**thread name change* Nvidia and AMD moral and immoral business practices

[Janooo]

Why are you comparing TLB bug to bad bumps in this way? Both are hardware defects. AMD's was in the silicon. the bump problem was the material used in the solder. One is a logic problem, the other is a physical assembly problem. Nothing was actually wrong with Nvidia silicon. The chips themselves operated fine. The solder was the problem. If something like that was foreseeable, I'm sure the manufacturers would have corrected it. However, this problem is a long term expansion and contraction fracture problem that develops over longer periods of time. Unfortunate, but that hardly compares to AMD releasing a product KNOWING that it had the TLB bug.

It's not comparable. Scali is trying to fabricate something. Ask him.

 

[Scali]

You have a very strange logic.
CPU can work with TLB bug BIOS fix.

Yes, but I buy my CPUs for their performance.
The TLB 'fix' significantly reduced performance, and as such made the CPU useless for people who expect to get a certain level of performance, and also destroys the value-for-money of the CPU.

Bad bump breaks your laptop. It does not work at all.

Yes, but after a while. In my case, my videocards lasted about 2 years.
Are you familiar with the concept of depreciation?
After about 2 years, most hardware is depreciated to a point where they paid for themselves, are now worthless, and ready to be replaced by new hardware.

NV did not fix all the laptops. There are thousands people with broken laptops that were not fixed.

And also thousands of people whose laptops WERE fixed (or replaced).
We've had a few at work. Dell serviced them very nicely.
Somehow you try to make it sound like nVidia didn't do ANYTHING for ANY users. Why?

So your laptop didn't get fixed... tough. It happens. Would you feel better if I bought you a new laptop?

 

[Janooo]

That would take time to find out, and perhaps why the litigation took so long to come to a conclusion. Was it the solder manufacturer? Was it the entitiy responsible for ordering the solder and selecting the solder manufacturer?
Was it the entity responsible for actually soldering the GPU onto the laptop PCB's? I honestly could not tell you. Was it Nvidia who ordered the materials for the solder? The manufacturer of the solder? Was it Nvidia who decided for Dell, HP, and others which grade of solder to use and from what manufacturer? I haven't any idea badb0y, but you can see there was a lot of area to cover at any rate.

Of course it's NV. Do you think they departed with a half a billion for nothing?

 

[Scali]

Of course it's NV. Do you think they departed with a half a billion for nothing?

NV is held responsible. That is not the same as them CAUSING it.
Similar situation with the Deep Horizon oil platform today. BP is held responsible, but technically the Deep Horizon platform was owned, operated and maintained by a company called TransOcean.
In the end, the reason why BP is held fully responsible probably has more to do with the fact that TransOcean would never be able to pay the damages, while BP can. It is TransOcean however, who were negligent in maintaining and operating the blow-out valve, which was the actual cause of the disaster. It is also TransOcean employees who were operating the platform. They may have been a few BP supervisors present, but that's it.
It's the TransOcean guys that should have stopped work and replaced the broken blow-out valve, rather than the patchy solution they used... but that would have meant work had to be stopped for a while, and that costs money, and would upset their client: BP.

 

[Janooo]

Yes, but I buy my CPUs for their performance.
The TLB 'fix' significantly reduced performance, and as such made the CPU useless for people who expect to get a certain level of performance, and also destroys the value-for-money of the CPU.



Yes, but after a while. In my case, my videocards lasted about 2 years.
Are you familiar with the concept of depreciation?
After about 2 years, most hardware is depreciated to a point where they paid for themselves, are now worthless, and ready to be replaced by new hardware.



And also thousands of people whose laptops WERE fixed (or replaced).
We've had a few at work. Dell serviced them very nicely.
Somehow you try to make it sound like nVidia didn't do ANYTHING for ANY users. Why?

So your laptop didn't get fixed... tough. It happens. Would you feel better if I bought you a new laptop?

Where did I say they did not do anything?
NV got pushed to do something. What I am saying it does not cover all the damage. The litigation linked earlier is a proof.

Sure, send me a PM when you are ready and you need my ship to address.

 

[Janooo]

NV is held responsible. That is not the same as them CAUSING it.
Similar situation with the Deep Horizon oil platform today. BP is held responsible, but technically the Deep Horizon platform was owned, operated and maintained by a company called TransOcean.
In the end, the reason why BP is held fully responsible probably has more to do with the fact that TransOcean would never be able to pay the damages, while BP can. It is TransOcean however, who were negligent in maintaining and operating the blow-out valve, which was the actual cause of the disaster. It is also TransOcean employees who were operating the platform. They may have been a few BP supervisors present, but that's it.
It's the TransOcean guys that should have stopped work and replaced the broken blow-out valve, rather than the patchy solution they used... but that would have meant work had to be stopped for a while, and that costs money, and would upset their client: BP.

Would you be able to show me a link where it says that NV subcontractor was responsible for it?
Thanks.

 

[Scali]

Where did I say they did not do anything?

That's the impression you're creating by focusing completely on the laptops they didn't replace/fix.

