China Begins Production Of x86 Processors Based On AMD's IP (tomshardware.com) 189
Chinese-designed "Dhyana" x86 processors based on AMD's Zen microarchitecture are beginning to surface from Chinese chip producer Hygon. From a report: 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.
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.
Triumvirate?! (Score:4, Interesting)
Does Via Technologies still exist?
I guess the bigger question is really if x86 should be the basis for a new processor initiative from China.
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I'm guessing that they still need PCs, which they then preload w/ whichever pirated version of Windows is popular w/ their base. As for Via, no idea, but that would beg the question of who inherited the Cyrix/Centaur IP
Re:Triumvirate?! (Score:4, Informative)
As for Via, no idea, but that would raise the question of who inherited the Cyrix/Centaur IP
FTFY. It seems they continue to sell their CPUs, though these designs and processes don't look exactly new. https://www.viatech.com/en/sil... [viatech.com]
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As for Via, no idea, but that would raise the question of who inherited the Cyrix/Centaur IP
FTFY. It seems they continue to sell their CPUs, though these designs and processes don't look exactly new. https://www.viatech.com/en/sil... [viatech.com]
fuck off. does it make your pecker a little longer and wider if you correct someone's mistakes in a slashdot post? i bet your wife and/or husband wishes it did.
The basis of rational discourse is for people to (calmly) correct mistakes where they find them.
Otherwise, you descend into a mess where any non-factual statement is as valid as any other.
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The latest iteration is part of a joint venture between the Shanghai government in mainland China and the Taiwanese VIA: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zhaoxin
They still come out with interesting new chips, but are rarely seen in the west.
Re: Triumvirate?! (Score:2)
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Although an 80486 on a modern process could have a blazing fast clock, it wouldn't be effective speed competition for a modern processor due to small cache and poor instructions-per-clock. For most programs, memory bandwidth would be a limiting factor.
Optimized for efficiency at a moderate clock speed, it would be an interesting product, but probably not competitive against a system-on-chip.
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China may be hedging its bets by investing in both kinds of CPUs: x86 and ARM.
Some argue x86 is dying, but x86 has more server-centric features than ARM, and is thus is still popular for server farms. (At least the x86 server features are more mature.)
I wonder if GPU's will overtake both of these, or at least push x86 and ARM into being mostly coordinators. Perhaps the market will shift to specialized chip-sets for AI, databa
What "server-centric features"? Mfg elsewhere? (Score:2)
Other thoughts: What will happen in the future? If most manufacturing is done in China, will the U.S. become a poorer country?
Re: What "server-centric features"? Mfg elsewhere? (Score:3)
When it comes to Xeon, the various cache levels are higher per core.
Also you can expand the system to dual, 4x or 8x processor packages, allocate way more memory, have more PCIe lanes to drive high volume IO, etc etc.... Though those aren't all x86, just the server side, which is why they dominate there.
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I wonder if GPU's will overtake both of these, or at least push x86 and ARM into being mostly coordinators.
GPUs will not necessarily do this but specialized function units in some form will. This fits with the whole dark silicon [wikipedia.org] thing.
Perhaps the market will shift to specialized chip-sets for AI, databases, graphics, etc., and x86 or ARM will mostly function as process coordinators which dish out specific tasks to specialized CPUs.
This has already happened where dedicated hardware offers a performance advantage however Amdahl's law [wikipedia.org] means that high single thread performance does not become less important.
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Re:Triumvirate?! (Score:5, Interesting)
x86 turned out to be good even though it's crap, at least for high performance applications.
People thought that RISC was the way forward for performance, because you could make simpler hardware that would allow higher clock frequencies and more parallelism. But it turned out that you could use CISC instruction sets like x86 as an intermediate language that you recompiled on the fly, optimizing for each specific CPU and even the other threads executing in parallel in a way that no compiler ever could.
So for performance x86 is great, even if it's not really what x86 CPUs actually execute internally. For power consumption RISC is much better, as we have seen with ARM.
Of course all this is talking generally, for specific applications the answer might differ.
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Performance and efficiency are irrelevant. Which one hast the best code of conduct?
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Well x86 assembly is defined by the UNCHR as a form of torture, so...
Find out! (Score:2)
Does Via Technologies still exist?
