Qualcomm To Manufacture Custom Chips For Chinese Market (thestack.com)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Stack: Qualcomm president Derek Aberle has suggested that the semiconductor giant is preparing to produce its own custom chips for the Chinese market. [A Wall Street Journal interview with] Aberle revealed that the American company had entered into a joint venture with the local government in Guizhou province to manufacture custom chips starting in the second half of 2016. According to Aberle, the Guizhou government owns 55% of the venture, while Qualcomm owns the remaining 45%. Aberle told the Wall Street Journal that he expects China's server demand to dwarf that of the U.S.. He said of the government-backed venture: "This is really going to be the primary vehicle from which we build our data center business in China. We are actually trying to create the company that is going to be able to win the market here as opposed to just licensing old technology."

Comments

custom chips == government backdoors

[Gravis Zero]

China already gets powerful multi-core ARM chips at dirt cheap prices, so this isn't a matter of saving money. The only logical reason they would be making custom chips (and so soon) is they are modifying an existing chip and adding a hardware backdoor. With hardware backdoors in every server in china, they can control information much easier and identify dissidents.

Re:custom chips == government backdoors

[Hognoxious]

The way things are going, it's quite possible they're removing them for the Chinese market.