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A New AMD Licensing Deal Could Create More x86 Rivals For Intel (pcworld.com)
angry tapir quotes a report from PCWorld: AMD has announced a plan to license the design of its top-of-the-line server processor to a newly formed Chinese company, creating a brand-new rival for Intel. AMD is licensing its x86 processor and system-on-chip technology to a company called THATIC (Tianjin Haiguang Advanced Technology Investment Co. Ltd.), a joint venture between AMD and a consortium of public and private Chinese companies. AMD is providing all the technology needed for THATIC to make a server chip, including the CPUs, interconnects and controllers. THATIC will be able to make variants of the x86 chips for different types of servers. AMD is much smaller than Intel, and licensing offers it an easy way to expand the installed base of AMD technology. The resource-strapped company will also generate licensing revenue in the process, said Jim McGregor, principal analyst at Tirias Research.
... that AMD would be licensing Zen to a company in the country where Zen (buddhism) was founded.
The resource-strapped company will also generate licensing revenue in the process... until it suddenly doesn't.
Perhaps this leads to being able to buy sub-Intel-level but still adequate x86 processors for $12.99 in a few years on alibaba?
Intel has fabs in China, but last I heard, only for chipsets, not the CPU, which they were trying to keep out of the hands of China for obvious reasons.
Historically top of the line desktop processor tech is considered munitions and not exportable to places like China. What changed?
I think you underestimate just how much I just dont care.
They're still making shitty and inferior AMD chips. I would never buy one. I'd rather have an old hand-me-down Intel chip any day.
In other news for AMD today, they released their Q1 results with 100M net loss.
I didn't read the article, so maybe I'm missing something, but isn't x86 more or less obsolete? To my knowledge, servers abandoned it before PCs, and I haven't seen anything that was 32-bit sold in a store in ages.
I'm definitely not doing much of those tasks on ARM CPU's. X86 isn't going away any time soon. ARM simply sucks for many tasks still. And when I looked for a cheap PC to do simple tasks, I still looked for an Intel, not an ARM computer.
Giving away the secret sauce for few hundred million to a quasi state Chinese venture who will eventually rob you blind seems like a desperate gasp of a long has been trying to stay afloat.
When you can't beat them, China them.
Intel has an x86 smartphone CPU. x86 is a huge server platform. PCs are not going anywhere, people are just replacing their PCs every 7 rather than 3 years. This creates the illusion that the PC market is shrinking. its not. Smartphones are hellish when you want to do any real work. Not many want to do their taxes on a smartphone.
Seriously, that will be the end of AMD in no time flat.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
With Intel laying people off and vowing to concentrate on the server market, wouldn't AMD be better off going after what's left of the desktop market? It's shrinking to be sure, but I think there's still a lot of meat on those bones, especially now that Intel won't be vying so hard for market share in that space. It would probably be a safer bet than handing over their IP to the Chinese.
'The Economy' is a giant Ponzi scheme whose most pitiable suckers are the youngest among us and the yet-unborn.
Then you must not own a smartphone or tablet (or smart tv, set top box, etc etc etc). Or if you do, you barely touch them. (Or there is the unlikely possibility that you happen own a phone one of the 5% of smartphones that do not have an ARM CPU).
Also, I did not say ARM based computers are the norm today. I am saying they will be in the not so distant future. (Quick FYI: there where some netbooks produced to compete against Atom a few years back).
However, the more ubiquitous they become, economies of scale should kick in overdrive and make them the cheapest option by far. Intel and AMD have both failed to dominate the mobile market, and this will come and bite them in the ass further down the line (actually I think it has already started).
I don't see anyone realising this here (perhaps because the commenters have not done business selling into China): this is about creating a local source for Chinese customers to buy from, in order to 1) better compete with (non locally owned and controlled) Intel and 2) level (somewhat) the field against home grown products...
Email and Web doesn't count as computing you twatnozzle
Often x86 is used to mean any processor with an ISA descended from the original 8086, including modern 64-bit CPUs. So they mean AMD is licensing their x86-64 (or x64 or AMD64, whichever way you like to put it) technology which is not as powerful as Intel's, but is still fully current in terms of ISA. They specifically mention AMD's "Zen" processor which is the new 64-bit architecture expected to release this year.
Just what we need, a processor backdoored by the Chinese. I wonder if they'll let the NSA use it?
Just as a point their server and 'high end' desktop chips are approximately 3 years out of date, the last refresh was late 2013?
Their laptop and low-end SoC desktop parts have gotten updates in the interim, as have their gpus, which makes that current loss bad, but not as terrible as one would expect.
