News AMD Fires Back at China Chip Accusations in Strongly Worded Statement

[Admin]

AMD is firing back at an explosive report in the Wall Street Journal, titled "How a Big U.S. Chip Maker Gave China the 'Keys to the Kingdom.'

AMD Fires Back at China Chip Accusations in Strongly Worded Statement : Read more

 

[skagon]

"Advanced Micro Devices revived its fortunes through the deal…"
…when you know from the subheading that the article is FUD.

 

[croc]

It must be kept in mind that Rupert Murdoch owns the WSJ...

 

[mrsense]

Any articles on technologies by WSJ are junk.

 

[jasonelmore]

Hark on the WSJ all you want, but at the end of the day AMD gave China the x86 IP over the objections of the US Government. AMD did some really shady stuff to get around America's technology transfer ban and the terms of the x86 agreement. They created a handful of shell companies whose sole purpose was to buy and resell the processors multiple times throughout the manufacturing process in order to skirt both US law and the x86 agreement. By the time processors reached customers, they had been bought and resold by AMD and China's corporations 10 times as to not violate the x86 patent. Without this deal, China would be forced to buy x86 chips from the USA for at least the next 20 years. China was never going to develop a CPU architecture on their own, and open-source alternatives like RISC don't offer near the performance of x86, plus all of the world's software is written for x86 or ARM. x86 was literally the USA's ace in the hole and AMD handed that over for, as it turns out, less than $300 million dollars. China pretty much bought 50 years of microchip technology for less than the costs of a couple of good fighter jets. Madness. And the worst part about it is AMD didn't even need the money. Zen had already turned the company around. AMD should be severely reprimanded over this and be barred from future joint ventures, especially with overseas companies.

 

[jimmysmitty]

Hark on the WSJ all you want, but at the end of the day AMD gave China the x86 IP over the objections of the US Government. AMD did some really shady stuff to get around America's technology transfer ban and the terms of the x86 agreement. They created a handful of shell companies whose sole purpose was to buy and resell the processors multiple times throughout the manufacturing process in order to skirt both US law and the x86 agreement. By the time processors reached customers, they had been bought and resold by AMD and China's corporations 10 times as to not violate the x86 patent. Without this deal, China would be forced to buy x86 chips from the USA for at least the next 20 years. China was never going to develop a CPU architecture on their own, and open-source alternatives like RISC don't offer near the performance of x86, plus all of the world's software is written for x86 or ARM. x86 was literally the USA's ace in the hole and AMD handed that over for, as it turns out, less than $300 million dollars. China pretty much bought 50 years of microchip technology for less than the costs of a couple of good fighter jets. Madness. And the worst part about it is AMD didn't even need the money. Zen had already turned the company around. AMD should be severely reprimanded over this and be barred from future joint ventures, especially with overseas companies.

I would be very surprised if they somehow don't get reprimanded for it. For one they basically gave away Intels IP, sure x86-64 is AMD but it still needs x86 which is solely Intels IP as AMD64 is just an extension on top of x86, and they bypassed the US Governments ban on giving China our technology.

I guess we shall have to wait and see what happens with this case.

 

[koblongata]

It's like dad agreed but then mom came.

 

[ganimoth]

I would be very surprised if they somehow don't get reprimanded for it. For one they basically gave away Intels IP, sure x86-64 is AMD but it still needs x86 which is solely Intels IP as AMD64 is just an extension on top of x86, and they bypassed the US Governments ban on giving China our technology.

I guess we shall have to wait and see what happens with this case.

Are you guys aware about the little fact that chinese already had access to the both x86 and AMD64 for years though another JV with VIA ?

 

[AllanGH]

Interesting how FUD like this is starting, and just before the Ryzen 3 release...

 

[joeblowsmynose]

Interesting how FUD like this is starting, and just before the Ryzen 3 release...

Can you say "Intel Money?"

 

[AllanGH]

LOL....I didn't need to, though.

This has the same flavor of the ms-funded fake articles and reviews--all of it FUD--of the 90's and early 2K years. Greed is a terrible--if not transparent--motivator.

 

[jimmysmitty]

Are you guys aware about the little fact that chinese already had access to the both x86 and AMD64 for years though another JV with VIA ?

Doesn't mean AMD was right to go through with this joint venture.

As well nothing that has come out of that has been any good anyways, VIA hasn't made a decent x86 chip in decades.

LOL....I didn't need to, though.

This has the same flavor of the ms-funded fake articles and reviews--all of it FUD--of the 90's and early 2K years. Greed is a terrible--if not transparent--motivator.

Or it could be a viable issue that some people may want to ignore if they prefer one company. AMD is not perfect and has and will make the wrong choice at times. I think this was one of them.

Does it mean Zen 2 is bad? Nope. But it does show that AMD is like any other company and works towards the bottom line.

 

[AllanGH]

jimmysmitty

Doesn't mean AMD was right to go through with this joint venture.

As well nothing that has come out of that has been any good anyways, VIA hasn't made a decent x86 chip in decades.

Not attributable to me....

 

[jimmysmitty]

Apologies. Haven't had my morning caffeine yet.

 

[AllanGH]

Right there with you on the caffeine deprivation.....'cept mine is NOT ENOUGH YET, instead of none at all.

