AMD Sued for Allegedly Lying About Bulldozer Processor Cores
Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) has been sued for allegedly making false marketing claims about the number of cores in its Bulldozer processor.
The class-action lawsuit accuses AMD of misleading customers into thinking that the Bulldozer processor has eight cores, but only the four cores are working. It also explained that the cores in the chip cannot function individually, so the two cores are actually just counted as one, according to Tech Times.
"AMD built the Bulldozer processors by stripping away components from two cores and combining what was left to make a single 'module,'" the Times quotes the lawsuit against AMD. "… As a result, AMD's Bulldozers suffer from material performance degradation and cannot perform eight instructions simultaneously and independently as claimed."
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The lawsuit, led by Tony Dickey, was filed against AMD in October with the U.S. District Court in California. AMD launched the Opteron 4200 Bulldozer chip in September 2011 with the promise that six or eight cores can function all at once, but the suit says otherwise, PC Mag reports.
AMD allegedly violated the Consumer Legal Remedies Act and California's Unfair Competition Law, Dickey said. The suit also accuses the chip maker of false advertising, breach of express warrant, fraud, unjust enrichment, and negligent misrepresentation, the report relays.
AMD's main error is its failure to inform the public of the way the processor cores function. Many gamers were disappointed to find out that the Bulldozer chipset was actually underpowered, the report adds.
However, AMD's fate in this legal mess lies on the court's definition of a core. The situation could also be further complicated by the court's classification and counting of a core. AMD's Bulldozer chipset contains eight cores, but since its performance is the same as the Intel quad-core chip, it technically has only four cores.
AMD has yet to react on the class-action lawsuit filed against it over the alleged fake Bulldozer processor core claims. The chip maker faces at least $5 million in fines should it lose this case.
