24 ms·

China Begins Production Of x86 Processors Based On AMD's IP

458 points by gscott 8y ago

christianbryant 8y ago
Plus for this manufacturer, the Hygon Dhyana CPUs should work under GNU/Linux: http://lkml.iu.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel/1806.1/00730.html http://lkml.iu.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel/1806.1/00730.html
gscott 8y ago
I feel this is important, one of the things China has felt they have been held back on is chip production, especially something like the x86 and x64 chips. Now they are good to go on something that is a national priority. They can produce hundreds of thousands of cpu's as many as they want now with no limitations from the US Government since now they can do it locally.
- ksec 8y ago
  >one of the things China has felt they have been held back on is chip production Not sure what you mean by held back, As far as we cant tell, ignoring all the JV and shares, this is basically AMD making their EPYC chip in TSMC specially for Chinese Market.
  - baybal2 8y ago
    >As far as we cant tell, ignoring all the JV and shares, this is basically AMD making their EPYC chip in TSMC specially for Chinese Market. Yes, basically Chinese paid near $300m just for the right to put own label on it, and distribution rights.
    - Waterluvian 8y ago
      Shame on me. I read the title and flat out assumed China was stealing the IP.
      - acct1771 8y ago
        Yeah, I don't think you can be blamed for that one at all...
- asaka 8y ago
  China have Zhaoxin (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zhaoxin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zhaoxin) which can produce X86 chips already.
  - dvfjsdhgfv 8y ago
    In terms of performance, VIA Nano and EPYC are hardly comparable.
- gaius 8y ago
  one of the things China has felt they have been held back on is chip production Really? They have a decent MIPS story there, have had for a while. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loongson https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loongson https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dawning_Information_Industry#Dawning_6000 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dawning_Information_Industry#D... They could literally have ignored x86, but they are making the same strategic blunder the UK made in the 1980s
  - userbinator 8y ago
    Yes, MIPS is everywhere in all sorts of consumer devices like routers and cheap Android phones/tablets, but it lacks performance, and also compatibility with existing software.
    - gaius 8y ago
      See the second link - they are using MIPS for HPC so it’s performance must be adequate
      - seanmcdirmid 8y ago
        MIPS had been used in HPC applications in the past. It’s just an ISA, like x86 or ARM, and (these days) has less to do with performance than the CPU architecture and process user to FAB it. Heck, they could even bring back 68k’s and make them work well enough.
        phire 8y ago
        Yep, all you need to do is build a massive out-of-order superscalar pipeline with 8 to 10 execution ports and a very large reorder buffer (150 to 200 uops). And idealy toss in hypertreadding. Intel has done it with x86, IBM have done it with POWER, AMD have done it with x86 (more or less independently to Intel), Sun/Oracle have done it with SPARC, Apple have done it with ARM and most recently it looks like ARM's Cortex A76 is joining the league. All these designs look very similar, they are basically variatins on the same archtechure with different front ends.
- pabloski 8y ago
  Yes it is important for competition. But this gives x86 another century of survival. Seriously, someone kill x86 please!
  - TheSpiceIsLife 8y ago
    If you use any complex tool enough you will rapidly come up against its limitations and bizarre design implementations. Is there any reason to believe any other architure that tries to be, approximately, everything for everyone would fair any better?
  - krylon 8y ago
    Never underestimate the value of backward compatibility. Any architecture that wants to take a decent swing at replacing x86 will either have to be x86-compatible or do a good job at emulating it accurately and efficiently.
    - lawnchair_larry 8y ago
      No it won’t. ARM has already displaced it pretty heavily and will continue to do so.
      - krylon 8y ago
        Is "displaced" the correct term, though? In mobile devices, ARM has an almost(?)-monopoly indeed, but x86 never was a serious contender in that space to begin with. The same goes for "IoT" devices. In new areas of computing, Intel is just one vendor among many (well, several), and the more the market tends to demand low-power chips, Intel's advantage melts away. In that sense, I agree with you. In HPC, I could see ARM become a serious alternative, because the trend seems to be to delegate the heavy lifting to GPUs, anyway, and the GPU does not care what kind of CPU feeds it, so to speak. But in the traditional desktop area, if you cannot run Windows and the huge number of third-party applications available there, you might as well give up. And to completely "replace" x86/x64, you have to compete in the desktop market as well.
ksec 8y ago
What I don't understand, is how or why this model works "only" in China as it stays within the x86 license boundary. Why hasn't Apple, Microsoft Xbox, Sony PS 4 use this route for their semi custom SoC?
- fake-name 8y ago
  Presumably because, since they control the whole stack, targeting a different architecture is not a significant hurdle, and therefore they can skip having to license the x86 ISA.
- throwaway2048 8y ago
  I'm guessing because Intel/AMD/VIA don't want to sell it to them.
- MaxBarraclough 8y ago
  Xbox One and PS4 use relatively ambitious chips, integrating an AMD multicore x86-64 CPU, with and AMD GPU. This project seems a good deal more humble: as far as I can tell from the article, they're making single-core 32-bit x86 CPUs, and they aren't touching AMD's GPU solutions. I imagine it's far easier to get AMD to agree to sign off the licensing agreement given that it doesn't really compete with them. Also it looks far easier to pull off, so there's less reason to have AMD themselves put the work in.
  - caf 8y ago
    The Linux support patch indicates it is equivalent to AMD's family 0x17 (Zen).
    - MaxBarraclough 8y ago
      As aoeusnth1 points out, I was wrong - it is indeed looking to be much like AMD's own multicore x86-64 chips.
  - aoeusnth1 8y ago
    Where did you get the idea that these were single core? It said they were using EPYC designs, which are many-core high end server chips (like Xeon).
krob 8y ago
This will definitely be part of the us Trade War going on.
scruffyherder 8y ago
