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The page says "Zhaoxin's home-grown x86 CPU is completely designed from the ground up within China", but other sources suggest that their cores are derived from

The page says "Zhaoxin's home-grown x86 CPU is completely designed from the ground up within China", but other sources suggest that their cores are derived from Centaur microarchitecture. Anyone know what the truth is on this?

trollian 9y ago
According to the official One China Policy the island of Taiwan is a province of China. So yeah, maybe it all depends what your definition of "China" is...
sanxiyn 9y ago
VIA bought Centaur, so you can argue that, tenuously. VIA is a Taiwanese company. Some people insist that being Taiwanese is being Chinese.
- Coding_Cat 9y ago
  Taiwan insist it's Chinese. Its government claims to be the rightful government of the whole of China.
  - TazeTSchnitzel 9y ago
    The People's Republic of China and the Republic of China both agree there is a single China which includes Taiwan. They differ over who should govern it.
    - hangonhn 9y ago
      The new current Taiwanese administration has not confirm that the 1992 Consensus: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1992_Consensus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1992_Consensus The Chinese government has been engaging in some saber rattling because of that.
    - seanmcdirmid 9y ago
      Not all Taiwanese are pro republic of China. There is a huge split in Taiwan between mainlanders (post 1949) and natives (also descended from the mainland, just pre 1949).
      - keltor 9y ago
        Hans started moving to Taiwan in the 1600s, then you had that big influx as the Chinese Revolution wound down. There's also Native Taiwanese - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Austronesian_peoples https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Austronesian_peoples, they even make up about 2% of the population, I think they all want the Hans to pickup and leave their lands.
        seanmcdirmid 9y ago
        The native natives are more aligned with the KMT (ok, super aligned). The Hans before 1949 are mostly from Fujian, who are not known for being the most patriotic (and indeed, became dominant in overseas Chinese communities in SE Asia, NYC, and so on...). Post 1949 was the rich Chinese and KMT officials from everywhere escaping the communists, who also own much of the island's economy and want closer ties to China (so they can make more money).
    - gurkendoktor 9y ago
      The Republic of China probably agrees partly because waiving their territorial claims could trigger military action through China's Anti-Secession Law.
- 0xcde4c3db 9y ago
  Even granting the considerable stretch that the VIA acquisition somehow renders part of Austin "within China" (I'm reminded here of the Babylon 5 episode "Day of the Dead"), I have my doubts that they'd throw away all pre-acquisition IP just to be able to make this claim. I guess they might have done so regardless to develop something with a newer workflow (e.g. for better verification), but my understanding is that it's not unusual to ship ~20-year-old HDL cores (e.g. UARTs) that are just synthesized with different gate libraries.
  - Chaebixi 9y ago
    > I have my doubts that they'd throw away all pre-acquisition IP just to be able to make this claim China doesn't seem to be above claiming that they "domestically developed" technology that they really acquired from foreigners. An example I'm aware if is China's "home grown" 3G cellular protocol called TD-SCDMA. It was really a failed European standards proposal from Siemens, but passed off as an indigenous Chinese development for prestige reasons. See https://www.samizdata.net/2012/06/here-is-the-rac/ https://www.samizdata.net/2012/06/here-is-the-rac/
- djsumdog 9y ago
  But if you go back far enough, that tech actually came from Cyrix, an American company. I highly doubt they rewrote everything.
- luyi06 9y ago
  Taiwan IS part of China.
baybal2 9y ago
>"Zhaoxin's home-grown x86 CPU is completely designed from the ground up within China" Yes, just not that China, another one
- candiodari 9y ago
  Well, given the territorial claims, yes, kind of that one. It just depends which government you believe as to whether the island of Taiwan is occupied territory, or everything else in China is occupied territory. And these are governments we're talking about, so, needless to say, both sides killed millions to make this happen. Not because those people that got killed worked for the other side or were doing anything at all (not even protesting most of them), but merely because they wanted to frighten the rest enough to not do anything against them. One of the nicknames for one of the actions of the Taiwanese government was "the White terror" (death toll: at least 10000, there had been a protest march against them, so naturally ...), the mainland Chinese government had a policy that each little town had to have at least one public execution, and millions died. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Taiwan#Republic_of_China_rule https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Taiwan#Republic_of_...
  - guan 9y ago
    It’s worth noting that while the government in Taiwan still officially claims all of China, the government is currently led by a president (Tsai Ing-wen) whose party does not whole-heartedly endorse that position.
    - seanmcdirmid 9y ago
      Ya, see the difference between the DPP and KMT. Chiang Kai Shek’s legacy is also very dubious amongst many Taiwanese (especially in the DPP), who don’t align with the communists either (and let’s not get into Japan).
  - qwerty456127 9y ago
    Whatever they claim, in the present time reality the RC (Taiwan) and the PRC are 2 distinct independent countries that are not going to re-unite any soon. "Believing" any of the 2 just doesn't make much sense.
yegle 9y ago
I believe this is just a bad translation from a popular Chinese propaganda (自主研发).
saas_co_de 9y ago
They say it has a new microarchitecture, pipeline reduced by 5 stages, new branch prediction, new support for multi-chip-modules, and new cache coherency protocol to support that. It seems as much a ground up design as Zen. http://www.eefocus.com/mcu-dsp/399906/r0 http://www.eefocus.com/mcu-dsp/399906/r0

trollian 9y ago

According to the official One China Policy the island of Taiwan is a province of China. So yeah, maybe it all depends what your definition of "China" is...

sanxiyn 9y ago

VIA bought Centaur, so you can argue that, tenuously. VIA is a Taiwanese company. Some people insist that being Taiwanese is being Chinese.

