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).
Facebook
Twitter
Instagram