Are they going to hit retail shelves or what? It'll be interesting to see if they do. I was interested in getting one of those Chinese MIPS machines (based on the 3A2000), but they seem to have all but evaporated.
- voxadam 8y ago
  Whatever happened to Loongson?
  - scruffyherder 8y ago
    Don't know. I have yet to actually see anywhere to buy one. It's all email or phone and I've done both from China and Hong Kong and never got a reply.
    - monocasa 8y ago
      They exist; Richard Stallman has one in a laptop.
plumeria 8y ago
Backdoor Inside™
- sschueller 8y ago
  I don't understand your comment. Are you saying the US would never put a backdoor in a chip?
  - pabloski 8y ago
    I think we need a Geneva convention on microelectronics and informatics products. We are growing tired of this spy bullshit by the so-called super powers. They are destroying the information age. We need machines and software we can trust and who don't go around spilling our secrets.
    - orbital-decay 8y ago
      >I think we need a Geneva convention on microelectronics and informatics products. Such convention is not very useful when you can't detect and prove a violation.
    - tzahola 8y ago
      Or you can just buy chips from companies who don't put backdoor in them.
      - e12e 8y ago
        Which would be? I suppose you could run opensparc - but you'd still have to trust the fab..
      - Taniwha 8y ago
        how can you tell?
    - sschueller 8y ago
      Sadly useless if even the US doesn't sign & ratify such a thing. [1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_treaties_unsigned_or_unratified_by_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_treaties_unsigned_or_u...
baybal2 8y ago
Also, It is not true that China never had own from scratch designed "cores." It had not one, but like 4 different families, with one being their own custom ISA (iCube.) I as a person who meets people from Qinghua university group on 1 in every 3 industry events, I can tell. The one and only reason the huge lump of money was dished on yet another "national" chip is because the "national OS" is still is the pirated Win XP from around 2005. And according to opinion of augustly officials, no performance metrics command merit if the chip can't run it. There is one individual from Unigroup who is the sole person responsible for bringing "the national chip" to the MofCom on a golden platter. At around 2010, MofCom announced near one hundred grants available for the chip maker who can make that chip. NuFront was one of contenders (The company's sole purpose originally was to contend for that huge grant.) Their meeting with that guy was very short. They went to him to deliver presentation about the product. Midway, he interrupted them and asked this question: "can it run Windows?," and the next words in their conversation were "no" and "bye"
- skissane 8y ago
  > the "national OS" is still is the pirated Win XP from around 2005 I wonder why China doesn't adopt a national policy of moving to an OS it can control, such as Linux? (Possibly in conjunction with Wine for backward compatibility, or if they want something more Windows-like, maybe ReactOS.) Whatever limitations an open source OS stack may have, surely with enough funding those limitations could be overcome, and surely the Chinese government can afford to fund that.
  - baybal2 8y ago
    They certainly tried. But I can imagine that it all also broke down when "some official" factor kicked it. First builds of red flag linux were copying WinXP "pixel for pixel," most likely just to prevent yet another official like that asking something like "where is the start button?" https://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/02/14/china_shutters_windows_rival_red_flag_linux/ https://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/02/14/china_shutters_wind...
Roritharr 8y ago
Interesting Move. If you base your assumptions on Peter Zeihan and his Book the Absent Superpower, this would basically be China trying to get as much manufacturing out of the US as possible to force it to be a customer of Chinese goods indefinitely and secure access to the US consumers. In this case it obviously has also strategic value, as China can also securely supply his military with "clean" chips. I can only recommend watching one of his talks on YT for a different pov regarding world politics: https://youtu.be/feU7HT0x_qU https://youtu.be/feU7HT0x_qU
- curiousgal 8y ago
  Dumb question, who comes up with these smart policies/strategies?
  - Roritharr 8y ago
    In China, the US or where? In the US the parties have Think Tanks and hordes of analysts covering these topics. From what I heard from people at the WEF in China there's committees that are created to work on those topics, staffed meritocratically.
    - jacquesm 8y ago
      > In the US the parties have Think Tanks and hordes of analysts covering these topics. You wouldn't say so. Most 'think tanks' seem to do what they can to give the party they work for the ammo they need to get the laws passed they desire, it rarely - if every - seems to be based in a genuine desire to move matters forward.
      - fladrif 8y ago
        I seem to be getting the same impression through all the news and 'research' that have come up over the years. I'd love to be proven wrong though.
      - TheSpiceIsLife 8y ago
        Move matters forward in the sense of implementing the party’s preferred ideology. Though it’s a far cry from the highest good of all conceded.
bitwize 8y ago
> But here's where things get tricky. AMD holds a 51 percent stake in HMC, while Tianjin Haiguang Holdings owns 49%. Meanwhile, AMD owns 30% of Hygon and Tianjin Haiguang Holdings owns 70 percent. > HMC owns the x86 IP and ends up producing the chips, which satisfies the AMD and Intel x86 cross-licensing agreements because the IP remains with a company owned primarily by AMD. But AMD provides the IP with the understanding that the company will use it to design its "own products specifically tailored to the needs of the Chinese server market." That requires quite a bit of maneuvering given the restrictions of AMD's x86 cross-licensing agreement with Intel. > To stay within the legal boundaries, HMC licenses the IP to Hygon, which designs the x86 chips and then sells the design back to HMC. > HMC then employs a foundry to fab the end product (likely China Foundries or TSMC). Confusingly, HMC then transfers the chips back to Hygon (the same company that designed them), which then sells the Dhyana processors. Let's call this what it is -- IP laundering.
whazor 8y ago
As far as I know, China does not possess the newest semiconductor machines. Either it will create these chips via TSMC, or they will use a lower resolution and less powerful chips. I wonder if they can make something competitive.
- kypro 8y ago
  Depends on the price they can produce them at I suppose.
- skrebbel 8y ago