What I am saying it does not cover all the damage.

I think we all knew that long before this thread anyway. I haven't seen anyone claim otherwise...
No need to keep reiterating that.
Heck, when does such an action ever REALLY cover the damage? If you really want to go down that alley, you could argue that just replacing the hardware is not enough, because you may also have lost your work, and you may have lost valuable time because you had to wait for a replacement etc etc.
There's no way a company can ever win in such a situation. You can never do enough.

But let's make this the last post on this subject, and carry on with some of the other subjects instead.

 

[Scali]

Would you be able to show me a link where it says that NV subcontractor was responsible for it?
Thanks.

Why should I even need to do that?
I think it is common knowledge that nVidia outsources all production, GPUs, PCBs, everything (aka a fabless company, they only design the hardware, they don't build it). Which means that whatever soldering is being done on whatever part of an nVidia product, it's not being done by nVidia themselves, but by a third party.

 

[WelshBloke]

Why should I even need to do that?
I think it is common knowledge that nVidia outsources all production, GPUs, PCBs, everything (aka a fabless company, they only design the hardware, they don't build it). Which means that whatever soldering is being done on whatever part of an nVidia product, it's not being done by nVidia themselves, but by a third party.

Well given that AMD was not affected in the same way and the same people were responsible for making them I would say that there was some instruction from Nvidia as to what solder to use.

 

[Scali]

Well given that AMD was not affected in the same way and the same people were responsible for making them I would say that there was some instruction from Nvidia as to what solder to use.

Not really.
AMD has its own version of 'bumpgate'... of course this wasn't blown up on the internet (you could ask yourself why... but that'd get us back on topic with immoral business practices and all that, and we wouldn't want that), but that doesn't mean it doesn't exist.
See exhibit A: http://www.humus.name/index.php?page=Comments&ID=283&start=8

AMD's GPUs also use a different design, have different power/temperature specs etc... so using the same solder may not result in the same problems. There are too many unknowns to draw any conclusions.

Aside from that... yes, AMD and nVidia will probably have had some input on what to use exactly... but especially nVidia has no first-hand experience with making chips at all, so they will just have to go by what the fab advises (and TSMC has made quite a mess of their 40 nm process as well... both AMD and nVidia complained that the final product was nowhere near what they originally specced it out to be. It happens).
AMD may have had some extra inside-info from their own fabs, who knows?
And well, there's still people making decisions. It's all about evaluating risks (we've been over this before).
By the looks of it, either nVidia didn't estimate the risk as highly as AMD did, or nVidia was willing to take more of a risk than AMD was.
We don't know for sure. All we know is that nVidia took the gamble and lost. It happens.

 

[WelshBloke]

Not really.
AMD has its own version of 'bumpgate'... of course this wasn't blown up on the internet (you could ask yourself why... but that'd get us back on topic with immoral business practices and all that, and we wouldn't want that), but that doesn't mean it doesn't exist.
See exhibit A: http://www.humus.name/index.php?page=Comments&ID=283&start=8

AMD's GPUs also use a different design, have different power/temperature specs etc... so using the same solder may not result in the same problems. There are too many unknowns to draw any conclusions.

Aside from that... yes, AMD and nVidia will probably have had some input on what to use exactly... but especially nVidia has no first-hand experience with making chips at all, so they will just have to go by what the fab advises (and TSMC has made quite a mess of their 40 nm process as well... both AMD and nVidia complained that the final product was nowhere near what they originally specced it out to be. It happens).
AMD may have had some extra inside-info from their own fabs, who knows?
And well, there's still people making decisions. It's all about evaluating risks (we've been over this before).
By the looks of it, either nVidia didn't estimate the risk as highly as AMD did, or nVidia was willing to take more of a risk than AMD was.
We don't know for sure. All we know is that nVidia took the gamble and lost. It happens.

Well thats all people are saying, its Nvidias responsibility. They design the chips and the reference board, the AIB makers follow their instructions.

EDIT: and they (nvidia), to their credit, have taken that responsibility and recompensed all parties

 

[Janooo]

Why should I even need to do that?
I think it is common knowledge that nVidia outsources all production, GPUs, PCBs, everything (aka a fabless company, they only design the hardware, they don't build it). Which means that whatever soldering is being done on whatever part of an nVidia product, it's not being done by nVidia themselves, but by a third party.

Do you really think that if a third party was to blame NV would willingly pay for that?
They tried to blame it on so many things but they failed at the end.
I do not understand this. Here you imply that NV is kind of innocent and in couple of posts down you say NV took the risk and it did not pay off.

Amazing how many twists are in your posts.

 

[Scali]

Well thats all people are saying, its Nvidias responsibility.

Not quite, unless some people have a strange idea of what responsibility means.

 

[Scali]

Do you really think that if a third party was to blame NV would willingly pay for that?
They tried to blame it on so many things but they failed at the end.
I do not understand this. Here you imply that NV is kind of innocent and in couple of posts down you say NV took the risk and it did not pay off.