Does the google search engine still exist?
I guess the bigger question is really if x86 should be the basis for a new processor initiative from China.
Why not? They copy pretty much everything else so why stop now?
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haha, "there are three (and growing) number of companies making this thing" .
"oh goody, I get to use the word triumvirate!"
Pfff, the truth is that other companies can make x86-64 compatible chips. Soon five at least will be making them.
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Yes. They're producing processors with the Chinese government.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Intel is fucked as they not even ok for china copy (Score:2)
Intel is fucked as they not even ok for china to copy them.
More likely AMD is f'd (Score:4, Insightful)
Intel is fucked as they not even ok for china to copy them.
More likely AMD is f'd if they felt desperate enough to engage in this short term benefit deal with long term negative consequences.
Nope, AMD *was* f'd (Score:2)
AMD was f'd, so they mortgaged the future with this deal. They got $250M from this deal, which let them ship Ryzen in a timely manner. They may regret it later, but without the cash infusion they wouldn't have had a future to regret.
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Until they don't (Score:5, Interesting)
Many US companies have partnered with Chinese companies and it works great for a couple of years, until the Chinese company no longer needs anything from the US company. Once they get all the information they need, they have no reason to send any payments, or anything else, to the US company.
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For IP that is not changing, you are correct. But so long as AMD continues to design new processors, any partners in China will continue to abide by whatever contract they have negotiated. To violate the contract would put the company at risk of losing access to future designs. This is a "goose that laid the golden egg" type scenario. If anything, the fact that they never bothered to make any changes to the CPU design is a good sign for AMD.
It was a good move by AMD because it will guarantee them a m
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Are they going to spin off and begin creating x86 compatible processors, completely neglecting patents?
Yes, and what are you going to do to stop them?
A single change and your x86 software becomes a buggy mess, I'd like to see them try to copy it.
China made 90.6% of all PCs produced in 2011 [theatlantic.com]. (Most recent number I could find in a quick search.) If your software doesn't work on them, who has more incentive to "fix" it?
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China made 90.6% of all PCs produced in 2011 [theatlantic.com]. (Most recent number I could find in a quick search.) If your software doesn't work on them, who has more incentive to "fix" it?
Largely for non-Chinese companies exported. While Chinese companies may be able to get away domestically with using stolen IP they won't be able to export infringing products to the west.
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Are they going to spin off and begin creating x86 compatible processors, completely neglecting patents?
The AMD controlled company has already licensed the IP to the non-AMD controlled company. The non-AMD controlled company is also doing all the CPU design work. The AMD controlled company is just a front for compliance with the Intel/AMD agreement. It designs nothing, it sells nothing to the market, all that is done by the non-AMD controlled company. Again, a non-AMD controlled company that has a valid IP license according to Chinese law.
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I think you are misremembering the prior argument. And I'm rather certain you are misunderstanding the current one.
The argument that Intel and AMD will both regret this action isn't talking about legalities, or proprietaries. It's talking about expectable consequences. Unless you're a stockholder in AMD or Intel, this particular action will have no direct influence on you. Indirect, yes, but no more than many other such "deals". As a programmer, I would expect no observable change in using a Chinese so
Re:More likely AMD is f'd (Score:5, Insightful)
They get 50% of the revenue from these chips, and they have the potential to get close to 100% marketshare in China once the Chinese government forces Chinese companies to use Chinese made processors.
Not how China rolls. Their typical pattern is:
1. Buy the full service product, the Chinese learn to use it.
2. Buy the product, the Chinese learn to operate/maintain it.
3. License the product, the Chinese learn to manufacture it.
4. Watch a Chinese clone take over your market.
Though the latter seems plausible though, anyone care to guess if those Chinese "special needs" are backdoors for the government? Then it would make sense that there's no user-visible changes...
Re: More likely AMD is f'd (Score:3)
Though the latter seems plausible though, anyone care to guess if those Chinese "special needs" are
The diameter of the backdoor was reduced for maximum pleasure.
