AMD taken to court over misleading Bulldozer core count claims

Posted on Friday, November 06 2015 @ 15:39 CET by Thomas De Maesschalck
AMD logo
AMD's Bulldozer is the subject of a new class-action lawsuit that has been filed with the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California's San Jose division. Tony Dickey, who filed the suit on behalf of himself and other affected users, alleges that AMD lied to consumers about the number of cores on its Bulldozer-based procesors.

Dickey claims AMD built its Bulldozer processors by stripping away components from two cores and combining what was left to make a single "module". Each Bulldozer module combines two integer cores with a single floating-point unit and a dedicated cache module, and Dickey argues that in doing so, the cores no longer work independently and suffer from "material performance degradation". Among other things, the suit alleges that AMD's eight-core Bulldozer CPUs do not perform like "true eight-core" could:
Dickey's suit says the average consumer doesn't have the technical expertise to understand AMD's CPU architecture and the company didn't convey accurate specifications. Because of this knowledge gap, the suit alleges the company tricked "tens of thousands of consumers" into buying CPUs that can't perform like a "true eight-core" processor could.

The suit accuses AMD of violating two California laws and a whole host of other counts, including "false advertising, fraud, breach of express warrant, negligent misrepresentation and unjust enrichment." He's suing for statutory and punitive damages, pre- and post-judgment interest, and other relief as the court deems necessary.


About the Author

Thomas De Maesschalck

Thomas has been messing with computer since early childhood and firmly believes the Internet is the best thing since sliced bread. Enjoys playing with new tech, is fascinated by science, and passionate about financial markets. When not behind a computer, he can be found with running shoes on or lifting heavy weights in the weight room.



Loading Comments