It's really simple. nVidia made the wrong choice, but that doesn't mean they did that deliberately. They did what they thought was the right choice. Hindsight and all that...

 

[WelshBloke]

Not quite, unless some people have a strange idea of what responsibility means.

I always like the 'well you broke it, you fix it' approach.

 

[Scali]

I always like the 'well you broke it, you fix it' approach.

What about "Your child broke it, but they're too young, so you as a parent are held responsible"?

 

[WelshBloke]

What about "Your child broke it, but they're too young, so you as a parent are held responsible"?

Well parents are responsible for their children so yes, but I dont think the analogy youre about to aim for is going to work.

 

[Janooo]

It's really simple. nVidia made the wrong choice, but that doesn't mean they did that deliberately. They did what they thought was the right choice. Hindsight and all that...

Of course it was not deliberate but their arrogant behavior that followed caught up with them.

 

[Scali]

Well parents are responsible for their children so yes, but I dont think the analogy youre about to aim for is going to work.

Not going for an analogy, just pointing out that it's not always as simple as "you broke it, you fix it".

 

[WelshBloke]

Not going for an analogy, just pointing out that it's not always as simple as "you broke it, you fix it".

It is, anything else is just excuses and justifications.

But this is way off topic in a topic thats already gone off topic. :\

 

[Scali]

It is, anything else is just excuses and justifications.

Not really... Why do you think parents are being held responsible for their children?
A big part of it is that children won't be able to pay for any damages anyway, because they don't have an income.
There may be tons of reasons why you can't really make the party that caused it responsible, as I tried to demonstrate with my BP/Deep Horizon example. And I wouldn't really call them 'excuses and justifications', it's just common sense and accepted practice.

But if you want to over-simplify things... fine. Let's not discuss this further.

 

[ZimZum]

I don't know at what point in your life that you decided that HUGE corporations priorities, companies worth billions of dollars, does care or should care about anything except making a ton of money for themselves, and their stockholders which is actually a responsibility of theirs.

Human beings have emotions and often times those emotions affect buying decisions. Especially with big ticket items. Do you really find this concept that difficult to understand? Many people are turned off to Apple's products because of their business practices. Is Apple a successful company that serves it shareholders? Yes, but consumers aren't shareholders. Consumers have a variety of reasons for choosing one product over another beyond the actual product itself. If I dont like how BP has handled the oil spill in the Gulf. I may choose another brand of gasoline when I need fuel.

 

[WelshBloke]

Not really... Why do you think parents are being held responsible for their children?
A big part of it is that children won't be able to pay for any damages anyway, because they don't have an income.
There may be tons of reasons why you can't really make the party that caused it responsible, as I tried to demonstrate with my BP/Deep Horizon example. And I wouldn't really call them 'excuses and justifications', it's just common sense and accepted practice.

But if you want to over-simplify things... fine. Let's not discuss this further.

OK, I'm happy with your justification

 

[Keysplayr]

Human beings have emotions and often times those emotions affect buying decisions. Especially with big ticket items. Do you really find this concept that difficult to understand? Many people are turned off to Apple's products because of their business practices. Is Apple a successful company that serves it shareholders? Yes, but consumers aren't shareholders. Consumers have a variety of reasons for choosing one product over another beyond the actual product itself. If I dont like how BP has handled the oil spill in the Gulf. I may choose another brand of gasoline when I need fuel.

Not in this forum ZimZum. You have people carefully calculating cost of ownership, wattage usage cost down to the killowatt hour. Are you going to tell me that is how "emotion" affects buying decisions? Creig even declared at one point that a light bulb could heat up a large room in short order, comparing the extra wattage a GTX480 consumes over a compared AMD card.
Does that sound emotional to you? No. The standard only applies in THIS case. Why do people think we don't see these things? LOL.

 

[NoQuarter]

Nope, TLB is worse.
With the bump problem, at least the product works as advertised for as long as it lasts (which in my case was more than 2 years, which I find acceptable in any case. I've had worse).
With TLB, you never get your money's worth, the chip never performs as advertised. And there is NO way to get your money back or to get a replacement.
With nVidia a lot of laptops were exchanged/fixed, so at least you'd get another laptop that works as advertised, for as long as it lasts (might get another 2 years out of it, 4 years total wouldn't be bad really, on average).

The TLB didn't effect 99.9% of people. The reason it became big news is because AMD released a fix for it, which almost no one should enable. Had they not released a fix for it or done it through back channels it probably would've remained under the radar where it belonged and only the people that needed the fix would've known about it. It was a mistake to enable the fix by default in later BIOS revisions because many people ended up with the patch enabled when they didn't need it and lost performance.

Bumpgate effects everyone who bought the GPU. Whether it kicks in early or late is luck and there's no option to enable/disable a TLB fix to get around it. My buddy lost his 8800 Ultra to it. We already went over this a while ago and I still feel it's a failure of engineering to predict the material properties. The solder in question was a well known material, the reaction to heat stress should have been predictable.