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1. the Chinese companies will still be paying royalties / patent fees as long the contract applies
2. if the Chinese partner violating the contract, the foreign partner can sue them in Chinese court and the Chinese court system has shown favorable ruling to foreign IP/patent holders
3. if the Chinese company clone the interface design, then it is all legal and ethical since interface design is not copyrightable/patentable, just like Linux and BSD cloned the Unix API
4. western companies are doing the same all
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Re:More likely AMD is f'd (Score:5, Informative)
They get 50% of the revenue from these chips, and they have the potential to get close to 100% marketshare in China once the Chinese government forces Chinese companies to use Chinese made processors.
AMD owns 51% of HMC, a "front" company that exists to work around Intel/AMD IP agreements.
AMD owns 30% of Hygon, the "real" company in this deal, well sort of "real", more below.
AMD will likely see very little profit from HMC as HMC will likely sell the finished chips to Hygon at or near cost.
OK, so AMD still has 30% of Hygon? Yes in theory, but Hygon will likely not be designed to capture much of the revenue of the domestic x86 trade. Hygon will likely subcontract to 100% Chinese owned companies where some of the real profits will be realized, and will likely sell the CPUs to 100% Chinese owned companies at a low price and these companies will capture much of the remaining profits. Maybe not in year 1 but by year 5 the preceding eco system will likely be complete.
In short the accounting will be engineered to avoid having to pay AMD very much, as we see with US companies engineering the accounting to avoid paying US taxes.
And the sad part is that AMD is smart enough to see it coming. But desperation leads them to maybe a few years of some revenue, hoping that it will be the bridge they need to return to full health.
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Yup. This is very very sad indeed. Market forces as a result of intel marketing and a couple of bad runs from AMD push AMD to sell their goose to china.
Even worse... Intel short changing customers with poor security within their chips sacrifice chip integrity for quick wins over AMD.
USA wins the short game, loose the war.
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I doubt AMD's lawyers are so dumb that they wouldn't license the product in such a way, that they get paid per each chip manufactured and sold. Therefore it doesn't matter what profit Hygon makes on the product. There may be issues with Hygon falsifying ledgers on the quantity of chips made, but so long as AMD actually has access to the factories, they should be able to figure out if they are getting cheated, and take their partners to court.
AMD also if they had a good lawyer would have made sure that onl
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That's some A grade bullshit. AMD's contract allows them manipulate the prices
http://m.guancha.cn/tieliu/201... [guancha.cn] From this Article "The core intellectual property, technology and pricing are still firmly in the hands of AMD."
In theory, via HMC, which is a facade to meet the requirements of the Intel/AMD agreement. Keep reading the article and note that the "real" company in this deal is Hygon, which HMC strangely sells finished CPUs too indicating HMC is unlikely to be where profits are realized. And within 5 years an ecosystem is likely to be built around Hygon where it does not realize much profits itself. The 100% Chinese owned companies that Hygon will sell finished CPUs too and/or subcontract out production to will be wher
China will not sit idly on Zen architecture (Score:2)
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That's not what happens with digital design.
When you get IPs, you almost never get the source code to build the circuits.
Everyone who has at least worked on FPGAs can confirm that there are vendor locked IP cores, that are just a ciphertext that gets decrypted on the fly when the design is synthesized.
Even if you could have the source code of zen, it's nearly impossible to build the asic because there's a shitload of proprietary IPs after you've obtained the code and custom AMD programs that do place and ro
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You argue that China doesn't currently have the technology to make a somewhat modern CPU. However you ignore that they are being trained and assisted by AMD to move down that path. China will not sit idly.
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Intel didn't beat PPC because x86 was good. It was shit, that's why everyone until the end of the 90s ran on either proprietary ISAs or some Alpha and what not.
It was thought that x86 (cisc) was hitting a dead end, and that a shift to risc was necessary. PowerPC expected to outperform x86, "twice the performance at half the price". In reality, in general, PowerPC at the same clock rate of Intel was 20% faster. But Intel was able to crank up the clock rate to continually outperform PowerPC overall. This was totally unexpected. This was friggin miracle working. It may have taken an insane amount of work to pull this off, far more than what PowerPC was receiving, but
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Even if all AMD is doing is getting some upfront money and preventing Intel from getting a foothold in China and India, that is good for AMD.
AMD is also preventing themselves from getting a foothold in China and India.
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AMD will still be making chips long after x86 is forgotten. Just like they were long before it was invented.
Yes, and AMD will be a small fraction of its current size.