  I'm sure ASML will happily sign them up as a customer.
  - TheArcane 8y ago
    Up until an American company acquires it like they did with NXP and booking.com.
- hmottestad 8y ago
  From the article: "HMC then employs a foundry to fab the end product (likely China Foundries or TSMC)"
  - solarkraft 8y ago
    Would they ever use TSMC?
    - yvdriess 8y ago
      Why not, it's on Chinese soil after all ;)
      - seanmcdirmid 8y ago
        TSMC is a Taiwanese company with a few FABs in Mainland China.
walrus01 8y ago
What motherboards are available for these? Anyone have URLs for manufacturer datasheets, etc? Or are they pin and chipset compatible with existing ryzen boards?
throwaway2048 8y ago
Seems pretty incredible AMD sold the keys to the kingdom for 1/4th the x86 market for 300millionish. I'm sure the shenanegans where they get pushed out of china are going to occur after a few years, just like they happened to tons of tech companies before them after they got raided for IP with joint partnerships... They never had much penetration into China to begin with, maybe they consider it worth it to cut down Intel's influence. Seems super dangerous if china starts exporting the chips however.
- spacenick88 8y ago
  Afaik they get per unit royalties too
  - freyir 8y ago
    We'll see how that works out for them.
  - castratikron 8y ago
    I'm sure they pay that. https://www.npr.org/2018/07/06/626683457/judge-orders-chinese-wind-turbine-maker-to-pay-59-million-for-stealing-trade-sec https://www.npr.org/2018/07/06/626683457/judge-orders-chines...
  - outworlder 8y ago
    Until China comes up with a completely "unrelated" chip which does not have to pay royalties. Because, you see, it's a completely unrelated design. Even the name will be different. There is prior history on this. Companies used to the level of IP enforcement in the USA are in for a big surprise.
- slededit 8y ago
  Shows how far AMD has come. They were close to bankruptcy at the time this deal was made. I doubt they would have made the same deal today, but it was life and death issue at the time.
some_account 8y ago
This is really good for the consumers, since the Chinese are free to innovate instead of waiting for Intel. Lately they have been coming out with really good things. The Matebook X Pro is amazing and can easily compete with Dells latest offerings, and Deepin Linux 15.6 has its own very modern user interface that makes it very enjoyable to use. Finally a linux distribution with a good sense of western style and performance, and it comes from China of all places. Its important to be careful of spyware however, but that goes for American software as well. There is plenty of evidence that NSA is spying on everybody, and probably has access to most Americans emails and web habits already.
- simonh 8y ago
  Well if the US does it too, that's alright then. Caveat, I'm a European (well a Brit, so almost European) and I'm appalled by US and yes British violations of privacy and surveillance overreach. Things like the threats to cripple or ban private use of strong encryption are appallingly damaging and misguided. However nations with an elected government accountable to the people doing this stuff is one thing. We still have the right and mechanisms to protest and these protests have frequently made a real difference. strong encryption of private communications is till legal and threats to it have gone nowhere. The fact that governments from multiple political groups, in multiple countries have looked at this and decided that the benefits to their electorate outweigh the dangers offers at least some comfort. It's at least possible that they are right, although I would prefer much stronger checks and balances. Pervasive active harvesting, analysis, intervention, censorship and subsequent punishments of 'private' communication by a totalitarian state, with the open goal of enforcing ideological obedience is not the same thing, and it's not ok. At all.
  - helpme420 8y ago
    Chinks have these kind of behaviours in their culture - it is wrong for us to assume that they are not fine with it.
  - candiodari 8y ago
    The issue with your comment is that it's absurd. You are complaining about US overreach, so presumably your basis for judgement should be the situation in the UK. Does the UK do mass-surveillance of it's own and foreign citizens, on UK soil and outside ? Yes [1] Strong encryption of private communications is NOT legal in the UK. You have to give the police access when they request it and you cannot use the rights you have in the US to avoid giving this access [2]. (unless you consider strong encryption stuff where you have to make all keys available to the police, border guard, gchq, foreign intelligence services, and others still strong encryption. I don't) The other huge difference is that the UK refuses to be accountable for their mass surveillance afterwards. In the US a big demand is that there is a paper trail for spying, to the person being spied upon. Granted, this may be buried in something like a phone contract for mass-targeting. When they target you specifically, however, you will be notified (afterwards, if the judge so decides, but can even be beforehand), and failure to do this makes the spying illegal. Furthermore, this gives private individuals and companies the option to sue to have the police/FBI/NSA/DEA/... explain themselves (and more generally the US state). In the UK however: 1) No notification is given to the person being spied upon. The state just does it. 2) There is no recourse. If you were spied upon because a police officer wanted to be your boyfriend and needed to know where your actual boyfried was to beat him up, that's legal. [3] (yes, I realize these guys got fired, however, their actions were ruled legal) 3) If anyone in the UK takes the side of the person being spied upon, whether an internet provider, an application provider (ie. outlook.com/fb/gmail/...), they will be vigorously pursued and punished for that. This is highly illegal. 