Monday, July 9th 2018
Chinese Company Begins Making x86 Processors Based on AMD "Zen" Architecture
Chinese chipmaker Hygon began mass-producing its first x86 processors codenamed "Dhyana" based on AMD's "Zen" micro-architecture. The processor is the fruition of a deal AMD entered with a Chinese state-owned company back in mid-2016. As part of this deal, a company called Haiguang Microelectronics Company (HMC), in which AMD has a 51 percent stake, would license the "Zen" architecture to another company called Hygon (Chengdu Haiguang Integrated Circuit Design Co.), in which AMD owns a 30 percent stake. Hygon would then design "Dhyana," and a third entity (likely TSMC or some other Chinese foundry), would contract-manufacture the chip.
Such legal gymnastics is necessary to ensure AMD makes good on the $293 million it will take from the Chinese firms to license "Zen," while not breaching the x86 architecture cross-licensing agreement it signed with Intel, the core x86 IP owner. Chinese firms are going through all this trouble to build "Dhyana" instead of simply placing a large order of EPYC processors not just because they want more control over the supply and pricing of these chips, but probably also to ensure that China can keep an eye on all the on-die software that makes the processor tick, and weed out any backdoors to foreign governments (*cough*NSA*cough*).
Source:
Tom's Hardware
Such legal gymnastics is necessary to ensure AMD makes good on the $293 million it will take from the Chinese firms to license "Zen," while not breaching the x86 architecture cross-licensing agreement it signed with Intel, the core x86 IP owner. Chinese firms are going through all this trouble to build "Dhyana" instead of simply placing a large order of EPYC processors not just because they want more control over the supply and pricing of these chips, but probably also to ensure that China can keep an eye on all the on-die software that makes the processor tick, and weed out any backdoors to foreign governments (*cough*NSA*cough*).
39 Comments on Chinese Company Begins Making x86 Processors Based on AMD "Zen" Architecture
Criticize China all you want, but whan a problem needs a stolen solution, they know how to get it.
AMD64 ? Intel is held in shackles by IP that they didn't manage to successfully develop/deploy just as much as AMD is by Intel. Don't fool yourself.
You know you're up to no good when you have to act like you're laundering money to sell tech to a foreign company.
www.tomshardware.com/news/china-zen-x86-processor-dryhana,37417.html
By owning one company, they still 'legally' maintain control over the IP. Except, the other company manufactures the chip, before selling back to the 51% AMD owned company.
AMD are 'legally' giving the Chinese company, the right to produce their own Epyc server chips. No IP theft here. This is unadulterated, legally tolerable, cross licensing shenanigans.
Remember now, this is AMD, giving the Chinese company clear access to the x86 IP. And helping reduce Chinese need for American inventory.
Yes, $293 million is peanuts. It doesn't look like AMD's revenue will scale with the Chinese companies' output.
This is like that guy who sold DOS to Bill Gates for $500k.
Edit: You were probably thinking about copyright, that can be held for a long time.
Then China is probably just waiting for the x86-64 subset... by that time (2023/2024) SSE/SSE2 would no longer be covered and SSE3 would have little time left. With that, they could probably build a relatively decent CPU (at least for some government uses), should they feel any pressure from the US.
Check out the "open" section on the right. Not sure about the northbridge and southbridge that went with it though...
Sorry for the car analogy