AMD faces suit over alleged misrepresentation of Bulldozer CPUs

AMD faces suit over alleged misrepresentation of Bulldozer CPUs

 

AMD, One of the world’s largest computer chip manufacturers is facing a lawsuit over allegations of deceptive marketing for their Bulldozer based CPU designs, with claims that their 8-core chips are actually quad core chips and as such should never have been marketed as a true 8-core design.

This case is being taken to court by Tony Dickey, who is taking AMD to court on behalf of himself and others similarly situated, filed a class-action lawsuit on October 26. In this case AMD is alleged to have violated the Consumer Legal Remedies Act, California’s Unfair Competition Law, false advertising laws and to have taken part in negligent misrepresentation of their products for the unjust enrichment of the company.

In claiming that their Bulldozer CPU had “8-cores,” AMD has allegedly tricked their consumers into buying its Bulldozer processors by overstating the number of cores contained in the chips, with Tony Dickey claiming that Bulldozer chips functionally have only four cores—not eight, as advertised.

In this lawsuit Tony Dickey alleges that AMD had built their Bulldozer architecture by stripping away the parts of two traditional CPU cores and then combined them together into a CPU “module”, forming a end product which in the end is not an 8-core product like advertised. He claims that the 8-threads of these CPUs do not work independently and suffers from severe performance degradation as a result, ending in a product which cannot be defined as an 8-core CPU. 

AMD is alleged to have lied to consumers by saying that their quad module design is a 8-core design and not a quad core design and as such tricked thousands of consumers into buying their products, since they lacked the technical know-how to see through AMD’s supposedly “inaccurate” specifications. 

 

(DIE shot of a 8-core 4-module AMD Bulldozer CPU)  (image from Semiaccurate)

 

In my eyes AMD has done nothing wrong here, as their CPU does indeed act like a 8-core CPU as advertised and a CPU architecture like Bulldozer cannot be defined by previous designs. All those with AMD Bulldozer or derivative CPUs will be able to lead them with tasks that are as threaded as AMD advertises, as can be seen in our reviews those products. This is almost like me trying to sue Tesla Motors by arguing that their cars are not cars due to the lack of a traditional internal combustion engine, or any product with a non-traditional design.  

It is highly likely that this case will be open/shut and simply thrown out of court, as to anyone that is remotely informed about PC components will know that AMD’s parts function as advertised when it comes to core count. If this were not the case this would have been in court years ago and not now after several iterations of these CPUs have been released. 

 

You can join the discussion on AMD being sued for false/ deceptive advertising of their Bulldozer based CPUs on the OC3D Forums.