4) The UK has cooperation treaties (ie. EU treaties, and others) that let police officers in ~70 countries spy on British citizens (I heard that these treaties were used to install a phone tap, yes really, on Angela Merkel's phone. Yes, that Angela Merkel. The utter incompetence is baffling in it's scope. And yes, the guy (an officer) did this as a joke and got fired for it) So to say I don't understand your criticism here massively understates the situation ... Obviously, as a UK citizen you've got some more local problems to sort out before you criticize the US. In reality, the UK/EU is pushing these news articles and blowing up cooperation for EXACTLY the opposite reason : they don't want increased privacy for people, they want to further reduce it. They want the US to honor spying requests without respecting US law. They don't want Facebook to ask "can you explain why this is really necessary" when a police officer is asking for the exact location of EU citizens. They don't want to give reasons, and they certainly don't want the person to be told afterwards (and potentially sue them). They want full FB and instagram chat logs in every divorce case. They want ever single email a person ever sent in every commercial dispute. They want every police force and secret service in Europe to have access to every Europeans every mail, immediately, with zero oversight or tracking, and especially without any paper trail available to their victims. THAT's what Europe is fighting for. THAT's what they're calling "US surveillance overreach". Well, that, and the fact that the US successfully recorded some rather high level conversations between Merkel and Macron and managed to get caught doing it. In other words, they're incompetent, and angry. And of course, that's the US's fault (despite, of course, that Germany was also caught attempting to bug Obama, and caught having successfully bugged several high level officials before getting caught). And of course, they're angry for Trump getting elected (if you don't believe me, watch this [4], and listen to the questions). That's why there is this campaign of "the US is horrible on privacy". There is "no cooperation". But, sadly, the US is the champion of privacy in this particular fight. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_surveillance_in_the_United_Kingdom https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_surveillance_in_the_Unite... [2] https://techcrunch.com/2017/09/25/traveler-who-refused-to-give-device-passwords-to-police-found-guilty-of-obstruction-in-uk-court/ https://techcrunch.com/2017/09/25/traveler-who-refused-to-gi... [3] http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1371833/20-police-officers-dismissed-using-force-spy-neighbours-partners.html http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1371833/20-police-of... [4] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y70LrlzrkNk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y70LrlzrkNk
jlebrech 8y ago
i wonder if they'll make multi socket motherboards. as manufacturers struggle to go smaller they could spread the thermal load over multiple chips.
orbifold 8y ago
I really don't get why the West is gifting all this technology to a competitor. By now it should be clear that in all cases of these joint ventures the only goal is to eventually clone the product. They have ripoffs of high-speed trains, military equipment and so on. I guess this is also how Japan caught up after WWII, but there the US has still ~60000 soldiers on the ground and significant long term ties.
- poutrathor 8y ago
  From a non US citizens point of view, getting spied on by the giant uncle Sam or by Xi's China makes less and less difference if the current trends keep on : USA retracting on nationalistic beliefs while China keeps opening up.
  - tanilama 8y ago
    Blackmail by Xi or by Trump, it is now a choice to make. Can't imagine this like 2 years ago. Funny time to live indeed.
    - zeofig 8y ago
      Give them conflicting information, so when they amalgamate Moloch will be left confused.
    - rakoo 8y ago
      As another non-US citizen, I can tell you this sentiment definitely didn't start with Trump.
  - realusername 8y ago
    > USA retracting on nationalistic beliefs while China keeps opening up. I don't see how China is opening up, the situation is even worse than 10 years ago, we used to have an oligarchy of the CCP, now we have a proper dictator instead. People hoped that China would open up while modernising, so far it has not worked at all.
lgvln 8y ago
This is going to be interesting. Such a partnership will avoid another ZTE-like scenario so this is a win for China. However this is probably going to place AMD in the crosshairs of the US administration. Let's see how this turns out for AMD.
- infocollector 8y ago
  How does this compare to the US Government stopping Intel in 2015? Does this wipe out everything good we have heard from AMD in recent times?
bdz 8y ago
Here is the Linux kernel patch https://patchwork.kernel.org/patch/10455791/ https://patchwork.kernel.org/patch/10455791/
api 8y ago
I have a sense that what happened to Detroit is about to happen to Silicon Valley. Detroit once had some of the highest median salaries (and home values) in the nation. Then Japan came and decimated what had become a fat and lazy domestic auto industry. China could easily do this to American chip makers, removing a key cornerstone of Silicon Valley's tech leadership. Meanwhile a lot of newer innovators in areas like software and custom hardware have already gone elsewhere. People are rationally concluding that the benefits of Silicon Valley are outweighed by its insane cost of living and that those same benefits can be obtained in other ways, so they're doing their work elsewhere. I personally know of several startups that maintain fake Silicon Valley mailing addresses while being located in places like Southern California, Denver, Indianapolis, or Nashville. They keep the address for its silly prestige value since if it says "Palo Alto" on your contact page people who aren't knowledgeable think it means you're cutting edge. Another big benefit of the Bay Area -- namely one of the most interesting cultural environments in the world -- has also been largely priced out and decimated by the local real estate bubble. That eliminates yet another draw. People might pay a lot to live in a fascinating city full of cutting edge culture and interesting people but not to live in a glorified office park. I see a future SV tech scene that's largely hollowed out and dominated by social media, an industry toward which the public is becoming increasingly hostile as they realize it's all about surveillance and mass manipulation. Chips go to China and newer startups go to cities with saner costs of living.
- raincom 8y ago
  SV has a good weather, which can keep the real estate bubble.
  - api 8y ago
    So do loads of other more affordable places.
berbec 8y ago
How long till EYPK chips show up on AliExpress?
DannyB2 8y ago
I wonder if China's chips have something like Intel Management Engine?
noetic_techy 8y ago
Summary: AMD has found a legal loophole to sell out critical x86 chip design IP to the Chinese for a cash infusion of 300+ million. Expect to see knock off copies emerge and AMD ultimately get pushed out of China in favor a local company that has their IP in hand. Their executives are either stupidly naive and in for a major shock, or plain greedy/desperate and willing to sell out the West for 300 million cash. If so then its IP laundering in my opinion. I hope the US gov regulators roast them for this. I plan to avoid their products as much as possible now.

