Intel's "cripple AMD" function (2009)

#1

Post by luu » Mon, Jan 20, 2014, 6:40 PM UTC

Intel's "cripple AMD" function (2009)
agner.org

Re: Intel's "cripple AMD" function (2009)

#2

Post by gcp » Mon, Jan 20, 2014, 7:18 PM UTC

This is an old article. As far as I know, the settlement that was been reached was entirely laughable and most certainly doesn't remove the "cripple AMD" function. Now Intel just has to notify customers that it may not get optimal performance on other CPUs, and reimburse them the cost of the compiler if they can demonstrate that they mistakenly bought the compiler thinking that wouldn't happen, or something like that.

There is no new info in the linked article regarding the "new" FTC investigation.

Re: Intel's "cripple AMD" function (2009)

#3

Post by wmf » Mon, Jan 20, 2014, 7:19 PM UTC

(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...

Re: Intel's "cripple AMD" function (2009)

#4

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Jan 20, 2014, 7:23 PM UTC

[deleted]

Re: Intel's "cripple AMD" function (2009)

#5

Post by lotyrin » Mon, Jan 20, 2014, 7:36 PM UTC

wmf wrote: post #3

(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.

Re: Intel's "cripple AMD" function (2009)

#6

Post by TwoBit » Mon, Jan 20, 2014, 7:39 PM UTC

How 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).

Re: Intel's "cripple AMD" function (2009)

#7

Post by w1ntermute » Mon, Jan 20, 2014, 7:42 PM UTC

Can you spoof AMD CPUs to return "GenuineIntel" instead of "AuthenticAMD"?

Re: Intel's "cripple AMD" function (2009)

#8

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Jan 20, 2014, 7:42 PM UTC

[deleted]

Re: Intel's "cripple AMD" function (2009)

#9

Post by happycube » Mon, Jan 20, 2014, 7:45 PM UTC

At this point, does intel need that function to make AMD's CPU cores look bad?

Re: Intel's "cripple AMD" function (2009)

#10

Post by sounds » Mon, Jan 20, 2014, 7:46 PM UTC

Article is from 2009 but Agner's CPU optimizations manual is still very useful.

http://www.agner.org/optimize/optimizing_cpp.pdf

Instructions on how to patch Intel's CPU detection routine to do your bidding is in section 13.7, pp. 132-133.

The 2009 article also has this interesting tidbit: "It is possible to change the CPUID of AMD processors by using the AMD virtualization instructions. I hope that somebody will volunteer to make a program for this purpose. This will make it easy for anybody to check if their benchmark is fair and to improve the performance of software compiled with the Intel compiler on AMD processors."