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AMD licences x86 tech to Chinese company
- snvzz 10y agoFor servers, really? I don't get it, they could just use RISC-V. x86 has a user case: legacy software.
- cm3 10y agoThis is mostly about custom SoC's, which means like ARM SoC's it's a couple CPU cores with a few special purpose chips all in the same package. Think networking, databases, ai, image processing...
- unlinker 10y ago"x86 is legacy" is a very good meme.
- wil421 10y agoName a few companies who have switched their large data centers off x86 to something else?
- mbreese 10y agoGoogle is at least testing OpenPower in their data centers. I don't know how serious they are, but people are starting to explore x86 alternative more. http://www.nextplatform.com/2015/03/18/google-looks-ahead-to-openpower-systems/ http://www.nextplatform.com/2015/03/18/google-looks-ahead-to...
- coldtea 10y agoSo, one example, on a "might be serious" experiment. Not really the most solid argument that this is a "thing".
- wil421 10y agoIt's one thing to explore new options, which all forward looking companies should do. The parent said x86 should only be used for legacy software which is a bogus statement.
- nathanaldensr 10y agoYou mean you want x86 to only have a "legacy software user [sic] case." Your claim is not backed up by reality whatsoever--just ask every Windows user.
- gtk40 10y agoWell, Windows has existed for other platforms, especially in the server world. And for end users, you have things like Windows RT that are still supported. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_NT#Supported_platforms https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_NT#Supported_platforms
- hatsunearu 10y ago>things like Windows RT But that didn't go too well. The same reason it didn't go too well (binary compatibility) is the reason why it's not going to be viable.
- xamolxix 10y ago> The same reason it didn't go too well (binary compatibility) That's the legacy
- hatsunearu 10y agoWhat makes you think this time it will work?
- Zardoz84 10y agoTell to Mac users that suffer two changes of CPU family and handled the binary compatibility.
- hatsunearu 10y agoExactly; binary compatibility is a hard issue, and it's especially non-viable in systems with no awesome unified package managers a la Linux. Case in point: despite an ARM processor, running conventional desktop programs on a Raspberry Pi is mostly fine (barring performance issues). Yes, all operating systems' build stack can emit ARM binaries, but it's useless unless the developer supports it well (not gonna happen), or if there is really nice automation (like Debian). edit: unless you're trying to say that the binary compatibility wasn't a pain in the butt. they solved it by (IIRC, not a long time OS X user), by bundling two arch binaries together for a bit. Not viable if you have 10 different architectures.
- bryanlarsen 10y agoI'm hoping that this is really good news for Zen. Because you're right, the server market is a lot less tied to x86 than the desktop market is. So why would they sign this deal when it would probably be easier to use RISC-V or ARM or MIPS or ...? Perhaps AMD gave them a private demo of Zen and they realized that it was better than all of their other alternatives, even including other architectures. But if they had their hearts set on x86, unless they could get Intel to play ball (highly unlikely), AMD was their only option even if Zen sucks.
- tcoppi 10y agoI agree and think the only way they made this deal is if AMD showed that Zen is better than any of the other alternatives. That probably isn't saying much since most of the alternatives are pretty bad, but they probably don't have another Bulldozer on their hands either.
- icebraining 10y agoAMD was their only option There's VIA, though I'm not sure their processors are still relevant.
- tcoppi 10y agoI highly doubt they care about the specific ISA in this case. The simple fact is, at this point, the only players with proven high-IPC, high-performance CPU designs are Intel(x86), AMD(x86), and IBM(POWER/POWERPC), and that is highly unlikely to change in the near future. IBM already has a licensing deal for POWER in China, and has been moving towards that with OpenPOWER for a long time. Intel would never contemplate such a thing, but AMD is desperate enough at this juncture to try it, even though it could cannibalize their core business in the future.
- nickpsecurity 10y agoDon't forget ShinWei-3 and Octeon3. Octeon is among my favorites since it has accelerstors for common stuff.
- tcoppi 10y agoFrom what I've seen of Cavium, I wouldn't describe them as general-purpose CPUs, though they are nice for their own niche. I don't think anyone in the west has gotten hands on anything except press releases of ShenWei systems, so it is unproven as far as I can tell. If it is so great why was the Chinese National Supercomputer Center trying to get their hands on Xeons so badly to upgrade Tianhe? :P Edit: Along the lines of Cavium, you might want to check out Tilera. They aren't exactly general-purpose either but they are more so than Octeons, and have respectable single-thread performance from what I've seen.
- nickpsecurity 10y agohttp://www.cavium.com/OCTEON-III_CN7XXX.html http://www.cavium.com/OCTEON-III_CN7XXX.html It's a multi-core MIPS64 processor with PCI, USB, and do on. Remember that MIPS has been used in everything from embedded to SGI Origin supercomputers. Quite general purpose. Cavium's addition is SOC, lower power, and accelerators. Regarding ShenWei, it was used in supercomputers. It's probably real. What jumped out is that it's probably stolen IP from Alpha CPU and had high watts. So, not as power-efficient or legal as they'd like was my guesss. Re Tilera I read the MIT RAW Workstation papers where all that began. ;) Yeah, it's pretty cool but that's the one that's limited purpose. It's like an overlap between vector processors, FPGA's, and multicores. I dont know who all uses them but I did find a 100Gbps network tap and NIDS that used 3 Tileras for its muscle.
