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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.
.....even relevant anymore?
Most general computing tasks are being overtaken by ARM (iPhones. iPads. Android devices, etc).
For the moment x86 has a place in high end desktops and servers however...they will, IMHO, be supplanted by ARM processors. Within a few generations they will be powerful enough to run even the most demanding CAD, photo editing, video editing software....at acceptable performances. Common , off the shelf software is not keeping up with hardware advancements and it will not be long before we start seeing the first ARM based servers (actually I think they already exist). Once that happens, unless some new unforeseen development in computing comes along, that will be the final nail in the coffin for x86.
Intel will try to muscle, intimidate, vendors in using it's Atom and Celeron lines, and maybe even drop it's prices but at the end of the day, extinction will be unavoidable...... and so the Wintel oligopoly will end as ingloriously as it started.
Most general purpose computing tasks (email, facebook, browsing, etc.) are done on ARM CPUs these days.
x86 still has a spot in hight end desktop and servers, for now. IMHO, within a few generation, ARM processors will be good enough to run even the most demanding CAD, photo editing, video software at an acceptable performance. Off the shelf software is not keeping pace with hardware advances. At some point, enough software will have been recompiled to justify dropping x86 from servers and that will be that, the Wintel duopoly finally defeated.
Sure Intel will likely drop Celeron and Atom CPUs prices to compete but it will probably be too late by then.
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.
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.
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.
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...
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.
I wonder what their rates are for allowing a backdoor? Probably cheaper than Intel's.
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).
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...
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.