News China Loses Zen: AMD Halts Technology Transfers of x86 IP

[PaulAlcorn]

AMD CEO Lisa Su tells us that the company is halting further technology transfers of its x86 IP to China-based companies.

China Loses Zen: AMD Halts Technology Transfers of x86 IP : Read more

 

[jeremyj_83]

"That means that AMD's chip-producing joint venture in China will be confined to the Zen architecture that debuted in first-gen Ryzen and EPYC Milan processors"
I think that should be Naples not Milan since Milan comes out after Rome.

 

[justin.m.beauvais]

Well, I guess THATIC will just have to make do with Zen. I feel like this has less to do with trade war issues and more to do with the way the original agreement was penned. The last thing AMD probably wants is to have to deal with the kind of deal Intel made with them when Intel licensed x86 to AMD for early CPU production, then Intel tried to sue them for producing 486 processors under the x86 licence saying that they had only licensed x86 for the production of earlier model CPUs. So, AMD must have made it part of the deal that THATIC would only get Zen out of the deal, and not future iterations. Though, it doesn't feel like THAT is what the article is saying. This article makes it sound like AMD made some kind of deal in perpetuity... which is not a shrewd business deal at all and AMD would have been out of their gourd to do... and has halted the deal to comply with... nothing? The trade war is a trade, espionage, and technology theft issue, not an issue with properly purchased rights. I mean, other news outlets are acting like Huawei was banned because of their success and not their ties to the CCP or possible security issues.

 

[PaulAlcorn]

"That means that AMD's chip-producing joint venture in China will be confined to the Zen architecture that debuted in first-gen Ryzen and EPYC Milan processors"
I think that should be Naples not Milan since Milan comes out after Rome.

OOps...good catch. Fixed.

 

[thegriff]

Well, I guess THATIC will just have to make do with Zen. I feel like this has less to do with trade war issues and more to do with the way the original agreement was penned. The last thing AMD probably wants is to have to deal with the kind of deal Intel made with them when Intel licensed x86 to AMD for early CPU production, then Intel tried to sue them for producing 486 processors under the x86 licence saying that they had only licensed x86 for the production of earlier model CPUs. So, AMD must have made it part of the deal that THATIC would only get Zen out of the deal, and not future iterations. Though, it doesn't feel like THAT is what the article is saying. This article makes it sound like AMD made some kind of deal in perpetuity... which is not a shrewd business deal at all and AMD would have been out of their gourd to do... and has halted the deal to comply with... nothing? The trade war is a trade, espionage, and technology theft issue, not an issue with properly purchased rights. I mean, other news outlets are acting like Huawei was banned because of their success and not their ties to the CCP or possible security issues.

Do you really believe THATIC will limit it self to Zen, now that it has obtained some of the skills needed and valuable information/microcode/arch. they will build from there. It's the same as providing the keys to the house to the crooked neighbor.

 

[justin.m.beauvais]

Do you really believe THATIC will limit it self to Zen, now that it has obtained some of the skills needed and valuable information/microcode/arch. they will build from there. It's the same as providing the keys to the house to the crooked neighbor.

Sure, there are some enhancements that can be made to Zen, but they won't be able to reach Zen 2 levels of performance without finding someone who can manufacture at 7nm. There are woefully few fabs that actually can. An established Chinese fab, even if they stole the fab process for 7nm, wouldn't easily be able to make it work. As Intel is finding out, there are a million wrong ways to fab something 10nm or smaller. If China really wants to catch up they are going to have to invade Taiwan and be very careful to not destroy the fabs.

That said, the people on the planet who are literate in CPU architecture enough to improve a design, let alone build one from scratch, are incredibly few and far between. This is on par with giving someone who builds muskets the plans to a Springfield M1903 rifle and fearing they are going to start building M-16s. Sure, they can get there, but it is going to take some time. So... China is stuck with Zen, and if they are smart they will not try to irritate ARM, AMD, or Intel. There may be a time in the future where they need chip designers again.

 

[ElectrO_90]

Do you really believe THATIC will limit it self to Zen, now that it has obtained some of the skills needed and valuable information/microcode/arch. they will build from there. It's the same as providing the keys to the house to the crooked neighbor.

