial which may proceed will be interesting nevertheless.

 

I find myself thinking I'm more fun when I'm posting while buzzed, which means I'm also criticizing myself as being less fun while totally sober... I'm in an odd state right now...

Ah. explains why you were having a wet dream about AMD dying then. 

[TechGod]

As a Macbook Pro Retina owner: BARF! Apple would never sell to other platforms than its own. Qualcomm is the last longshot hope AMD has of getting a buyout. Samsung being foreign (even if in US-cosy Japan) would be denied by the FTC over national security concerns. Apple being Apple, good Lord please no... No one is a worse patent troll than Apple. For every frivolous lawsuit Nvidia brings against Samsung, Apple brings 5. Apple is not an open company at all. It would mean the end of competition in the PC space. Nvidia getting x86_64 and Intel getting control of Radeon would mean two financial and technological heavyweights would be duking it out instead of two heavyweights giving an occasional love tap to a co-competitor barely left standing

Off topic completely, I know, I personally love my MacBook Pro. How about you? What specs did you pick it up with?

[Morgan MLGman]

Says who? Can you please source an industry standard definition of CPU core that doesn't come from AMD or Intel? CPU cores typically have an FPU in them, but I've seen no definition that days a core "must" have one.

Especially that since introduction of an FPU, they were a separate thing  from the CPU, something like an additional feature to the system if it needed it.

[ICantThinkOfAnyGoodName]

I will play devil's advocate and say the definitions of words in any language change with time, but if he were to apply the symmetrical rule to Haswell, Intel wouldn't be able to claim 4 cores for the 4790K (2 dedicated integer, one vector unit for both integer and float, and a dedicated FPU).

Each core should have a dedicated FPU imho, but that means very little to legal scholars. The result of any trial which may proceed will be interesting nevertheless.

I find myself thinking I'm more fun when I'm posting while buzzed, which means I'm also criticizing myself as being less fun while totally sober... I'm in an odd state right now...

I agree with you, but as long as we don't have an official definition of what a core is, AMD has the right to advertise it as an 8-core. Also it is not like they were trying to hide that the cores don't have a dedicated FPU, the information was readily available for anyone who cared about it.

You might say that it's deceiving customers who don't know anything about how a CPU works, but then you could also argue that it's deceiving the customers to advertise a big.LITTLE CPU as 8 core instead of 4 weak cores + 4 strong cores.

[TechGod]

I agree with you, but as long as we don't have an official definition of what a core is, AMD has the right to advertise it as an 8-core. Also it is not like they were trying to hide that the cores don't have a dedicated FPU, the information was readily available for anyone who cared about it.

You might say that it's deceiving customers who don't know anything about how a CPU works, but then you could also argue that it's deceiving the customers to advertise a big.LITTLE CPU as 8 core instead of 4 weak cores + 4 strong cores.

I already argue that whole big.LITTLE thing. I much rather prefer Apple's SOC designs. 

[patrickjp93]

You're actually crazy to believe this. Whatever AMD makes this year WILL be thrown at R&D for Zen+ and the successor to Arctic Islands. AMD is near their deathbed atm and they know now that if they ever become arrogant again and let someone else take the lead or if they make one more false move, they're toast. They're gonna manage they're cash reserves to ENSURE that they won't be slaughtered by IceLake and Volta. Mark my words. Skylake and Kabylake are very small performance boosts ( I don't expect Kabylake to bring more performance to the table) so AMD WILL claw back some market share from Intel and Nvidia in the consumer and server markets. It WILL happen. Youcan put this quote in your sig and if I'm wrong over the next year or two, you can rub it in that you were right. 

It has to pay off the 600 million USD chunk it owes January 1st 2019, not to mention start paying for the R&D of Zen itself which is currently unaccounted for in its debt structure. AMD is in a deep financial hole that stretches 6 years into the past and 9 years into the future.

