AMD Settles in "Llano" Investor Lawsuit by Coughing up $29.5M

[btarunr]

AMD Tuesday agreed to settle in its longstanding class-action lawsuit by investors for making misleading guidance over its first-generation accelerated processing units (APUs), codenamed "Llano." AMD was alleged to have oversold the potential of "Llano" in driving up revenues to the company, causing losses to investors. AMD is reported to have reached an agreement with the class to settle for USD $29.5 million. The settlement is yet to be approved by Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers, who has been hearing the case since 2014, sitting in session for the US District Court in Oakland, California. Under the proposed deal, AMD's insurers foot the bill for the settlement, while it continues to deny any wrongdoing.



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[Frick]

They did oversell it to the public, if they did the same to investors it's fair I guess.

 

[biffzinker]

What happened to the risk for an investment when you can sue?

 

[Fouquin]

Llano wasn't really that bad. Low clocks plus 10h's IPC meant for low performance, but Intel certainly took notice and beefed up Ivy-Bridge's iGPU to compete.

 

[plåtburken]

Llano wasn't really that bad. Low clocks plus 10h's IPC meant for low performance, but Intel certainly took notice and beefed up Ivy-Bridge's iGPU to compete.

It was bad, no need to dance around the matter.
Trinity and Richland and upwards were better, which is a natural thing but still. Llano was horrible and overly hyped in the market.
At least now AMD aren't over hyping their future APU-lineup but hopefully it will be good enough to make a mark in the market.

 

[Fouquin]

It was bad, no need to dance around the matter.

Well no actually, it was not bad. Underwhelming maybe, but not bad. The A8-3870K was only $20 more than the comparable Phenom II X4 955 at launch and both were overclockable (the APU less so). Llano gave 10h's IMC a nice boost in operable range allowing for much higher DDR3 clocks and brought the north bridge on-die with little negative impact. General CPU performance wasn't great, 10h didn't work well at 32nm but it wasn't completely useless by any means. Llano put the fire to Intel's ass and as a result HD 4000 saw a nearly 2x increase in performance over HD 2000/3000.

 

[the54thvoid]

Well no actually, it was not bad. Underwhelming maybe, but not bad. The A8-3870K was only $20 more than the comparable Phenom II X4 955 at launch and both were overclockable (the APU less so). Llano gave 10h's IMC a nice boost in operable range allowing for much higher DDR3 clocks and brought the north bridge on-die with little negative impact. General CPU performance wasn't great, 10h didn't work well at 32nm but it wasn't completely useless by any means. Llano put the fire to Intel's ass and as a result HD 4000 saw a nearly 2x increase in performance over HD 2000/3000.

You're missing the whole point. The lawsuit isn't about how good or bad it was, it is simply about how AMD misled investors about it's probable sales potential. It's nigh on illegal to exaggerate your product's income generating ability to investors.
Yes, investing is risky but it has rules and one of those is that you can't 'mislead' the investor about how good the product is. I think some of the problem is Llano was late arriving and by that time, Sandybridge was out from Intel. Lllano may have performed where expected when conceived but on release it was underwhelming and did not meet projections.
This is why they are settling because AMD still deny they did wrong but are using the insurance to pay out.

 

[bug]

What, AMD not playing fair when given a chance? That can't be.

 

[Fouquin]

You're missing the whole point.

Nope. Just commenting that it wasn't a bad first-step and still delivered something meaningful to the market. I'm sure investors were pissed but first full-quarter sales of Llano were reportedly good and lead to a $7M increase in operating income over Q2 2011. AMD stated this in the Q3 earnings report:

"Computing Solutions segment revenue increased 6 percent sequentially and 5 percent year-over-year. Sequentially, higher mobile and server microprocessor revenues were partially offset by lower desktop revenue. The year-over-year increase was primarily driven by higher mobile processor and chipset revenue."

"Leading notebook manufacturers including Acer, ASUS, Dell, HP, Lenovo, Samsung and Toshiba continued to increase global availability of their notebook platforms based on the AMD A-Series APUs, bringing brilliant HD graphics and up to 10.5 hours of battery life3 to users worldwide."

So AMD claims their increased revenue came from mobile processing, which at the time was Llano and Bobcat APUs. I'm sure AMD made the mistake of over promising, but from the quarterly reports it looks like they ended up positive still.

 

[silentbogo]

Well no actually, it was not bad. Underwhelming maybe, but not bad. The A8-3870K was only $20 more than the comparable Phenom II X4 955 at launch and both were overclockable (the APU less so). Llano gave 10h's IMC a nice boost in operable range allowing for much higher DDR3 clocks and brought the north bridge on-die with little negative impact. General CPU performance wasn't great, 10h didn't work well at 32nm but it wasn't completely useless by any means. Llano put the fire to Intel's ass and as a result HD 4000 saw a nearly 2x increase in performance over HD 2000/3000.

That's not the point. We have the same old story of demand/supply, which may soon catch up to Vega.

Advanced Micro officials continued to state that there were no problems with supply, concealing the fact that it was only shipping Llanos to top-tier computer manufacturers because of supply constraints, the lawsuit said.
By the time Advanced Micro was ready to ramp up shipments in late 2011, demand had dwindled, leading to an inventory glut, the lawsuit said. Advanced Micro eventually disclosed in October 2012 that it was writing down $100 million of Llano inventory as not salable, the lawsuit said.

 

[Fouquin]

That's not the point. We have the same old story of demand/supply, which may soon catch up to Vega.