- cyphar 10y agoAh yes, because everyone runs servers based on RISC-V and so -- oh wait, they don't. I'm as big a lover of RISC-V as anyone (and am excited about the possibility of having a completely open CPU which you can load into a free FPGA). But it's delusional to think that x86 is "legacy" at this point.
- bryanlarsen 10y agox86 is dominant in the server marketplace because Intel makes the best server chips for the vast majority of server use cases. Full stop. If somebody else comes out with a chip that's substantially better than x86 for servers, I expect the industry to transition quite quickly, just like it abandoned SPARC in the 90's.
- cm3 10y agoThe industry doesn't produce readily available SPARC systems, except for NEC and that European space chip consortium, plus including what's left of Sun inside Larry's dungeon, but SPARC is still evolving and is in a similar space as POWER. There are certain workloads that benefit very much from POWER and SPARC, but it's not your general purpose system that works well in a common denominator kinda way. There just aren't enough SPARC and POWER systems around to be economically viable as a x86 alternative, but technologically they're good choices for many scenarios.
- tracker1 10y agoThe issue is that mfg of cpus at scale is very costly, and short of a large scale, the per-unit cost to cover tooling is higher... lower margins, less profit, higher cost to the customers. Per-Unit cost, and relative throughput is why Intel rules the roost for the most part, even in server. I've looked at some of the costs of ARM servers, and they're way more expensive than they should be (compared to the cost going into phones)... I would think that may eventually become competitive... though Intel has a bit of room to lower pricing and still make money to compete.
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- gchadwick 10y ago> For servers, really? I don't get it, they could just use RISC-V. x86 is a mature established architecture, RISC-V is not. Indeed I think the privledged mode architecture is still under development (i.e. what you required to run an actual OS rather than just embedded applications). I'm sure there are many other features x86 possesses than RISC-V lacks too. I would have thought commercial RISC-V will be IoT/Embedded applications first. Fewer features required, lower costs (less to loose if it doesn't work out) and fairly static software supplied by a single or small group of vendors.
- PeCaN 10y agoFreeBSD's RISC-V port was mainlined for 11.0, so presumably the privileged ISA is relatively stable.
- wmf 10y agoDifferent Chines companies are trying every possible path to a "homegown" server processor and x86 is only one of them. I'm sure somebody's trying RISC-V.
- monk_e_boy 10y agoIs there any info out there on how x86 without the legacy cruft in it would preform?
- nickpsecurity 10y agoIdk about x86 itself minus legacy as it's defined by legal. However, Intel tried to clean-slate it at least four times. The first, i432, was revolutionary, forward-thinking, and overdid the hell out of the hardware side. Hundreds of man-years lost due to low, raw performance. Market only cared about the latter so rejected it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_iAPX_432 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_iAPX_432 Second was for BiiN parallel and high-availability system. Its i960 was a brilliant combo of RISC, HA, and security aspects of i432. Rejected by market due to no backward compatibility although used in F-35, some storage controllers, and so on. Still available for embedded but not the good version in the links. :( Especially see the manual and part with object mechanisms for containment/addressing. Cost them and Siemens a billion dollars. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_i960 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_i960 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BiiN https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BiiN Third time, in parallel with i960, was i860 RISC core for high-performance supercomputing and embedded systems. Had performance issues and just wasn't popular in general. Another loss. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_i860 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_i860 Itanium combined RISC, VLIW, PA-RISC style security, and reliability features. EPIC/VLIW probably what did it in the most unfortunately because reliability, speed, and security combo were good. Link below is security features as they alone justified in imho over x86 and you probably never saw them in comparisons. Just dollars, GHz, and GFLOPS as if that's all that matters. Used in appliances, supercomputers, and workstations but going away probably at a cost of hundreds of millions of dollars. http://www.intel.com/content/dam/www/public/us/en/documents/white-papers/intel-itanium-secure-white-paper.pdf http://www.intel.com/content/dam/www/public/us/en/documents/... So, Intel has tried to give us something better than x86 four times already at a cost of billions of dollars. To their credit, they tried and produced a few great designs with some flaws for sure but great in key ways. Market rejected them in favor of raw price/performance and backward compatibility with shit software. So, we're stuck with that given Itanium will go into legacy mode, VIA is loosing money on their x86 business, Transmeta was bought, and Loongons w/ x86 emulation are shaky investment. Gabriel's Worse is Better is in full effect here...
- tcoppi 10y agoWithout knowing any additional details of the agreement, I don't see how Intel will let this slide. The terms of their agreement are mostly likely violated at least in spirit, if not in the letter. Not only that, but it will have to get past export controls that have very recently stopped exports of Intel processors bound for China, I have no doubt they will find a joint venture to develop similar processors an easy target. If it gets past that, I would expect a lengthy lawsuit from Intel. Seems very risky from AMD's perspective.