 

Skylake is no slouch in performance boost. In my AI class we've had to make an AI player for domineering. Simple game, yes, but the performance difference between the 6700s in my school's new lab machines and the 4960HQ in my MBPr for the same program is nearly 30% (in 25*F Ohio which nullifies throttling, and that's for a 6-second game of domineering on a 10x10 board with the same AI using CilkPlus for vectorizing the evaluation of the moveset at each level of the tree for both sides (multithreaded alpha-beta). If software kept up, AMD wouldn't have been left standing after Ivy Bridge. I find it very disingenuous and/or ignorant for people to say Haswell and Skylake brought no meaningful performance improvements. I beg to differ and have the software to justify that point of view at my fingertips. Consumer software is not keeping up with what Intel has to offer. It hasn't kept up with AMD either to be fair (8 cores AMD mainstream vs. 4 Intel, and incredible vectorization from Intel vs. AMD's neglect of it until Zen). Kaby Lake provides a doubling of Skylake's vector capabilities(AVX 512). That's nothing to sneeze at. Ice Lake/Cannonlake will provide a new graphics architecture and tighter heterogeneous integration. 

 

It's not about rubbing it in. It's about being right and knowing what you know.

[patrickjp93]

Off topic completely, I know, I personally love my MacBook Pro. How about you? What specs did you pick it up with?

1TB SSD and GTX 750M and the full monty 32GB of RAM (discontinued mid-september 2014). My family's relatively famous for making desktops last 7+ years (my dad went from a Q6600 and dual GTX 9800s to a 4790K and from a 6 velociraptor RAID 0 to an 840 EVO). I will make this thing last at least 5 years.

 

May trackpad's click has failed on me. Perhaps the switches under the pad have gotten stuck, but regardless it needs a professional repair.

[patrickjp93]

I agree with you, but as long as we don't have an official definition of what a core is, AMD has the right to advertise it as an 8-core. Also it is not like they were trying to hide that the cores don't have a dedicated FPU, the information was readily available for anyone who cared about it.

You might say that it's deceiving customers who don't know anything about how a CPU works, but then you could also argue that it's deceiving the customers to advertise a big.LITTLE CPU as 8 core instead of 4 weak cores + 4 strong cores.

Whether or not it's right I leave to the courts and expert witnesses to argue. Having 1 scheduler for 2 functional units and calling it 2 cores is disingenuous to me, but I leave it to the courts.

[TechGod]

It has to pay off the 600 million USD chunk it owes January 1st 2019, not to mention start paying for the R&D of Zen itself which is currently unaccounted for in its debt structure. AMD is in a deep financial hole that stretches 6 years into the past and 9 years into the future.

 

Skylake is no slouch in performance boost. In my AI class we've had to make an AI player for domineering. Simple game, yes, but the performance difference between the 6700s in my school's new lab machines and the 4960HQ in my MBPr for the same program is nearly 30% (in 25*F Ohio which nullifies throttling, and that's for a 6-second game of domineering on a 10x10 board with the same AI using CilkPlus for vectorizing the evaluation of the moveset at each level of the tree for both sides. If software kept up, AMD wouldn't have been left standing after Ivy Bridge. I find it very disingenuous and/or ignorant for people to say Haswell and Skylake brought no meaningful performance improvements. I beg to differ and have the software to justify that point of view at my fingertips. Consumer software is not keeping up with what Intel has to offer. It hasn't kept up with AMD either to be fair (8 cores AMD mainstream vs. 4 Intel, and incredible vectorization from Intel vs. AMD's neglect of it until Zen). Kaby Lake provides a doubling of Skylake's vector capabilities. That's nothing to sneeze at. Ice Lake/Cannonlake will provide a new graphics architecture and tighter heterogeneous integration. 

 

It's not about rubbing it in. It's about being right and knowing what you know.

Look, all I'm saying is that I don't want AMD dead like how everyone else does. Why would Intel hand over the x86 licence to nvidia? Why nvidia specifically? The government could force them to give the licence to anyone that wants it, right? Why do you think nvidia wants to get into x86? Why bother doing that when instead they've got their incredible ARM based K1 chip they can improve even more? How could the cost be justified? 