458 points by gscott 8y ago

Plus for this manufacturer, the Hygon Dhyana CPUs should work under GNU/Linux: http://lkml.iu.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel/1806.1/00730.html http://lkml.iu.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel/1806.1/00730.html

gscott 8y ago

I feel this is important, one of the things China has felt they have been held back on is chip production, especially something like the x86 and x64 chips. Now they are good to go on something that is a national priority. They can produce hundreds of thousands of cpu's as many as they want now with no limitations from the US Government since now they can do it locally.

ksec 8y ago
>one of the things China has felt they have been held back on is chip production Not sure what you mean by held back, As far as we cant tell, ignoring all the JV and shares, this is basically AMD making their EPYC chip in TSMC specially for Chinese Market.
- baybal2 8y ago
  >As far as we cant tell, ignoring all the JV and shares, this is basically AMD making their EPYC chip in TSMC specially for Chinese Market. Yes, basically Chinese paid near $300m just for the right to put own label on it, and distribution rights.
  - Waterluvian 8y ago
    Shame on me. I read the title and flat out assumed China was stealing the IP.
    - acct1771 8y ago
      Yeah, I don't think you can be blamed for that one at all...
asaka 8y ago
China have Zhaoxin (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zhaoxin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zhaoxin) which can produce X86 chips already.
- dvfjsdhgfv 8y ago
  In terms of performance, VIA Nano and EPYC are hardly comparable.
gaius 8y ago
one of the things China has felt they have been held back on is chip production Really? They have a decent MIPS story there, have had for a while. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loongson https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loongson https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dawning_Information_Industry#Dawning_6000 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dawning_Information_Industry#D... They could literally have ignored x86, but they are making the same strategic blunder the UK made in the 1980s
- userbinator 8y ago
  Yes, MIPS is everywhere in all sorts of consumer devices like routers and cheap Android phones/tablets, but it lacks performance, and also compatibility with existing software.
  - gaius 8y ago
    See the second link - they are using MIPS for HPC so it’s performance must be adequate
    - seanmcdirmid 8y ago
      MIPS had been used in HPC applications in the past. It’s just an ISA, like x86 or ARM, and (these days) has less to do with performance than the CPU architecture and process user to FAB it. Heck, they could even bring back 68k’s and make them work well enough.
      - phire 8y ago
        Yep, all you need to do is build a massive out-of-order superscalar pipeline with 8 to 10 execution ports and a very large reorder buffer (150 to 200 uops). And idealy toss in hypertreadding. Intel has done it with x86, IBM have done it with POWER, AMD have done it with x86 (more or less independently to Intel), Sun/Oracle have done it with SPARC, Apple have done it with ARM and most recently it looks like ARM's Cortex A76 is joining the league. All these designs look very similar, they are basically variatins on the same archtechure with different front ends.
pabloski 8y ago
Yes it is important for competition. But this gives x86 another century of survival. Seriously, someone kill x86 please!
- TheSpiceIsLife 8y ago
  If you use any complex tool enough you will rapidly come up against its limitations and bizarre design implementations. Is there any reason to believe any other architure that tries to be, approximately, everything for everyone would fair any better?
- krylon 8y ago
  Never underestimate the value of backward compatibility. Any architecture that wants to take a decent swing at replacing x86 will either have to be x86-compatible or do a good job at emulating it accurately and efficiently.
  - lawnchair_larry 8y ago
    No it won’t. ARM has already displaced it pretty heavily and will continue to do so.
    - krylon 8y ago
      Is "displaced" the correct term, though? In mobile devices, ARM has an almost(?)-monopoly indeed, but x86 never was a serious contender in that space to begin with. The same goes for "IoT" devices. In new areas of computing, Intel is just one vendor among many (well, several), and the more the market tends to demand low-power chips, Intel's advantage melts away. In that sense, I agree with you. In HPC, I could see ARM become a serious alternative, because the trend seems to be to delegate the heavy lifting to GPUs, anyway, and the GPU does not care what kind of CPU feeds it, so to speak. But in the traditional desktop area, if you cannot run Windows and the huge number of third-party applications available there, you might as well give up. And to completely "replace" x86/x64, you have to compete in the desktop market as well.

ksec 8y ago

What I don't understand, is how or why this model works "only" in China as it stays within the x86 license boundary. Why hasn't Apple, Microsoft Xbox, Sony PS 4 use this route for their semi custom SoC?

fake-name 8y ago
Presumably because, since they control the whole stack, targeting a different architecture is not a significant hurdle, and therefore they can skip having to license the x86 ISA.
throwaway2048 8y ago
I'm guessing because Intel/AMD/VIA don't want to sell it to them.
MaxBarraclough 8y ago
Xbox One and PS4 use relatively ambitious chips, integrating an AMD multicore x86-64 CPU, with and AMD GPU. This project seems a good deal more humble: as far as I can tell from the article, they're making single-core 32-bit x86 CPUs, and they aren't touching AMD's GPU solutions. I imagine it's far easier to get AMD to agree to sign off the licensing agreement given that it doesn't really compete with them. Also it looks far easier to pull off, so there's less reason to have AMD themselves put the work in.
- caf 8y ago
  The Linux support patch indicates it is equivalent to AMD's family 0x17 (Zen).
  - MaxBarraclough 8y ago
    As aoeusnth1 points out, I was wrong - it is indeed looking to be much like AMD's own multicore x86-64 chips.
- aoeusnth1 8y ago
  Where did you get the idea that these were single core? It said they were using EPYC designs, which are many-core high end server chips (like Xeon).