Yes of course, because no one in the West at all would ever try and break into the code and control their computer would they...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vault_7

 

[tennis2]

China doesn't give a rip about stealing IP (or breaking contracts), so until they can follow the rules of the rest of the world, they'll continue to get this treatment in every market. I'm surprised AMD gave them as much access as they did.
Either:

1. Money is the great motivator
2. AMD was unaware of the mess they were getting themselves into

 

[thegriff]

Sure, there are some enhancements that can be made to Zen, but they won't be able to reach Zen 2 levels of performance without finding someone who can manufacture at 7nm. There are woefully few fabs that actually can. An established Chinese fab, even if they stole the fab process for 7nm, wouldn't easily be able to make it work. As Intel is finding out, there are a million wrong ways to fab something 10nm or smaller. If China really wants to catch up they are going to have to invade Taiwan and be very careful to not destroy the fabs.

That said, the people on the planet who are literate in CPU architecture enough to improve a design, let alone build one from scratch, are incredibly few and far between. This is on par with giving someone who builds muskets the plans to a Springfield M1903 rifle and fearing they are going to start building M-16s. Sure, they can get there, but it is going to take some time. So... China is stuck with Zen, and if they are smart they will not try to irritate ARM, AMD, or Intel. There may be a time in the future where they need chip designers again.

Thanks, didn't take that into account.

 

[littleleo]

China probably copied enough for them to release their own Zen 2 version.

 

[ginthegit]

Why are all these posts assuming that all Chinese are thieves, and assuming that most of the people are incapable of the design of processors.
Note that I am an Electronics Engineer and know complex digital design very well. All the processors are made up of simple digital architectures and only the optimizations and changes to the standard architecture are difficult.
Programs like Proteus and such like are used to auto-place standard modules of the ASIC design packages, and these tend to be drag and drop interfaces that reroute connections automatically. So making steps from Zen+ to Zen2 are mainly increases in modules of Cache and registers size increase etc, and these afforded due to the use of shrunk transistor size. We know that the Interconnect has changed, so they look at the modlue and redesign the module on a lower level to reduce stages to increase IPS and throughput.
The rest of the optimizations are simple, you just have to choose the right modules and place them in the right place. You guys love to over-complicate things when you don't understand them.
Most of the time the engineers discuss what modules can be added and subtracted to increase speed and decrease size, and test and retest via Virtual testing a rough improvement on digression, increased speed or efficiency gains. Most of the hard work of the module design that you drag and drop in is already done and simple. It is those that create new modules from scratch that are really the genius. They work with massive karnaugh maps etc. The other geniuses are those boffins that keep figuring out new materials and orientations of materials to make smaller transistors and drop with Quantum noise that happens in each and every one of them.
Back to China stealing tech... Bah! as if Intel and AMD have not been sued for intelectual property theft, then you could just blame the Chinese for the dinosaus and the Armenian genocide. China is no worse in that respect. The worst part of the problem is that we get so much manufactured in China rather than within our own borders, so We (like AMD) give them the tech and they make it for us... Then we accuse them of stealing..... The reality really is... we treat them like slaves (or buy products that have been made by slaves) and expect them to take it lying down.
If China really was stealing like we suggest,, they would hire a chip designer for silly money and get him to start the deluge of trade secrets. If we isolate china... like Russia... we risk forcing them to use their population to replace first world tech research. Russia has their own chip now, and our western governments hate it. We cannot spy on them, because unlike Intel who build in NSA sponsored spy tech, they don't... yet strangly we accuse them of what our countries are doing out in the open (note that APPLE refused to build in backdoors).

 

[jasonelmore]

AMD shouldn't have transferred the x86 technology in the first place. Greedy corps are giving away all of the US's technological advantages to China for a quick buck. China requires US corps to agree to these 50/50 ventures in order to access the Chinese market because they want to control everything, down to what their citizens eat for breakfast. All these 50/50 ventures are doing is allowing China to have their cake and eat it too. China needs to reform and provide its citizens with more freedom and access to unbiased information. Freedom breeds innovation. Prosperity without freedom is just another form of poverty.