China can catch up with the USA (Score:2)
Time for the 1980's NSA and its consumer chip super computer contractor adventures.
Buy 100000's more consumer CPU from contractors and enjoy doing more maths. With many more low cost consumer CPU's. They are for consumers so the cost is low.
Buy more CPU's from the contractor and the maths is faster again.
"tailored for the Chinese server market"? (Score:2)
translation: fabs owned by fairly high ranked party officials' brothers-in-law and making timely deposits to Panamanian accounts.
x86-64? (Score:2, Interesting)
I assume they're talking about x86-64, which is modern AMD technology, and not actually the x86, which is decades old Intel technology. I can't imagine anyone would want to build x86s for anything but legacy devices.
Re: x86-64? (Score:2)
Apple relies on x86-64, which is backwards compatible with x86, but Mac throws up a warning when you actually try to run old x86 code.
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Apple are moving fully towards x86-64, the latest versions of OSX warn you when running 32bit x86 code and future versions are planning to eliminate support for it altogether.
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Not counting iOS (which is ARM) or the old Apple 8 bits (all 650x machines), Apple has changed Mac architecture three times; 68000-family to start, then PowerPC, and now Intel. That's three times in thirty years. Yes, more than Microsoft, which has largely stuck with x86, despite a few ventures with NT. There's ARM now, and I expect that one will ultimately stick a bit better than the defunct Alpha and PowerPC ports.
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That's three times in thirty years.
So the AC was probably correct in telling his parent AC:
Apple has changed its internal architecture more times than you've changed your underwear
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"Yes, more than Microsoft"
You say right before you go on to list two extra architectures which puts Microsoft EVEN with Apple (DEC and PPC.)
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And today we still start our Teslas with a hand crank because they must remain compatible with the Model T
More like a Tesla is still vehicle with a width accommodating most normal roads. If Tesla came out with a car that was twice the width, it would be more analogous. They don't, for a similar reason - to maintain compatibility with older resources, in Tesla's case roads.
Re: whoosh (Score:2)
It's super useful for enabling long mode (64bit).
Do they need Intel? (Score:3)
Two questions arise: if they have licensed AMD's Zen architecture, does that allow them to support Intel's x32, which is the cross licensing exclusive that Intel and AMD have (or at least had), which allowed Intel to use AMD64 and AMD to use IA32? Or have we come to the point where it's no longer necessary to support 32-bit in x64?
As for AMD, this is the only way they can gain any significant marketshare anywhere - by taking their China partners and selling into China. In fact, those Chinese partners might as well acquire AMD directly, and make it all their own.
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AMD holds a 51 percent stake in HMC... HMC owns the x86 IP and ends up producing the chips, which satisfies the AMD and Intel x86 cross-licensing agreements because the IP remains with a company owned primarily by AMD. ... To stay within the legal boundaries, HMC licenses the IP to Hygon, which designs the x86 chips and then sells the design back to HMC. HMC then employs a foundry to fab the end product (likely China Foundries or TSMC). Confusingly, HMC then transfers the chips back to Hygon (the same compa
Re: Do they need Intel? (Score:2)
China IP laws make it so they don't need intel / t (Score:2)
China IP laws make it so they don't need intel to say it's ok.
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I for one welcome our competition overlords (Score:1)
Good! AMD and Intel need competition in x86 chips. Duopolies usually provide narrow choices, and consumers can't do squat about it (big telecoms cough cough).
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Did your old ass forget about VIA? Competition exists, it's just utterly weak.
Comment removed (Score:3)
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AMD is in control, they are doing the design, they are just having another company they partly own do the FAB work, thus they stay contractural with Intel.
Just like Apple uses Samsung FAB for its SOCs. The article even says the security updates for the eypc cpus are almost exact for the Chinese version of the chips.
This is actually good, it means the technology flows from the USA into China, and they keep buying and using our technology. We want them dependant on our designs and not clone our chip
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AMD is in control, they are doing the design, they are just having another company they partly own do the FAB work, thus they stay contractural with Intel.