krob 8y ago

This will definitely be part of the us Trade War going on.

scruffyherder 8y ago

Are they going to hit retail shelves or what? It'll be interesting to see if they do. I was interested in getting one of those Chinese MIPS machines (based on the 3A2000), but they seem to have all but evaporated.

voxadam 8y ago
Whatever happened to Loongson?
- scruffyherder 8y ago
  Don't know. I have yet to actually see anywhere to buy one. It's all email or phone and I've done both from China and Hong Kong and never got a reply.
  - monocasa 8y ago
    They exist; Richard Stallman has one in a laptop.

plumeria 8y ago

Backdoor Inside™

sschueller 8y ago
I don't understand your comment. Are you saying the US would never put a backdoor in a chip?
- pabloski 8y ago
  I think we need a Geneva convention on microelectronics and informatics products. We are growing tired of this spy bullshit by the so-called super powers. They are destroying the information age. We need machines and software we can trust and who don't go around spilling our secrets.
  - orbital-decay 8y ago
    >I think we need a Geneva convention on microelectronics and informatics products. Such convention is not very useful when you can't detect and prove a violation.
  - tzahola 8y ago
    Or you can just buy chips from companies who don't put backdoor in them.
    - e12e 8y ago
      Which would be? I suppose you could run opensparc - but you'd still have to trust the fab..
    - Taniwha 8y ago
      how can you tell?
  - sschueller 8y ago
    Sadly useless if even the US doesn't sign & ratify such a thing. [1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_treaties_unsigned_or_unratified_by_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_treaties_unsigned_or_u...

baybal2 8y ago

Also, It is not true that China never had own from scratch designed "cores." It had not one, but like 4 different families, with one being their own custom ISA (iCube.) I as a person who meets people from Qinghua university group on 1 in every 3 industry events, I can tell. The one and only reason the huge lump of money was dished on yet another "national" chip is because the "national OS" is still is the pirated Win XP from around 2005. And according to opinion of augustly officials, no performance metrics command merit if the chip can't run it. There is one individual from Unigroup who is the sole person responsible for bringing "the national chip" to the MofCom on a golden platter. At around 2010, MofCom announced near one hundred grants available for the chip maker who can make that chip. NuFront was one of contenders (The company's sole purpose originally was to contend for that huge grant.) Their meeting with that guy was very short. They went to him to deliver presentation about the product. Midway, he interrupted them and asked this question: "can it run Windows?," and the next words in their conversation were "no" and "bye"

skissane 8y ago
> the "national OS" is still is the pirated Win XP from around 2005 I wonder why China doesn't adopt a national policy of moving to an OS it can control, such as Linux? (Possibly in conjunction with Wine for backward compatibility, or if they want something more Windows-like, maybe ReactOS.) Whatever limitations an open source OS stack may have, surely with enough funding those limitations could be overcome, and surely the Chinese government can afford to fund that.
- baybal2 8y ago
  They certainly tried. But I can imagine that it all also broke down when "some official" factor kicked it. First builds of red flag linux were copying WinXP "pixel for pixel," most likely just to prevent yet another official like that asking something like "where is the start button?" https://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/02/14/china_shutters_windows_rival_red_flag_linux/ https://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/02/14/china_shutters_wind...

Roritharr 8y ago

Interesting Move. If you base your assumptions on Peter Zeihan and his Book the Absent Superpower, this would basically be China trying to get as much manufacturing out of the US as possible to force it to be a customer of Chinese goods indefinitely and secure access to the US consumers. In this case it obviously has also strategic value, as China can also securely supply his military with "clean" chips. I can only recommend watching one of his talks on YT for a different pov regarding world politics: https://youtu.be/feU7HT0x_qU https://youtu.be/feU7HT0x_qU

curiousgal 8y ago
Dumb question, who comes up with these smart policies/strategies?
- Roritharr 8y ago
  In China, the US or where? In the US the parties have Think Tanks and hordes of analysts covering these topics. From what I heard from people at the WEF in China there's committees that are created to work on those topics, staffed meritocratically.
  - jacquesm 8y ago
    > In the US the parties have Think Tanks and hordes of analysts covering these topics. You wouldn't say so. Most 'think tanks' seem to do what they can to give the party they work for the ammo they need to get the laws passed they desire, it rarely - if every - seems to be based in a genuine desire to move matters forward.
    - fladrif 8y ago
      I seem to be getting the same impression through all the news and 'research' that have come up over the years. I'd love to be proven wrong though.
    - TheSpiceIsLife 8y ago
      Move matters forward in the sense of implementing the party’s preferred ideology. Though it’s a far cry from the highest good of all conceded.

bitwize 8y ago

> But here's where things get tricky. AMD holds a 51 percent stake in HMC, while Tianjin Haiguang Holdings owns 49%. Meanwhile, AMD owns 30% of Hygon and Tianjin Haiguang Holdings owns 70 percent. > HMC owns the x86 IP and ends up producing the chips, which satisfies the AMD and Intel x86 cross-licensing agreements because the IP remains with a company owned primarily by AMD. But AMD provides the IP with the understanding that the company will use it to design its "own products specifically tailored to the needs of the Chinese server market." That requires quite a bit of maneuvering given the restrictions of AMD's x86 cross-licensing agreement with Intel. > To stay within the legal boundaries, HMC licenses the IP to Hygon, which designs the x86 chips and then sells the design back to HMC. > HMC then employs a foundry to fab the end product (likely China Foundries or TSMC). Confusingly, HMC then transfers the chips back to Hygon (the same company that designed them), which then sells the Dhyana processors. Let's call this what it is -- IP laundering.

whazor 8y ago

As far as I know, China does not possess the newest semiconductor machines. Either it will create these chips via TSMC, or they will use a lower resolution and less powerful chips. I wonder if they can make something competitive.