Read my post directly above yours.

More directly relates to the topic. AMD was reporting income from Llano to the point of profitability despite supply.

Edit: That does bring up the idea that AMD was selling something they didn't have, and reported 'sold' inventory in their quarterly that didn't yet exist.

 

[Mirkoskji]

I have a Llano a8-3500m powered laptop i've recently put to rest. It was one of the best buys i've ever made in pc hardware. It had a full quadcore chip with a frequency of 1600mhz and a turbo frequency of 2300 i think. The best thing about that APU was K10stat, a software to overclock and downvolt/overvolt Llano APUs. During the years i found the sweetspot of the cpu in 2800mhz base and 3100 mhz turbo. It was impressive. And I could underclock the computer to 300 mhz and 0,56v, reaching 5 hours of battery autonomy even after 5 years. Today my cinebench was still in the range of some new i5 low voltage mobile cpus from intel, but back in the days it was competing against sandy bridge i7 mobile processors. everithing for 399 euros.

 

[EarthDog]

How did they "settle" if the judge hasnt approved it????

 

[TheinsanegamerN]

I have a Llano a8-3500m powered laptop i've recently put to rest. It was one of the best buys i've ever made in pc hardware. It had a full quadcore chip with a frequency of 1600mhz and a turbo frequency of 2300 i think. The best thing about that APU was K10stat, a software to overclock and downvolt/overvolt Llano APUs. During the years i found the sweetspot of the cpu in 2800mhz base and 3100 mhz turbo. It was impressive. And I could underclock the computer to 300 mhz and 0,56v, reaching 5 hours of battery autonomy even after 5 years. Today my cinebench was still in the range of some new i5 low voltage mobile cpus from intel, but back in the days it was competing against sandy bridge i7 mobile processors. everithing for 399 euros.

I had a similar machine, but with the A4-3400m and a dedicated 6650m. OCed the video memory and OCed and undervolted the CPU. Was a beastmode machine.

That was the best part about llano. You could clock it up 7-800 MHz and still undervolt the core. At least on mobile. And you could force ultra low clocks for insane battery life.

 

[Mirkoskji]

I had a similar machine, but with the A4-3400m and a dedicated 6650m.

Mine came with the 7670, which i think was a rebadge probably. But still, it had 512 shader units. I was able to play gta iv with console-graphics on it. Unfortunately the dedicated graphics died before AMD came out with a decent driver support for hybrid crossfire. so i was left with the APU's gpu. still works fine tough. Not bad in the end. I wish i could have such fine control over frequencies and voltages of my cpu today. It's sad it was abandoned so fast.

 

[the54thvoid]

Nope. Just commenting that it wasn't a bad first-step and still delivered something meaningful to the market. I'm sure investors were pissed but first full-quarter sales of Llano were reportedly good and lead to a $7M increase in operating income over Q2 2011. AMD stated this in the Q3 earnings report:

"Computing Solutions segment revenue increased 6 percent sequentially and 5 percent year-over-year. Sequentially, higher mobile and server microprocessor revenues were partially offset by lower desktop revenue. The year-over-year increase was primarily driven by higher mobile processor and chipset revenue."

"Leading notebook manufacturers including Acer, ASUS, Dell, HP, Lenovo, Samsung and Toshiba continued to increase global availability of their notebook platforms based on the AMD A-Series APUs, bringing brilliant HD graphics and up to 10.5 hours of battery life3 to users worldwide."

So AMD claims their increased revenue came from mobile processing, which at the time was Llano and Bobcat APUs. I'm sure AMD made the mistake of over promising, but from the quarterly reports it looks like they ended up positive still.

Lol, like I said, you did miss the point. What was 'presented' to investors was not adequately delivered. That's why they're settling (or trying to). Facts of the settlement speak volumes over anything else you care to right.

 

[Fouquin]

Lol, like I said, you did miss the point. What was 'presented' to investors was not adequately delivered. That's why they're settling (or trying to). Facts of the settlement speak volumes over anything else you care to right.

Hmm, nope. Pretty sure I addressed the point quite clearly. But hey, you're free to promote the opinion that I haven't.

 

[TheLaughingMan]

AMD takes their first real L for the year. Don't let it get you down AMD. This is still your year to shine.

 

[deu]

You're missing the whole point. The lawsuit isn't about how good or bad it was, it is simply about how AMD misled investors about it's probable sales potential. It's nigh on illegal to exaggerate your product's income generating ability to investors.
Yes, investing is risky but it has rules and one of those is that you can't 'mislead' the investor about how good the product is. I think some of the problem is Llano was late arriving and by that time, Sandybridge was out from Intel. Lllano may have performed where expected when conceived but on release it was underwhelming and did not meet projections.
This is why they are settling because AMD still deny they did wrong but are using the insurance to pay out.

He is not commenting on the thread but som dude claiming that the CPU was bad.

 

[eidairaman1]

What, AMD not playing fair when given a chance? That can't be.

Troll much?

Intel is no saint and has lied, stolen and cheated numerous times.

 

[bug]

Troll much?

Intel is no saint and has lied, stolen and cheated numerous times.

And what does that have to do with my comment?

 

[EarthDog]

Troll much?

Intel is no saint and has lied, stolen and cheated numerous times.

i think his underlying point was everyone seems to put amd up on a pedestal and can do no wrong.

We all know intel is the big bad wolf, but its the one without grandmas desguise.