No. There is a front company, HMC, which owns the IP and satisfies the Intel/AMD IP agreement. However there is another company, Hygon, which AMD is not in control of. HMC has licensed the IP to Hygon, Hygon does the design. HMC even sells the manufactured CPUs to Hygon. HMC is a facade, it will not be where profits are realized. HMC is not really in control of the IP since it has licensed it to Hygon, and again, Hygon is doing the design not HMC.
Within 5 years an ecosystem will be developed around Hygon
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"This is actually good, it means the technology flows from the USA into China, and they keep buying and using our technology. We want them dependant on our designs and not clone our chips and go off on their own designs."
I can tell you've never done any real business with China. They're going to steal this ASAP.
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Foreign companies are required to form joint ventures if they want to do business in China and there's usually "forced" transfer of IP. More often than not, the IP ends up getting stolen.
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"clocks"
The sexagecimal system which we use in modern times came from the Sumerians, about two millennia earlier.
"paper"
Papyrus is actual paper, to hell with the pedantic fuckwits that have never made any on their own. Take your sorry ass to Egypt.
"porcelain"
Hey, you actually got one right for once!
"iron smelting"
Wrong - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
"gunpowder"
Hey, you got another one right! Just about as good as randomly throwing rocks!
"compass"
Those random throws are getting better, but you're still w
How good are they? (Score:2)
What features do these chips have? What's the clock rate? What are some benchmark scores?
Financially, it makes a lot of difference if these Chinese CPUs are actually competitive.
PSP "security" co-processor? (Score:2)
Do they come with the original American backdoors, or do they have their own Chinese version?
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What if both end up in there and the chip gets stuck in a loop trying to eavesdrop on each other? Reminds me of the Space Balls scene when the baffled Commander accidentally spies on himself.
A copy but understanding? (Score:2)
I'm sure it isn't that difficult to copy a chip once you have the mask of it but the question is do they understand how that chip supposedly works? A lot of actual chip design is computer based and learning how that works can take years? It means they can make copies but not necessarily advance the design.
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We forgive you.
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We forgive you.
No, no we don’t. What a horrible “sentence”.
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Shouldn't that be "Engrish Siri"?
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I felt sure I was about to see a Lethal Weapon [youtube.com] clip.
Re:China Finds Begins Production... (Score:5, Interesting)
Just business as usual at Slashdot. Incoherent summaries and easily spotted typos. On a side note does that mean I can buy these knockoff processors from Alibaba for a fraction of AMD's prices?
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Re:China Finds Begins Production... (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't care what intelligence the Chinese government collects on me. Uncle Sam is a different story.
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And he need never know if you do whatever's required. Perhaps just pass on that useful trade secret that might be of benefit to their companies, it's not a big thing...
Or whatever else they might want.
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Just business as usual at Slashdot. Incoherent summaries and easily spotted typos. On a side note does that mean I can buy these knockoff processors from Alibaba for a fraction of AMD's prices?
Licensing restricions apply -- chips are exclusively for Chinese Domestic and military market.
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The titel is cuased by a Pentuim flaoting piont erorr. Its why we nead competion.
(Slahsdot just fixed the erorr, by the way.)
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2. Begin making CPU so production line works.
3. Make a lot of the CPU and connect them together. Keep adding CPU until sure most powerful super computer.
3.5 Code software for impressive math question that works for CPU design.
4. Name and show super computer.
5. Ensure it gets to be number 1 most powerful super computer.
6. Find next new CPU design and math problem.
Re:Sorry, learn me some English, please (Score:5, Informative)
It looks like they copied the headline from the source article but bizarrely omitted one word and a piece of punctuation making the whole thing unintelligible. The actual title should be:
"China Finds Zen: Begins Production Of x86 Processors Based On AMD's IP"
Which is kind of a dumb pun based on the fact that they're copying AMD's Zen microarchitecture.
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Don't worry, English isn't the native language of msmash, either.
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..
The reality is that culture and ethnicity are interdependent and there is absolutely no reason to assume that Chinese peopl
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The reality is that culture and ethnicity are interdependent and there is absolutely no reason to assume that Chinese people, once lifted out of poverty will choose the same path as Europeans.
The educated young people are still opposed to the central government. The only thing keeping them in power is continued economic growth. I doubt that will work out in the long term.
But then if it does work, maybe it wouldn't be such a bad idea to adopt their system. No one said democracy was perfect.
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I agree thats why intel must have competition.