[Dabombinable]

I agree with you, but as long as we don't have an official definition of what a core is, AMD has the right to advertise it as an 8-core. Also it is not like they were trying to hide that the cores don't have a dedicated FPU, the information was readily available for anyone who cared about it.

You might say that it's deceiving customers who don't know anything about how a CPU works, but then you could also argue that it's deceiving the customers to advertise a big.LITTLE CPU as 8 core instead of 4 weak cores + 4 strong cores.

People are going off every single previous CPU with the same basic design. The true description for Bulldozer is x Module, x threads, however in the very name of the FX 8350 for example, its called an 8 core.

[TechGod]

1TB SSD and GTX 750M and the full monty 32GB of RAM (discontinued mid-september 2014). My family's relatively famous for making desktops last 7+ years (my dad went from a Q6600 and dual GTX 9800s to a 4790K and from a 6 velociraptor RAID 0 to an 840 EVO). I will make this thing last at least 5 years.

 

May trackpad's click has failed on me. Perhaps the switches under the pad have gotten stuck, but regardless it needs a professional repair.

Ah! So the non retina model then??? I have the late 2013 13" Retina model with 256GB SSD and 8GB of RAM. Unfortunate about the trackpad though:/ do you predominantly use OSX on it?

[patrickjp93]

Look, all I'm saying is that I don't want AMD dead like how everyone else does. Why would Intel hand over the x86 licence to nvidia? Why nvidia specifically? The government could force them to give the licence to anyone that wants it, right? Why do you think nvidia wants to get into x86? Why bother doing that when instead they've got their incredible ARM based K1 chip they can improve even more? How could the cost be justified? 

Most people don't want AMD dead. Everyone would love for the little guy to rise up and win. I'm just realistic.

 

It would have to. If it didn't, it would have no leverage to get x86_64 from Nvidia (who has been wanting to get into the x86 space for 4 years and would buy the CPU division off a bankrupt AMD in a heartbeat).

 

No, contrary to popular belief, the FTC does try to promote competition. The FTC has limited authority and would choose a new competitor that seemed lively enough. VIA at the time looked to be charging right into the desktop space. The moment it got x86, it took a 90* turn for 3rd world desktop markets Intel and AMD aren't interested in.

 

Nvidia originally had Denver emulating x86. Intel's lawsuit threats put a stop to it. Nvidia wants into the x86 space for its ubiquity so it can SLI its Tegras with its dGPUs to cut into Intel's enthusiast profits. It's a very high-margin market worth Nvidia's time. Not to mention being in x86 gives Nvidia unprecedented access to the server world it will never get under ARM. It makes perfect sense for Nvidia to go after x86_64 and get x86_32 from Intel. The cost would be nothing. Intel would have to give x86 to get x86_64. There'd be no cost involved.

[patrickjp93]

Ah! So the non retina model then??? I have the late 2013 13" Retina model with 256GB SSD and 8GB of RAM. Unfortunate about the trackpad though:/ do you predominantly use OSX on it?

It is retina. 15" with GTX 750m and 4950HQ or 4960HQ.

 

I use OS X when I can (much longer battery life over windows 8.1), but for my graphics class I do the programming through Visual Studio on Windows 8.1 since the skeletons of the projects are provided as such. I get what I can of both worlds.

[TechGod]

It is retina. 15" with GTX 750m and 4950HQ or 4960HQ.

 

I use OS X when I can (much longer battery life over windows 8.1), but for my graphics class I do the programming through Visual Studio on Windows 8.1 since the skeletons of the projects are provided as such. I get what I can of both worlds.

Where did you get 32GB of RAM in it then??? And how will you change out the SSD??? Or are the 2012 models the ones without the PCIE SSDs?

[patrickjp93]

Where did you get 32GB of RAM in it then??? And how will you change out the SSD??? Or are the 2012 models the ones without the PCIE SSDs?

It was the 2014 model. 2 16GB sticks. 2 SM941s in RAID 0 for the flash storage.

[TechGod]

Most people don't want AMD dead. Everyone would love for the little guy to rise up and win. I'm just realistic.

