Interesting. Maybe this or the next gen will take some share from Intel/AMD in China market. Isn't AMD also working on a JV such as this, but on the server side?
No they won't. This chip is born for government purchasing. No consumer or enterprise will be foolish enough to use anything other than Core/Zen. But if you count government orders as part of market share, then, yes.
First of all, this is a JV, not wholly owned by the Chinese gov't. Secondly, if there are 10^9 x86 computers out there and 20% are run by AMD chips, 75% are run by Intel chips and 5% are run by "others", who cares if 2% of the Intel chips are inside computers used by Intel engineers/marketing/HR etc.? Since when is that taken into account?
>>First of all, this is a JV, not wholly owned by the Chinese gov't.
I'd like to see you prove that. In the best of cases Chinese financial transactions are black box, ventures like this are almost entirely funded with unsecured government backed loans with companies headed by high level party officials, members of the Army or intelligence apparatus.
China is not a free market, and people that assume it is simply don't understand how things work over there.
"Zhaoxin, a joint venture between Via Technologies and the Chinese government".
I'd like to see you prove that it isn't. I mean I have no idea but you know, burden of proof and all that. Officially it's a JV until someone can prove the contrary.
Prove what? You simply don't understand how capital works. Free market or not, it doesn't affect how ownership works. Your assumption is simply not true, and quite ridiculous.
You forget that all Chinese consumers and businesses are government, comrade.
In all seriousness, if China is concerned that Intel/AMD hardware could be used by other nations to spy on them, they'll push for Chinese made hardware in any market segment they want to protect. And you don't say no to those requests.
LOL, let the Chinese government buy them up. With wild claims of i5-class performance, I'll see it when I believe it and I doubt any consumer (unless these are dirt cheap) will want something in this performance class. And at 16nm, it is highly unlikely to be competitive on power efficiency. It would likely have to be 100w+ to compete with even an i5
hmmmm, x86 needs Intel license, I know Via has a license, but do they have ability to maintain this when they "share" to another company? x64 is pretty much AMD (though it uses x85 as backbone) I can picture AMD not giving any trouble about this they WANT an open market, and if 8 cores only operate at 3Ghz then they likely are really in any "trouble" course it all depends on how it performs and how much it costs
seems by spec alone it is "approved" by Intel, otherwise they are facing a massive lawsuit using intel proprietary stuff (AVX, SSE 4.2 and such)
Ya, I mean, Ryzen has done a lot of good for market share and stock prices, but AMD's money comes from GPUs and custom chip orders (like consoles).Ryzen will help their bottom line eventuially, but it is going to be a few years before it pays off.
AMD does not own x64 - but Intel has rights to Core.
The big issue is this is from China, and China does not have some of security rights - if this company abuses any of that they are serious trouble and more than just Intel and AMD, meaning government.
I think they are more threat to AMD instead Intel, because they cut at lower price cheaper stuff as AMD been doing.
"AMD does not own x64 - but Intel has rights to Core."
Here is a quote from Wikipedia "The original specification, created by AMD and released in 2000, has been implemented by AMD, Intel and VIA. The AMD K8 processor was the first to implement it." They are referring to AMD64 which after Intel licensed from AMD & in turn AMD licenses x86 from Intel AMD's AMD64 is known by everyone as x86-64 now. Hope this helps and informs you that yes AMD does indeed own AMD64.
Intel was working on 64 bit - at time that AMD came out with it. Most important the original architecture was created by Intel. Upping to 64 bit at the time was seen not a big deal - just adding extra bits to original implementation.
Yes Intel was but not for the Desktop sector they had or were doing IA-64 which was totally different. It was AMD that that came up with AMD64 and a bit later on Intel decided to use that. Maybe Intel was working on 64 bit as well but they were most likely trying to adapt the IA-64 into an x86 CPU which would have pretty much screwed AMD over because you know Intel would not have licensed that to AMD and then AMD would have done their AMD64 and we would have had AMD64 & IA-64 on the market and it would have become a cluster frack for software dev's so I am glad AMD got there first and we now have a single 64 bit instruction setup and not 2 for the desktop.
AMD64 is actually a new processor mode. It is not just "protected mode, but with wider registers". And long mode behaves quite differently than protected mode, much as protected mode behaves quite differently than real mode. Anyways, it doesn't matter if it is added on to something else or not. It is still AMD's creation, and AMD holds the rights to their additions. That IS how the law works. Since APPARENTLY you can have a copyright on a frickin' microprocessor instruction set these days. I hate the world.