- tcoppi 10y agoWell according to this other article, Intel and AMD's patent cross-license expired in 2015[1]. I'm not sure if that was the only agreement they had relating to x86 IP, but if so that makes this deal more likely to go through, if they can get past the export controls. 1. http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1329517 http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1329517
- tracker1 10y agoI am slightly curious how much actual innovation (new patents) there are since 1996, that would need to be cross licensed by either given company... the bulk of legacy x86 (not x86-64) is expired. Excluding certain extensions.
- tcoppi 10y agoYeah, I have no idea and I also suspect that very few new patents by either company are directly related to x86. Intel is still one of the most prolific patent recipients though, so one might have to dig through them to see. I suspect they are mostly related to fab design and lithography, though.
- nickpsecurity 10y agoIt would be microarchitecture, SOC, or commercial application patents. Even one or two critical ones could be good ammo. I doubt Intel or AMD stopped at 1 or 2, though. ;)
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- zekevermillion 10y agoAndy Grove must be spinning in his grave!
- npx 10y agoLet THEM omit frame pointers for a decade or two, it is in the broader national interests of America.
- cm3 10y agoCare to explain?
- npx 10y agoI have this dystopian Foxconn style vision of sweat shops where they force people to unwind stacks in binaries compiled without frame pointers because they're using a register starved architecture and they think that using SP as a general purpose register will make their code run faster. Now that I think of it, I'm beginning to understand the suicide nets.
- oldmanjay 10y agoWhenever people mention the Foxconn suicide nets, I remember how nobody noted that the measured suicide rate of Foxconn workers is and was lower than the general population, and I laugh at humanity's prospect of ever rising above its animal nature.
- Ericson2314 10y agoIs suicide "animal"?
- doktrin 10y agoI think 'animal nature' was a jab at our tendency to make judgments clouded by bias Emphasis on 'I think', because the comment wasn't worded very clearly.
- Ericson2314 10y agoYours seems to be the most sensible interpretation.
- hawski 10y agoSo when nVidia wanted x86 license for Tegra K1 they should have go to AMD? Probably it would backfire their probable relationship with Intel. Do they have one?
- tcoppi 10y agoThe landscape with regards to patents and licenses was a lot different then, it seems like all bets might be off at this point.
- tracker1 10y agoIt's worth noting that a lot of 32-bit x86 is well beyond patent protections at this point... The Pentium was released over 20 years ago now. The only licensing needed is for certain innovations since 1996, of which is mostly x86-64.
- nickpsecurity 10y agox86 boxes are about to get a lot cheaper since China has cheap RTL engineers, fabs, and assembly workers. Hopefully it gets as interesting as ARM SOC's and boards have in Shenizen.
- petra 10y agoFabs ? last i heard the Chinese are struggling to build even 28nm fabs.
- nickpsecurity 10y agoMight be true. This list shows SMIC has about 8: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_semiconductor_fabrication_plants https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_semiconductor_fabricat... You can do a lot with 45 and 65nm. My Core Duo 2 I'm still using is 65nm.
- nickpsecurity 10y agoWait, I found these that arent on the list and show they're making SnapDragons: http://www.smics.com/eng/press/press_releases_details.php?id=299479 http://www.smics.com/eng/press/press_releases_details.php?id... http://www.smics.com/eng/foundry/technology/highlight_28.php http://www.smics.com/eng/foundry/technology/highlight_28.php
- tcoppi 10y agoChina has caught up big time in the fab game over the past few years, though SMIC doesn't have very much capacity for cutting-edge production and it is basically only manufacturing Qualcomm products for 28nm afaik. You'll also notice they didn't mention yields at all there, which are probably not very good for 28nm, but then again no one has good yields at first, they'll catch up in time.
- nickpsecurity 10y agoHaha good catch on the yields. Yeah, they probably suck and are strongly encouraging Design for Manufacturing flows to keep losses lower. That's always true for new fabs. Contrary to popular beliefs, though, most design starts are still in 110-350nm range with a good chunk on 45/65nm and now interest in 28nm. China has all that covered. So, they're only missing a small chunk of market. That said, the cost of 28nm fab investments means they really need more projects on 28nm. Personally, I thought they were doing all the semiconductor stuff as anti-subversion and economic imperialism. So, they'll probably keep it and work on lower nodes going even at a loss. Just a hunch. ;)
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- vox_mollis 10y agoThis will be nice if it leads to x86 implementations devoid of ME or equivalent transparent hardware backdoors.
- voodootrucker 10y agoThis might be our one ray of hope to keep the platform open and uncompromised: http://mail.fsfeurope.org/pipermail/discussion/2016-April/010912.html http://mail.fsfeurope.org/pipermail/discussion/2016-April/01...
- jlawer 10y agoI am curious if this was caused by the export restrictions on Xeon & Xeon Phi chips to the Chinese government due to the concerns about their super-computers. If that is the cause, it could be interesting as we may end up with AMD (and the rest of us) getting the benefits of heavy research into upcoming processors, simply as they become a strategic material for the Chinese government. The competition would benefit all of us.