BAPco say they never threatened AMD with explusion

Yesterday we ran a story, based around a press release that AMD sent out to the press. In the email they said Technology is evolving at an incredible pace, and customers need clear and reliable measurements to understand the expected performance and value of their systems,” said Nigel Dessau, senior vice president and Chief Marketing Officer at AMD. “AMD does not believe SM2012 achieves this objective. Hence AMD cannot endorse or support SM2012 or remain part of the BAPCo consortium.”

Nigel Dessau, AMD CMO said in a blog released on the 21st June that “BAPCo’s response to this blog was a threat to expel AMD from the consortium.”

In an interesting turn of events, BAPco released a statement saying that this was “contrary to the false assertion by AMD, BAPCo never threatened AMD with expulsion from the consortium, despite previous violations of its obligations to BAPCo under the consortium member agreement.”

We aren't sure what has gone on behind the scenes to cause the very public falling out, whatever it was it is a complete flip on AMD's previous stance. But Nvidia have also confirmed they have left – without giving any reasons why. According to BAPco “Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) was, until recently, a long standing member of BAPCo.  We welcomed AMD's full participation in the two year development cycle of SYSmark 2012, AMD's leadership role in creating the development process that BAPCo uses today and in providing expert resources for developing the workload contents.”

While under different circumstances the removal of AMD and Nvidia from such a project might force a closure there are other high profile companies involved. Dell, Hewlett-Packard, Hitachi, Intel, Lenovo, Microsoft, Samsung, Seagate, Sony, Toshiba and ARCintuition continue to be members of the group.

Kitguru says: If both AMD and Nvidia leave, then it is clear there are some issues.

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