 

It would have to. If it didn't, it would have no leverage to get x86_64 from Nvidia (who has been wanting to get into the x86 space for 4 years and would buy the CPU division off a bankrupt AMD in a heartbeat).

 

No, contrary to popular belief, the FTC does try to promote competition. The FTC has limited authority and would choose a new competitor that seemed lively enough. VIA at the time looked to be charging right into the desktop space. The moment it got x86, it took a 90* turn for 3rd world desktop markets Intel and AMD aren't interested in.

 

Nvidia originally had Denver emulating x86. Intel's lawsuit threats put a stop to it. Nvidia wants into the x86 space for its ubiquity so it can SLI its Tegras with its dGPUs to cut into Intel's enthusiast profits. It's a very high-margin market worth Nvidia's time. Not to mention being in x86 gives Nvidia unprecedented access to the server world it will never get under ARM. It makes perfect sense for Nvidia to go after x86_64 and get x86_32 from Intel. The cost would be nothing. Intel would have to give x86 to get x86_64. There'd be no cost involved.

That's extremely interesting. Thanks. I didn't know about that. Sorry for the childish insults directed towards you, you know this stuff better than me and I'm just starting to learn now. You're right that for AMD to suddenly turn around would be a massive undertaking but then I think about how Apple was on their deathbed when going against the giant Microsoft and look at the little Apple now...

[TechGod]

It was the 2014 model. 2 16GB sticks. 2 SM941s in RAID 0 for the flash storage.

But I'm pretty certain that Retina models have RAM soldered on and the storage isn't upgradable either with dual SSDs. https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/MacBook+Pro+15-Inch+Retina+Display+Mid+2014+SSD+Replacement/27694. You can only replace the existing SSD with only one. 

 

And you can't upgrade the RAM either. https://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/MacBook+Pro+15-Inch+Retina+Display+Late+2013+Teardown/18696

[patrickjp93]

That's extremely interesting. Thanks. I didn't know about that. Sorry for the childish insults directed towards you, you know this stuff better than me and I'm just starting to learn now. You're right that for AMD to suddenly turn around would be a massive undertaking but then I think about how Apple was on their deathbed when going against the giant Microsoft and look at the little Apple now...

Apple being on its deathbed against a Microsoft 1/5 the size Intel is now is a far less significant David v. Goliath story than it seems now. That was also the era before the consolidation began. Matrox, 3DFX, and IBM were all still consumer-facing companies at that point. Competition was vibrant and innovation was much easier to come by (sorry, but it was).

[patrickjp93]

But I'm pretty certain that Retina models have RAM soldered on and the storage isn't upgradable either with dual SSDs. https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/MacBook+Pro+15-Inch+Retina+Display+Mid+2014+SSD+Replacement/27694. You can only replace the existing SSD with only one. 

 

And you can't upgrade the RAM either. https://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/MacBook+Pro+15-Inch+Retina+Display+Late+2013+Teardown/18696

Well I have 2 M.2 SSDs in mine running in RAID 0, and I've never touched them or the RAM.

[TechGod]

Apple being on its deathbed against a Microsoft 1/5 the size Intel is now is a far less significant David v. Goliath story than it seems now. That was also the era before the consolidation began. Matrox, 3DFX, and IBM were all still consumer-facing companies at that point. Competition was vibrant and innovation was much easier to come by (sorry, but it was).

Why is no one interested in producing dGPUs anymore? Why do we only have two companies left? Same goes for x86. Why is Intel allowed to keep the licence between them and AMD only??? Doesn't that stifle innovation? 

[TechGod]

Well I have 2 M.2 SSDs in mine running in RAID 0, and I've never touched them or the RAM.

Interesting. Could you post screenshots from about this Mac?

[iLoveCaptTeemo]

So I'm not that familiar with the hardware stuff, some people said the shared FPU and othet stuff isn't that bad for 2 cores. Let's assume the CPU's had 8 modules instead of 4 modoules without shared components, would there be a huge performance boost?

If not I wouldn't care at all as a customer. If yes I def wouldnt by the new Zen CPUs because we don't know what kind of "scam" is incomming.