Coding_Cat 9y ago
Taiwan insist it's Chinese. Its government claims to be the rightful government of the whole of China.
- TazeTSchnitzel 9y ago
  The People's Republic of China and the Republic of China both agree there is a single China which includes Taiwan. They differ over who should govern it.
  - hangonhn 9y ago
    The new current Taiwanese administration has not confirm that the 1992 Consensus: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1992_Consensus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1992_Consensus The Chinese government has been engaging in some saber rattling because of that.
  - seanmcdirmid 9y ago
    Not all Taiwanese are pro republic of China. There is a huge split in Taiwan between mainlanders (post 1949) and natives (also descended from the mainland, just pre 1949).
    - keltor 9y ago
      Hans started moving to Taiwan in the 1600s, then you had that big influx as the Chinese Revolution wound down. There's also Native Taiwanese - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Austronesian_peoples https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Austronesian_peoples, they even make up about 2% of the population, I think they all want the Hans to pickup and leave their lands.
      - seanmcdirmid 9y ago
        The native natives are more aligned with the KMT (ok, super aligned). The Hans before 1949 are mostly from Fujian, who are not known for being the most patriotic (and indeed, became dominant in overseas Chinese communities in SE Asia, NYC, and so on...). Post 1949 was the rich Chinese and KMT officials from everywhere escaping the communists, who also own much of the island's economy and want closer ties to China (so they can make more money).
  - gurkendoktor 9y ago
    The Republic of China probably agrees partly because waiving their territorial claims could trigger military action through China's Anti-Secession Law.
0xcde4c3db 9y ago
Even granting the considerable stretch that the VIA acquisition somehow renders part of Austin "within China" (I'm reminded here of the Babylon 5 episode "Day of the Dead"), I have my doubts that they'd throw away all pre-acquisition IP just to be able to make this claim. I guess they might have done so regardless to develop something with a newer workflow (e.g. for better verification), but my understanding is that it's not unusual to ship ~20-year-old HDL cores (e.g. UARTs) that are just synthesized with different gate libraries.
- Chaebixi 9y ago
  > I have my doubts that they'd throw away all pre-acquisition IP just to be able to make this claim China doesn't seem to be above claiming that they "domestically developed" technology that they really acquired from foreigners. An example I'm aware if is China's "home grown" 3G cellular protocol called TD-SCDMA. It was really a failed European standards proposal from Siemens, but passed off as an indigenous Chinese development for prestige reasons. See https://www.samizdata.net/2012/06/here-is-the-rac/ https://www.samizdata.net/2012/06/here-is-the-rac/
djsumdog 9y ago
But if you go back far enough, that tech actually came from Cyrix, an American company. I highly doubt they rewrote everything.
luyi06 9y ago
Taiwan IS part of China.

baybal2 9y ago

>"Zhaoxin's home-grown x86 CPU is completely designed from the ground up within China" Yes, just not that China, another one

candiodari 9y ago
Well, given the territorial claims, yes, kind of that one. It just depends which government you believe as to whether the island of Taiwan is occupied territory, or everything else in China is occupied territory. And these are governments we're talking about, so, needless to say, both sides killed millions to make this happen. Not because those people that got killed worked for the other side or were doing anything at all (not even protesting most of them), but merely because they wanted to frighten the rest enough to not do anything against them. One of the nicknames for one of the actions of the Taiwanese government was "the White terror" (death toll: at least 10000, there had been a protest march against them, so naturally ...), the mainland Chinese government had a policy that each little town had to have at least one public execution, and millions died. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Taiwan#Republic_of_China_rule https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Taiwan#Republic_of_...
- guan 9y ago
  It’s worth noting that while the government in Taiwan still officially claims all of China, the government is currently led by a president (Tsai Ing-wen) whose party does not whole-heartedly endorse that position.
  - seanmcdirmid 9y ago
    Ya, see the difference between the DPP and KMT. Chiang Kai Shek’s legacy is also very dubious amongst many Taiwanese (especially in the DPP), who don’t align with the communists either (and let’s not get into Japan).
- qwerty456127 9y ago
  Whatever they claim, in the present time reality the RC (Taiwan) and the PRC are 2 distinct independent countries that are not going to re-unite any soon. "Believing" any of the 2 just doesn't make much sense.

yegle 9y ago

I believe this is just a bad translation from a popular Chinese propaganda (自主研发).

saas_co_de 9y ago

They say it has a new microarchitecture, pipeline reduced by 5 stages, new branch prediction, new support for multi-chip-modules, and new cache coherency protocol to support that. It seems as much a ground up design as Zen. http://www.eefocus.com/mcu-dsp/399906/r0 http://www.eefocus.com/mcu-dsp/399906/r0