kypro 8y ago
Depends on the price they can produce them at I suppose.
skrebbel 8y ago
I'm sure ASML will happily sign them up as a customer.
- TheArcane 8y ago
  Up until an American company acquires it like they did with NXP and booking.com.
hmottestad 8y ago
From the article: "HMC then employs a foundry to fab the end product (likely China Foundries or TSMC)"
- solarkraft 8y ago
  Would they ever use TSMC?
  - yvdriess 8y ago
    Why not, it's on Chinese soil after all ;)
    - seanmcdirmid 8y ago
      TSMC is a Taiwanese company with a few FABs in Mainland China.

walrus01 8y ago

What motherboards are available for these? Anyone have URLs for manufacturer datasheets, etc? Or are they pin and chipset compatible with existing ryzen boards?

throwaway2048 8y ago

Seems pretty incredible AMD sold the keys to the kingdom for 1/4th the x86 market for 300millionish. I'm sure the shenanegans where they get pushed out of china are going to occur after a few years, just like they happened to tons of tech companies before them after they got raided for IP with joint partnerships... They never had much penetration into China to begin with, maybe they consider it worth it to cut down Intel's influence. Seems super dangerous if china starts exporting the chips however.

spacenick88 8y ago
Afaik they get per unit royalties too
- freyir 8y ago
  We'll see how that works out for them.
- castratikron 8y ago
  I'm sure they pay that. https://www.npr.org/2018/07/06/626683457/judge-orders-chinese-wind-turbine-maker-to-pay-59-million-for-stealing-trade-sec https://www.npr.org/2018/07/06/626683457/judge-orders-chines...
- outworlder 8y ago
  Until China comes up with a completely "unrelated" chip which does not have to pay royalties. Because, you see, it's a completely unrelated design. Even the name will be different. There is prior history on this. Companies used to the level of IP enforcement in the USA are in for a big surprise.
slededit 8y ago
Shows how far AMD has come. They were close to bankruptcy at the time this deal was made. I doubt they would have made the same deal today, but it was life and death issue at the time.

some_account 8y ago

This is really good for the consumers, since the Chinese are free to innovate instead of waiting for Intel. Lately they have been coming out with really good things. The Matebook X Pro is amazing and can easily compete with Dells latest offerings, and Deepin Linux 15.6 has its own very modern user interface that makes it very enjoyable to use. Finally a linux distribution with a good sense of western style and performance, and it comes from China of all places. Its important to be careful of spyware however, but that goes for American software as well. There is plenty of evidence that NSA is spying on everybody, and probably has access to most Americans emails and web habits already.

simonh 8y ago
Well if the US does it too, that's alright then. Caveat, I'm a European (well a Brit, so almost European) and I'm appalled by US and yes British violations of privacy and surveillance overreach. Things like the threats to cripple or ban private use of strong encryption are appallingly damaging and misguided. However nations with an elected government accountable to the people doing this stuff is one thing. We still have the right and mechanisms to protest and these protests have frequently made a real difference. strong encryption of private communications is till legal and threats to it have gone nowhere. The fact that governments from multiple political groups, in multiple countries have looked at this and decided that the benefits to their electorate outweigh the dangers offers at least some comfort. It's at least possible that they are right, although I would prefer much stronger checks and balances. Pervasive active harvesting, analysis, intervention, censorship and subsequent punishments of 'private' communication by a totalitarian state, with the open goal of enforcing ideological obedience is not the same thing, and it's not ok. At all.
- helpme420 8y ago
  Chinks have these kind of behaviours in their culture - it is wrong for us to assume that they are not fine with it.
- candiodari 8y ago
  The issue with your comment is that it's absurd. You are complaining about US overreach, so presumably your basis for judgement should be the situation in the UK. Does the UK do mass-surveillance of it's own and foreign citizens, on UK soil and outside ? Yes [1] Strong encryption of private communications is NOT legal in the UK. You have to give the police access when they request it and you cannot use the rights you have in the US to avoid giving this access [2]. (unless you consider strong encryption stuff where you have to make all keys available to the police, border guard, gchq, foreign intelligence services, and others still strong encryption. I don't) The other huge difference is that the UK refuses to be accountable for their mass surveillance afterwards. In the US a big demand is that there is a paper trail for spying, to the person being spied upon. Granted, this may be buried in something like a phone contract for mass-targeting. When they target you specifically, however, you will be notified (afterwards, if the judge so decides, but can even be beforehand), and failure to do this makes the spying illegal. Furthermore, this gives private individuals and companies the option to sue to have the police/FBI/NSA/DEA/... explain themselves (and more generally the US state). In the UK however: 1) No notification is given to the person being spied upon. The state just does it. 2) There is no recourse. If you were spied upon because a police officer wanted to be your boyfriend and needed to know where your actual boyfried was to beat him up, that's legal. [3] (yes, I realize these guys got fired, however, their actions were ruled legal) 3) If anyone in the UK takes the side of the person being spied upon, whether an internet provider, an application provider (ie. outlook.com/fb/gmail/...), they will be vigorously pursued and punished for that. This is highly illegal. 4) The UK has cooperation treaties (ie. EU treaties, and others) that let police officers in ~70 countries spy on British citizens (I heard that these treaties were used to install a phone tap, yes really, on Angela Merkel's phone. Yes, that Angela Merkel. The utter incompetence is baffling in it's scope. And yes, the guy (an officer) did this as a joke and got fired for it) So to say I don't understand your criticism here massively understates the situation ... Obviously, as a UK citizen you've got some more local problems to sort out before you criticize the US. In reality, the UK/EU is pushing these news articles and blowing up cooperation for EXACTLY the opposite reason : they don't want increased privacy for people, they want to further reduce it. They want the US to honor spying requests without respecting US law. They don't want Facebook to ask "can you explain why this is really necessary" when a police officer is asking for the exact location of EU citizens. They don't want to give reasons, and they certainly don't want the person to be told afterwards (and potentially sue them). They want full FB and instagram chat logs in every divorce case. They want ever single email a person ever sent in every commercial dispute. They want every police force and secret service in Europe to have access to every Europeans every mail, immediately, with zero oversight or tracking, and especially without any paper trail available to their victims. THAT's what Europe is fighting for. THAT's what they're calling "US surveillance overreach". Well, that, and the fact that the US successfully recorded some rather high level conversations between Merkel and Macron and managed to get caught doing it. In other words, they're incompetent, and angry. And of course, that's the US's fault (despite, of course, that Germany was also caught attempting to bug Obama, and caught having successfully bugged several high level officials before getting caught). And of course, they're angry for Trump getting elected (if you don't believe me, watch this [4], and listen to the questions). That's why there is this campaign of "the US is horrible on privacy". There is "no cooperation". But, sadly, the US is the champion of privacy in this particular fight. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_surveillance_in_the_United_Kingdom https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_surveillance_in_the_Unite... [2] https://techcrunch.com/2017/09/25/traveler-who-refused-to-give-device-passwords-to-police-found-guilty-of-obstruction-in-uk-court/ https://techcrunch.com/2017/09/25/traveler-who-refused-to-gi... [3] http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1371833/20-police-officers-dismissed-using-force-spy-neighbours-partners.html http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1371833/20-police-of... [4] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y70LrlzrkNk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y70LrlzrkNk