That said... Short of them putting out a new chip this year capable of smashing Intel's dominance and drumming up upgraders from their current 'fan ranks' I can't see how it will pull them out of this nosedive. I know I personally will not be buying any of their hardware that requires signed firmware/binary blobs to operate which is anything newer than AM3+/C32/G34. Having burned their customer base on the 'open source freedom' that would otherwise differentiate them from Intel, and their lackluster performance/reliability which Intel/Nvidia fanboys rightfully denigrate turning this ship around into a success seems about as unlikely as the Titanic's history being rewritten to have avoided an iceberg. Sure it might happen, in another reality, but in this one it's still sinking with most hands aboard.
My tablet has an Intel Atom in it. I hardly use it though.
I'm starting to think GNU is the problem with "GNU/Linux" these days.
Actually tried to do some work on a smartphone that connected to a screen through MHL and a bluetooth keyboard/mouse. It was by far not as good as a desktop that was designed for such things, but it was not hellish either.
You're funny. All PCs, all Macs, almost all servers, and all game consoles (maybe except some Nintendo weirdness) are using x64 now. x64 has wiped out PowerPC and MIPS completely now. If it plugs into the wall, it's using x64. If you carry it with you, it's using ARM. The markets are sewn up, don't expect to see either side break significantly into the other market.
ARM based servers
LOL. Don't get me wrong, I love ARM, I paid a lot of money for the very first ARM machine nearly 20 years ago, but they are nowhere in the server market and they have a bunch of barriers to jump before they reach parity. I mean, yeah, they're a thing, just a x64-based phones are a thing, but they're not a *big* thing, they're a niche thing, and thus will they remain.
that will be the final nail in the coffin for x86
Oh, x86 is dead. Make no mistake about that. But it was killed by x64, not ARM.
the Wintel oligopoly will end as ingloriously as it started.
Ah, I see, this is all wishful thinking. Mmm, nice dream, but ...
I wonder what their rates are for allowing a backdoor? Probably cheaper than Intel's.
A great deal of people have no idea how to use PC. That's why apps are broadening. They are taking the functionality to where the users are. These masses are not "missing out" on, say, using a practical spreadsheet on a PC, because they don't know how to use spreadsheets anyway. (And about half of Americans, at least, cannot do algebra. Source=first 31 years of my life.)
nobody outside of china is going to want these chips.. even if amd was able to sublicense intel tech needed (it takes patents from BOTH amd AND intel to create an 'x86' or 'amd64' processor).
Mine too. I use it all the time when I don't need to type too much.
Peter predicted that you would "deliberately forget" creation 2000 years ago...
China is investing, with zero expectation on ROI, in semiconductors under the guise of National Security according to the US Dept of Commerce. See http://electronicspurchasingst...
There are rumors out there that this could be the last generation of game consoles as we know them (gaming is shifting to mobile, and for group/family gaming set top boxes like Apple TV and Steam boxes are starting to gain market share). A lot of AAA studios are in financial trouble. Nintendo has said they will stop releasing consoles and has started to shift everything to mobile.
As for everything else, with the growing irrelevance of the OS for the average user (everything is slowly being shifted to the browser with cloud apps/SaaS), the x64 will lose out in the long run, due to cost. Think about it for a second: if in a few years time ARM processors are good enough to run all the applications the average user needs at a lower price point, all while being more power efficient while you are at it, why pay a premium for a x64 processor?
And power efficiency is a huuuge factor for cloud service providers, probably will eventually outweigh the cost of rewriting all code to run on ARM. And if not, it will be good enough to emulate x64 (albeit with a performance penalty of course). Assuming 2 processors with equal FLOPS, ARM will always be more power efficient due to it's use of RISC architecture. They are only a few generations away where it's processing power will be good enough. Also economies of scale will kick in overdrive to further reduce their costs as they keep gaining market share (They are already in 60% of all mobile devices and still growing).
And if you think I am making this stuff up, here an interesting snippet from Wikipedia to show I am not the only one who thinks the processor market is heading in this direction:
"With Microsoft's ARM-based Windows 8 OS, market research firm IHS predicted that in 2015 23% of all the PCs in the world will use ARM processors.[110]
In May 2012, Dell announced the Copper platform, a server based on Marvell’s ARM powered devices."
Will the x64 platform disappear tomorrow? Of course not. But unless some unforeseen magical new development comes along that changes the paradigm, it is on the path of demise. It will never disappear completely, probably survive in some niche market, a shadow of it's formal glory.
Speculation on the possibility of deminishing returns in future cannot and should not drive this policy decision decision.
Anyone who doesn't wholeheartedly applaud this decision on any but financial grounds (has AMD obtained a a good price for its licenses ?) has left the Path of True Capitalism. Be told.