Slashdot Mirror
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.
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.
Yeah, AMD's leadership seems to be too stupid these days to learn anything from Qualcomm's plight...
Intel chips are obsolete.. AMD's fused cpu/gpu architecture with hbm/hbm2, HSA, asynch shaders new generation gpu's, etc..etc..etc.. is going to bleed Intel big time..
Intel was able to put a lot of money to make its chips fast.. but for a high price.. which morons always payed the huge profit slice.. Now AMD can make faster chips for a fraction of the price.. now that AMD has 14 nm, 16 nm, and son 7nm chip foundry technology..
I bought at $1.78, and I will retire in 5 years with the profit I already started making.. while my Intel stock has always been around the $20.00 to for the first time lately $30.00... A very lack laster performance compared to APPLE, Qualcom, etc..
Now it is amd turn.. I'l sit and relax seing my AMD go 10x plus over the next years...
Todays AMD is not the AMD from yesterday.. noe it has all the teeth, while bully Intel is years behind AMD's latest architectures..
Intel is just a cpu company, it was never able to build a high end gpu because it does not have high end gpu technology..remember Intels Larrabbee gpu fiasco..?
AMD has a lot of new surprises to come..
... or any of a hundred other companies. It's funny how after three years the Chinese company dissolves the joint venture, yet continues to make the same product. From chips, to cars (ask Chevrolet), to "Mig" Fighter Jets, I'm not sure I've ever heard of one of these JVs that actually worked out for the non-Chinese party. At this point, even though I don't like victim blaming, you deserve to get hosed when you supply the intellectual property into one of these deals.
Well, the positive is that this technology goes obsolete pretty quickly, though maybe a little slower in recent years than the previous 20
"AMD has a lot of new surprises to come.."
I have been hearing this since Bulldozer. AMD consistently over-promises and under-delivers. Until AMD actually ships this stuff, its vapor and not much more. I would like to see AMD succeed, but they actually have to get a compelling product out the door first.
"Intel is just a cpu company'
,br> And SSDs, NICs, wireless solutions, chipsets. They also make barebone PCs called NUCs.
Good-bye
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.
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.
A lot of people prefer PCs. Its user base is not shrinking.l the problem is people are replacing PCs far less often than they used to. This creates the illusion that its shrinking. Its not. But its enough of a problem to create a hit on the bottom line of the CPU companies.
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.
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.
They ran into technical problems that prevented them from matching pace with Intel and when Apple made the switch, what incentive did they have to continue down that road?
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
The PowerPC\Power ISA merged when the POWER4 was released in 2001, so the intent was always for the PowerPC variant to die off at that point. If Apple continued down the PowerPC route instead of the switch to x86/x64 they'd likely be using one the POWER chips instead of a custom PowerPC.
The resulting POWER ISA is still going strong and IBM currently licenses the design to a number of different companies including Tundra Semiconductor, HCL Enterprise, Culturecom, P.A. Semi, Sony, Honeywell, Toshiba and Cray.
It was less technical reasons and more that they were arguing with IBM over chip pricing/manufacturing quantities and Intel swooped in and made them an offer they couldn't refuse.
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...