China Begins Production Of x86 Processors Based On AMD's IP (tomshardware.com)

Chinese-designed "Dhyana" x86 processors based on AMD's Zen microarchitecture are beginning to surface from Chinese chip producer Hygon. From a report: The processors come as the fruit of AMD's x86 IP licensing agreements with its China-based partners and break the decades-long stranglehold on x86 held by the triumvirate of Intel, AMD and VIA Technologies. Details are also emerging that outline how AMD has managed to stay within the boundaries of the x86 licensing agreements but still allow Chinese-controlled interests to design and sell processors based on the Zen design.

AMD's official statements indicate the company does not sell its final chip designs to its China-based partners. Instead, AMD allows them to design their own processors tailored for the Chinese server market. But the China-produced Hygon "Dhyana" processors are so similar to AMD's EPYC processors that Linux kernel developers have listed vendor IDs and family series numbers as the only difference. In fact, Linux maintainers have simply ported over the EPYC support codes to the Dhyana processor and note that they have successfully run the same patches on AMD's EPYC processors, implying there is little to no differentiation between the chips.

Comments

More likely AMD is f'd

[drnb]

Intel is fucked as they not even ok for china to copy them.

More likely AMD is f'd if they felt desperate enough to engage in this short term benefit deal with long term negative consequences.

Re:More likely AMD is f'd

[Kjella]

They get 50% of the revenue from these chips, and they have the potential to get close to 100% marketshare in China once the Chinese government forces Chinese companies to use Chinese made processors.

Not how China rolls. Their typical pattern is:
1. Buy the full service product, the Chinese learn to use it.
2. Buy the product, the Chinese learn to operate/maintain it.
3. License the product, the Chinese learn to manufacture it.
4. Watch a Chinese clone take over your market.

Though the latter seems plausible though, anyone care to guess if those Chinese "special needs" are backdoors for the government? Then it would make sense that there's no user-visible changes...

Re:More likely AMD is f'd

[Anonymous Coward]

I doubt AMD's lawyers are so dumb that they wouldn't license the product in such a way, that they get paid per each chip manufactured and sold. Therefore it doesn't matter what profit Hygon makes on the product. There may be issues with Hygon falsifying ledgers on the quantity of chips made, but so long as AMD actually has access to the factories, they should be able to figure out if they are getting cheated, and take their partners to court.

AMD also if they had a good lawyer would have made sure that only certain foundries could produce the chips. As much as people say that IP laws don't work in China, they are clearly wrong. If you have a good contract, a Chinese court will find for the plaintiff. Most of the people who got screwed had crappy contracts, and didn't even get a Chinese lawyer to look over the contract and do due diligence.

Re:Triumvirate?!

[Tablizer]

bigger question is really if x86 should be the basis for a new processor initiative

China may be hedging its bets by investing in both kinds of CPUs: x86 and ARM.

Some argue x86 is dying, but x86 has more server-centric features than ARM, and is thus is still popular for server farms. (At least the x86 server features are more mature.)

I wonder if GPU's will overtake both of these, or at least push x86 and ARM into being mostly coordinators. Perhaps the market will shift to specialized chip-sets for AI, databases, graphics, etc., and x86 or ARM will mostly function as process coordinators which dish out specific tasks to specialized CPUs.

Re:China Finds Begins Production...

[ArchieBunker]

I don't care what intelligence the Chinese government collects on me. Uncle Sam is a different story.