SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
In 2011 AMD released the Bulldozer architecture, with a somewhat untraditional implementation of the "multicore" technology. Now, 4 years later, they are sued for false advertising, fraud and other "criminal activities". From TFA:
In claiming that its new Bulldozer CPU had "8-cores," which means it can perform eight calculations simultaneously, AMD allegedly tricked consumers into buying its Bulldozer processors by overstating the number of cores contained in the chips. Dickey alleges the Bulldozer chips functionally have only four cores—not eight, as advertised.
This discussion has been archived.
No new comments can be posted.
AMD Sued by Customer Over Misrepresentation of "Multicore"
|
Log In/Create an Account
| Top
| 36 comments
| Search Discussion
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
F.S. Fitzgerald to Hemingway:
"Ernest, the rich are different from us."
Hemingway:
"Yes. They have more money."
(Score: 2) by frojack on Saturday November 07 2015, @04:36AM
In terms of hardware complexity and functionality, this module is equal to a dual-core processor in its integer power, and to a single-core processor in its floating-point power: for each two integer cores, there is one floating-point core. The floating-point cores are similar to a single core processor that has the SMT ability, which can create a dual-thread processor but with the power of one (each thread shares the resources of the module with the other thread) in terms of floating point performance.
So the upshot of that is if these processors were not used for gaming and complex numerical calculation, and reserved for the server market, there's a good chance no one would ever notice this floating point limitation.
Most of the work done in server situations is integer math, (well, most of it is just byte slinging hither and yon). Encryption may be some of the most taxing work in the server market.
But I have no idea how those processors were marketed.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by Pino P on Saturday November 07 2015, @03:06PM
Most of the work done in server situations is integer math, (well, most of it is just byte slinging hither and yon).
Unless the server is, say, transcoding uploaded video to fifteen different formats for streaming to viewers. But perhaps a lot of that can be written in OpenCL and run on the integrated GPGPU. Does a Xeon even have an GPGPU?
(Score: 2) by frojack on Sunday November 08 2015, @04:49AM
Yes, but most streaming stuff isn't transcoded from one format to the other every time someone requests a stream.
You do it once, and save the file, then chuck what ever format they ask down the socket as fast as the requester can consume it.
Admittedly, you still have a transcoding task just to arrive at a copy for each format. And maybe these processors do that just fine, and maybe they don't, I donno.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by Pino P on Sunday November 08 2015, @06:48PM
most streaming stuff isn't transcoded from one format to the other every time someone requests a stream.
If someone is sending a live stream that has few simultaneous viewers, the server might end up serving the transcoded stream at each detail level to one viewer or at most a handful. Even apart from live streaming, I'm told some adaptive streaming platforms do a real-time transcode for a few seconds rather than waiting for the next keyframe to switch detail levels when the Internet connection's throughput changes or when the user fast-forwards or rewinds.
Admittedly, you still have a transcoding task just to arrive at a copy for each format.
Even apart from live streaming, uploaders on big video sharing sites such as Dailymotion and YouTube initiate so many transcoding tasks that I shudder to think of how many must be running at once.