jlebrech 8y ago

i wonder if they'll make multi socket motherboards. as manufacturers struggle to go smaller they could spread the thermal load over multiple chips.

orbifold 8y ago

I really don't get why the West is gifting all this technology to a competitor. By now it should be clear that in all cases of these joint ventures the only goal is to eventually clone the product. They have ripoffs of high-speed trains, military equipment and so on. I guess this is also how Japan caught up after WWII, but there the US has still ~60000 soldiers on the ground and significant long term ties.

poutrathor 8y ago
From a non US citizens point of view, getting spied on by the giant uncle Sam or by Xi's China makes less and less difference if the current trends keep on : USA retracting on nationalistic beliefs while China keeps opening up.
- tanilama 8y ago
  Blackmail by Xi or by Trump, it is now a choice to make. Can't imagine this like 2 years ago. Funny time to live indeed.
  - zeofig 8y ago
    Give them conflicting information, so when they amalgamate Moloch will be left confused.
  - rakoo 8y ago
    As another non-US citizen, I can tell you this sentiment definitely didn't start with Trump.
- realusername 8y ago
  > USA retracting on nationalistic beliefs while China keeps opening up. I don't see how China is opening up, the situation is even worse than 10 years ago, we used to have an oligarchy of the CCP, now we have a proper dictator instead. People hoped that China would open up while modernising, so far it has not worked at all.

lgvln 8y ago

This is going to be interesting. Such a partnership will avoid another ZTE-like scenario so this is a win for China. However this is probably going to place AMD in the crosshairs of the US administration. Let's see how this turns out for AMD.

infocollector 8y ago
How does this compare to the US Government stopping Intel in 2015? Does this wipe out everything good we have heard from AMD in recent times?

bdz 8y ago

Here is the Linux kernel patch https://patchwork.kernel.org/patch/10455791/ https://patchwork.kernel.org/patch/10455791/

api 8y ago

I have a sense that what happened to Detroit is about to happen to Silicon Valley. Detroit once had some of the highest median salaries (and home values) in the nation. Then Japan came and decimated what had become a fat and lazy domestic auto industry. China could easily do this to American chip makers, removing a key cornerstone of Silicon Valley's tech leadership. Meanwhile a lot of newer innovators in areas like software and custom hardware have already gone elsewhere. People are rationally concluding that the benefits of Silicon Valley are outweighed by its insane cost of living and that those same benefits can be obtained in other ways, so they're doing their work elsewhere. I personally know of several startups that maintain fake Silicon Valley mailing addresses while being located in places like Southern California, Denver, Indianapolis, or Nashville. They keep the address for its silly prestige value since if it says "Palo Alto" on your contact page people who aren't knowledgeable think it means you're cutting edge. Another big benefit of the Bay Area -- namely one of the most interesting cultural environments in the world -- has also been largely priced out and decimated by the local real estate bubble. That eliminates yet another draw. People might pay a lot to live in a fascinating city full of cutting edge culture and interesting people but not to live in a glorified office park. I see a future SV tech scene that's largely hollowed out and dominated by social media, an industry toward which the public is becoming increasingly hostile as they realize it's all about surveillance and mass manipulation. Chips go to China and newer startups go to cities with saner costs of living.

raincom 8y ago
SV has a good weather, which can keep the real estate bubble.
- api 8y ago
  So do loads of other more affordable places.

berbec 8y ago

How long till EYPK chips show up on AliExpress?

DannyB2 8y ago

I wonder if China's chips have something like Intel Management Engine?

noetic_techy 8y ago

Summary: AMD has found a legal loophole to sell out critical x86 chip design IP to the Chinese for a cash infusion of 300+ million. Expect to see knock off copies emerge and AMD ultimately get pushed out of China in favor a local company that has their IP in hand. Their executives are either stupidly naive and in for a major shock, or plain greedy/desperate and willing to sell out the West for 300 million cash. If so then its IP laundering in my opinion. I hope the US gov regulators roast them for this. I plan to avoid their products as much as possible now.