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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: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 09 2018, @06:09AM
I have to wonder what's up with the Chinese here. As of this writing there is only one Chinese scientific* Nobel laureate (Tu Youyou, Medicine 2015). There are two other laureates who had Chinese citizenship at the time they did the work which led to their prizes: Chen-Ning Yang and Tsung-Dao Lee. However, when they did the work which won them the 1957 Physics prize they were both in the United States (Yang did not return to China until 2015, and Lee was naturalised an American citizen in 1962). Two other Nobel laureates were once Chinese nationals, but again neither of them did their prize-winning work when they were still in China. Daniel C. Tsui moved to the United States in 1958 and did his work that won him the 1998 Physics Prize in the 1980s, and Charles K. Kao did the work which won him the 2009 Physics Prize in the 1960s while he was working in England. So that leaves only Tu Youyou as the sole Chinese Nobel Prize winner who did all the prize-winning work under the auspices of China. So it's clearly not a question of race, but more one of society. There is something badly wrong with the scientific establishment in China that is responsible for their paltry results thus far. It's not just a matter of their form of government either: the Soviet Union still somehow managed at least eight scientific Nobel laureates with a government every bit as repressive as China's had ever been. Probably more the priorities of their government and society.
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* Specifically excluding non-scientific prizes like Peace or Literature