I've ran into it in practice a few years back, while making WRF (math intensive atmospheric modeling software, I'm maintaining non-commercial soaring prediction site for the bay area) to work on my AMD cluster. Had to patch the executable compiled with the Intel compiler in order to make it work unhindered on AMD's. The patch was just zapping 'Genuine Intel' detection code in the compiled executable... That 'post-linker' patch is available here: http://www.swallowtail.org/naughty-intel.shtml
Intel's "cripple AMD" function (2009)
11–20 of 131 posts
Re: Intel's "cripple AMD" function (2009)
#12Can you spoof AMD CPUs to return "GenuineIntel" instead of "AuthenticAMD"?
Couldn't that also potentially break some logic branch through the chip where the app is expected to be running on a GenuineIntel processor? I'm not well versed in this.
Re: Intel's "cripple AMD" function (2009)
#13(2009) Since then Intel settled the lawsuit by paying $10M and agreeing to add the following disclaimer to their compilers: "Intel's compilers may or may not optimize to the same degree for non-Intel microprocessors for optimizations that are not unique to Intel microprocessors..." http://software.intel.com/en-us/articles/optimization-notice... http://www.anandtech.com/show/3839/intel-settles-with-the-ft...
Yep, and that's been interpreted such that - just in case - we add a link on every page of software.intel.com to http://software.intel.com/en-us/articles/optimization-notice Whether or not the current page has anything to do with compilers. Also, judging by the URL they made it an 'article' instead of a 'page' again... I'll have to see if I can get someone to fix that.
Happy to see you guys are using Drupal. I usually remove article as one of the first steps in an install and replace with something that confuses people less and/or restrict permissions appropriately, but it's hard to always get people to always follow the right path.
Re: Intel's "cripple AMD" function (2009)
#14Can you spoof AMD CPUs to return "GenuineIntel" instead of "AuthenticAMD"?
Couldn't that also potentially break some logic branch through the chip where the app is expected to be running on a GenuineIntel processor? I'm not well versed in this.
Not likely. AMD processors are very carefully designed to correctly execute code, even if it just assumes GenuineIntel and never even checks.
If code is dumb enough to try to use something low-level (let's use Bull Mountain RDRAND as an example) without checking for that specific feature bit, then it obviously is the code that is broken, leading to an illegal operation and it gets killed. That's not the CPU's fault.
Intel and AMD CPU manuals both pound in the point, too. In the sections on these advanced features they always insist that you check the feature bit first.
Re: Intel's "cripple AMD" function (2009)
#15Bothered me when I realized that maybe mainstream reviews (the ones able influence the average mass market buyer) were using binaries very biased in favor of intel.
Re: Intel's "cripple AMD" function (2009)
#16At this point, does intel need that function to make AMD's CPU cores look bad?
You're talking about a company whose motto is "only the paranoid survive". Why win when you can utterly dominate?
Re: Intel's "cripple AMD" function (2009)
#17(2009) Since then Intel settled the lawsuit by paying $10M and agreeing to add the following disclaimer to their compilers: "Intel's compilers may or may not optimize to the same degree for non-Intel microprocessors for optimizations that are not unique to Intel microprocessors..." http://software.intel.com/en-us/articles/optimization-notice... http://www.anandtech.com/show/3839/intel-settles-with-the-ft...
Intel paid $10M into a pool to reimburse customers who purchased the Intel compiler. Intel later paid over $1B to AMD settling a number of cases with AMD and the US DOJ. Intel was also fined by the EU ca 2009.
Re: Intel's "cripple AMD" function (2009)
#18How does the Intel compiler compare to others today? We tried using it for game development years ago and it had too many problems to make it worthwhile (e.g. pathological behavior with some C++ code).
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Re: Intel's "cripple AMD" function (2009)
#19Can you spoof AMD CPUs to return "GenuineIntel" instead of "AuthenticAMD"?
Search the linked page for "CPUID manipulation program for AMD" -- there is some info about this.
Apparently when run under virtualization, the CPUID instruction is intercepted and can thus be manipulated. There's also a github project for patching binaries generated from ICC to run the optimal code-paths even for AMD. But there doesn't seem to be a way to manipulate the hardware itself to change its vendor string.
Re: Intel's "cripple AMD" function (2009)
#20I'm still not entirely sure why is Intel forced to do this? Is it only because they advertise that it optimizes equally well for any CPU? If not, then I don't really see why they can force them to provide another AMD-friendly version.