 

[cryoburner]

The Wall Street Journal has become a garbage clickbait tabloid in recent years full of poorly researched articles. They basically do their best to fabricate sensationalist news rather than report on it. Newspaper advertising revenue has declined to a fraction of what it was over a decade ago, and they are doing their best to remain profitable through whatever means necessary.

...but at the end of the day AMD gave China the x86 IP...

As I understand it, the primary reasoning behind shuffling chips back and forth was to avoid leaking IP. Basically, AMD was supplying the vital parts of the processors without allowing the Chinese companies to get their hands on the low-level technology. Ask yourself, why would AMD want to supply China with the means to directly compete with them in the future?

 

[bit_user]

Without this deal, China would be forced to buy x86 chips from the USA for at least the next 20 years. China was never going to develop a CPU architecture on their own,

This is fantasy land. Huawei already has several generations of ARM-based server CPUs and you can find Chinese processors powering top supercomputers.

They're much further along than you give them credit for, although it must be noted that Huawei is not using custom cores, but rather ARM-designed cores.

x86 was literally the USA's ace in the hole

x86 is no ace. Within 10 years, if not sooner, x86 will already be a second-class citizen of the cloud.

AMD handed that over

Do you know exactly what they handed over? Was it HDL, RTL, net lists, full layouts, etc.? It makes a BIG difference. AMD's rebuttal says they protected their IP, so either they're lying (which, being a publicly-traded company is probably both securities fraud and exposes them lawsuits by their investors) or you don't know what you're talking about.

the worst part about it is AMD didn't even need the money. Zen had already turned the company around.

In early 2016? No. They surely needed this revenue to help get Zen out the door. Otherwise, they might've had to lay off employees and Zen would've been delayed. They were in pretty bad shape, back then, and such a big product launch (new chipset, new desktop CPU, and new server CPU) takes a lot of money. Even after launch, it takes a while for revenues to ramp.

BTW, I didn't like this news, back then. I still don't, but if AMD truly protected their IP, then I accept it as a last resort to get the funds to keep the doors open and the lights on until Zen's launch.

 

[bit_user]

AMD handed that over for, as it turns out, less than $300 million dollars

And I have to ask: how do you feel that Google open-sourced Android... for free???

That's literally the source code - the actual IP.

...just curious.

 

[johnrhenle]

Fake news. China already has x86 chips, courtesy of VIA (as mentioned previously) and the most recent version is reasonable performant.

Late last year, the China-based processor designer Zhaoxin Semiconductor (jointly owned by the Shangai government and VIA Technologies, another semiconductor corporation) promised its upcoming octa-core CPUs based on the 16nm node from TSMC would be able to match Intel's quad-core i5 processors, and today is that day: the newly-announced KX-6000 CPUs are said to deliver performance on par with the Core i5-7400, yet supposedly pull off the feat at a mere 3 GHz. And they support Windows.

 

[King_V]

Hark on the WSJ all you want, but at the end of the day AMD gave China the x86 IP over the objections of the US Government.

(other stuff snipped, not relevant and didn't see any citations)

So, you're saying that this is a complete fabrication on AMD's part?

Starting in 2015, AMD diligently and proactively briefed the Department of Defense, the Department of Commerce and multiple other agencies within the U.S. Government before entering into the joint ventures. AMD received no objections whatsoever from any agency to the formation of the joint ventures or to the transfer of technology – technology which was of lower performance than other commercially available processors. In fact, prior to the formation of the joint ventures and the transfer of technology, the Department of Commerce notified AMD that the technology proposed was not restricted or otherwise prohibited from being transferred. Given this clear feedback, AMD moved ahead with the joint ventures.

If so, then I'm sure you have documentation somewhere that you can link to where the DoD and DoC have come out and said "No way, that's BS, never happened" or words to that effect?

 

[jimmysmitty]

Fake news. China already has x86 chips, courtesy of VIA (as mentioned previously) and the most recent version is reasonable performant.

Late last year, the China-based processor designer Zhaoxin Semiconductor (jointly owned by the Shangai government and VIA Technologies, another semiconductor corporation) promised its upcoming octa-core CPUs based on the 16nm node from TSMC would be able to match Intel's quad-core i5 processors, and today is that day: the newly-announced KX-6000 CPUs are said to deliver performance on par with the Core i5-7400, yet supposedly pull off the feat at a mere 3 GHz. And they support Windows.

Except that is not even true. In Single Threaded the i5 7400 easily beats the KX-6840 at the same clock speeds:

https://browser.geekbench.com/geekbench3/compare/8788789?baseline=8658463

And it matches it in multicore. Considering that the i5 is 4 cores/4 threads (and OLD) vs 8 cores/8 threads that's pretty sad and misleading.

 

[artk2219]

Except that is not even true. In Single Threaded the i5 7400 easily beats the KX-6840 at the same clock speeds:

https://browser.geekbench.com/geekbench3/compare/8788789?baseline=8658463

And it matches it in multicore. Considering that the i5 is 4 cores/4 threads (and OLD) vs 8 cores/8 threads that's pretty sad and misleading.

Even if its only a little over 50% of the single threaded performance, that still puts it on par with Phenom II, FX, Core 2, and not far behind the original nehalem. Granted those are all old architectures, they're all still more than good enough to do general work today. I'd actually love for a comparison against an FX 8300, or a more direct clock to clock comparison against an FX 8120. Just not using Geekbench, which is unfortunately not the most reliable benchmark, also its only one benchmark, it'd be nice to have a slew of them.