Friday, April 22nd 2016
AMD to Custom-design CPUs for the Chinese Government
AMD could custom-design enterprise CPUs for the Chinese Government. The move was announced in the company's latest quarterly results. China's quest for its "own" hardware and software running government and state-run companies and institutions, hit a roadblock with the government's inability to come up with a reliable enterprise processor, particularly one that runs on the x86 architecture. That need could be fulfilled by Sunnyvale, California-based AMD; which could design special enterprise CPUs under close supervision of the Chinese authorities under a joint-venture with a state-run company. This deal could earn AMD USD $293 million in cash.
In a joint venture between AMD and THATIC (Tianjin Haiguang Advanced Technology Investment Co., Ltd.), AMD's x86 expertise could be put to use in developing everything between tiny SoCs to large, multi-socket CPUs that drive enterprise machines (data-centers, HPC farms, military cyber infrastructure), for the Chinese government, and state-run companies. At this point, neither of the companies are commenting on which kind of x86 core architecture from AMD could be adopted. AMD has two distinct types of x86 cores, low-power, high-density cores such as "Jaguar," which can be found on devices such as the Sony PlayStation 4, and large modular cores such as the ones found on its FX-series and Opteron X-series CPUs.
Source:
Forbes
In a joint venture between AMD and THATIC (Tianjin Haiguang Advanced Technology Investment Co., Ltd.), AMD's x86 expertise could be put to use in developing everything between tiny SoCs to large, multi-socket CPUs that drive enterprise machines (data-centers, HPC farms, military cyber infrastructure), for the Chinese government, and state-run companies. At this point, neither of the companies are commenting on which kind of x86 core architecture from AMD could be adopted. AMD has two distinct types of x86 cores, low-power, high-density cores such as "Jaguar," which can be found on devices such as the Sony PlayStation 4, and large modular cores such as the ones found on its FX-series and Opteron X-series CPUs.
61 Comments on AMD to Custom-design CPUs for the Chinese Government
AMD - Made in China
wait, Name changed to CMD!!
You're under the impression China plays by any rules in this world whatsoever. They already own half the world economically, and no country has enough clout, either diplomatically, economically, or militarily to cow them into playing by said rules (actually only the last two, since diplomatic clout derives from the strength of economic and/or military power).
When PRC plays by the rules, it is only because it is advantageous to them for the moment.
The only reason why China would even approach AMD is because x86 isn't something easily reverse engineered. If they could have, they would have.
Best case scenario is the PRC play it straight. Worst case, the PRC use the IP as a wedge to force the door all the way open. It wouldn't be unheard of for product to go out the back door in China or find its way into the hands of "third parties". I'm sure the Chinese would make all the right noises about curbing the practices, but good luck prosecuting a patent/IP infringement case against the Chinese in China.You might have noticed that the PRC market isn't exactly small. $300m is both small change and probably represents a great return on investment even if it caters solely to the Chinese market - and good luck trying to prosecute the black and grey markets.
I actually owned a fulong mini-pc at one point, one of the first of the home-grown loongson MIPS deriviates. It ran at 800Mhz, had an excessive amount of errata, and had trouble running something even as flexible as gentoo for some time.
I wonder what China is doing that requires x86.
EDIT: Nevermind, that was Transmeta. I got confused.
Reverse engineering a chip with 100,000 transistors is easy compared to the processors today with transistor counts in the billions.
However, your point about WHY they need x86 is rather interesting. I'm sure they could just steal the lithography and just start producing their own, assuming they can build their own fabs.
But then, the cost of doing so is so vast that it only makes sense for them to do what they did, and just pay for what they want, rather than try to make copies. Certain things just aren't worth the effort, and they pay for it. Hence them owning so much real estate and industry in other countries. Their presence in the local oil industry is embarrassing.