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China Finds Zen: Begins Production Of x86 Processors Based On AMD's IP
Chinese-designed "Dhyana" x86 processors based on AMD's Zen microarchitecture are beginning to surface from Chinese chip producer Hygon. 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.
The new chips are surfacing against the backdrop of the trade war between the US and China that could escalate quickly, likely reinforcing China's long-held opinion that a lack of native processor production could be a strategic liability. Today's wars are won with chips, and their strategic importance certainly isn't lost on those in the halls of power. In fact, the Obama administration blocked Intel from selling Xeon processors to China in 2015 over concerns the chips were fueling the country's nuclear programs, and subsequent actions by the US have largely prevented China from achieving the technical know-how and equipment to develop its own chips through acquisitions and mergers.
That makes it even more surprising that AMD has managed to establish a franchise that allows Chinese processor vendors to develop and sell x86 processors in spite of US regulations and the licensing restrictions with Intel, but now more information is coming to light about how AMD pulled off the feat.
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(Score: 3, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 08 2018, @04:47AM (3 children)
Bullshit. You might have needed mainframe grade hardware and software to do nuclear blast simulations in the 70s. But nowadays the average GPU does the job. Hell, an off-the-top game engine has all the physics code you need. Just apply the ragdoll physics to buildings, ground and trees, import terrain maps, place a few mock buildings and trees, and drop a huge bomb and enjoy the simulation.
Same math.
China could still get its compute needs from AMD, ARM and IBM just fine. So the whole thing was meant to slow down China's cloud services (at the behest of Google and Amazon) and at the expense of Intel's bottom line. And of course, much like Trump's trade war moves, it failed miserably.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 08 2018, @06:23AM (2 children)
That's... that's not what's being simulated. Were you serious? Someone modded you interesting and not funny, though...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 08 2018, @11:20AM (1 child)
Yield, penetration and dissipation figures, as well as the related simulation models and results were the only research results pentagon bothered classifying from being published in research papers. Some raw data was also classified naturally but that's device specific. They released casualty estimates as part of the NATO war games as well as discussed wind and cityscape effects on dissipation post 9/11 referencing internal simulations. But overall the stuff that's being classified is the stuff designed to tell armies were to drop the bombs for maximum damage.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Monday July 09 2018, @06:53AM
> But overall the stuff that's being classified is the stuff designed to tell armies were to drop the bombs for maximum damage.
Did you fail to notice that everyone is talking about new warhead designs, but the big guys stopped having big boom parties to test them?