Processor makers regularly exaggerate the performance of their chips (remember Intel's obsession with clock speed?), but AMD is learning that there are limits around what you can claim. It's facing a class action lawsuit accusing the company of misleading buyers about the number of cores in its Bulldozer-based CPUs. It would advertise that a given processor had eight cores, for example, when it effectively had four -- each core in AMD-speak was really half of a module, and couldn't operate independently. As such, that Bulldozer part couldn't handle as many simultaneous instructions as you'd expect in a true eight-core design. That was bound to be a disappointment if you were a performance junkie expecting eight-way computing in your gaming PC or server.
Via: Ars Technica
Source: Legal Newsline