And Intel's 64-bit solution was a nonstarter. They created an entirely new processor architecture, and saw no reason anyone would want 64-bit x86 parts. They had no hand in extending x86, and I'm pretty sure that licensing an outsider's extensions sticks in their craw to this day. But that's what circumstances were at the time. AMD64 was a HUGE deal, and Intel was in no position to ignore it. ... Honestly, where do you get the idea that "Upping to 64 bit at the time was seen not a big deal"? Sledgehammer lit the world on fire, and those first Opterons attracted quite a bit of attention.
8086/8088 does not maintain binary compatibility with 8080, so really isn't part of the architecture. 8086 was designed to be *assembly* language compatible, so for every 8080 opcode there existed a compatible 8088 opcode, but the exact binaries needed to be reassembled and linked.
If this was *perfectly* exact, presumably you could simply binary translate binaries, but I doubt all the opcodes had exactly the same size and you probably had to massage the assembly source if you were picky enough about where your memory was (and when 8088 was designed, everybody *cared* about every last byte: they were expensive). But still, not needed to rewrite *assembler* completely was unheard of, and good enough in those days.
I saw some blubber about AMD should end license - I think out of mess - Intel and AMD - just agree that AMD can use the original architecture including name of functions and such and to satisfied Microsoft Intel will support 64 bit extensions ( this is important part - 64 bit extensions ).
yeah awesome. "extended Memory 64-bit Technology (EM64T) is Intel‘s implementation of AMD‘s AMD64" with this as a reference: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X86-64#Intel_64 It lists the minor differences but it's made super obvious there that Intel licensed the base tech from AMD. "Historically, AMD has developed and produced processors with instruction sets patterned after Intel's original designs, but with x86-64, roles were reversed: Intel found itself in the position of adopting the ISA which AMD had created as an extension to Intel's own x86 processor line." etc.
You either don't know WTF you are talking about, or this is a gross attempt at gaslighting
Welcome to HStewart's distorted reality where EVERYTHING is somehow related to Intel. I'm sorry you blundered into his poorly worded shill drivel. The rest of us here usually ignore him.
Not like being nitpicky but Intel did not License AMD64 specifically. They have had a cross licensing deal for decades. Anything one does on X86 the other then has rights to.
It's one reason Intel could not push AMD out the door when they sold the Fabs. They could puff their stomach. Push for more restrictions on AMD. But if the cross license agreement comes to an end they would be paying out the nose in royalties for AMD64 for like 5 years till they had a suitable replacement.
I don't know if anyone remembers that time period, but Microsoft came out and said they only want to support one version of x86-64. AMD was there first and their 64 bit procs were being gobbled up by consumers, so they chose that.
Intel would end up losing marketshare if they created their own x86-64 procs that was supported by nothing or blow a lot of money hoping to get MS to change their mind. The logical solution was to start using AMD64. I very much like Intel (pretty much the only thing I buy) and I still laughed during the time, when they took AMD64, renamed it EMT64 and slapped it on their P4s. We all knew it was AMD64.
It's useless to argue with HStewart, particularly when you're asserting that AMD could be in any way superior to Intel. In his world, Intel is the greatest thing since sliced bread, and has basically invented every noteworthy product in tech since the beginning of time. The fact that AMD could have invented something beforehand is an affront to his very existence.
hmm, is temporary blindness a symptom of China Derangement Symptom? First sentence of the article as well as the post you're replying to spells it out- VIA Technologies (a Taiwanese company) owns an x86 license. They are receiving engineering resources from Chinese state-financed engineers. VIA are not selling the license, nor are they transferring it to "China".
It’s a joint venture with the Chinese government. Joint ventures are two-way mutually beneficial partnerships; one party does not simply sign on to provide “engineering resources”. China is getting something out of this.
If they’re really just contributing engineering resources, then what they likely get out of it is giving their engineers experience on x86 architectural design, so they can build their own (unlicensed) x86 chip later. That’s not dissimilar from “stealing”.
Sure they get something out of it - they can buy x86 chips from a source they trust more than US based chip makers. This helps with avoiding backdoors (at least foreign ones) and supply issues should the US be taken over by and unpredictable bully.
Nobody even mentioned Trump specifically. And with the Chinese government at the core of this story, you simply can't not talk about politics.
China is seeking their technological independence and influence from everyone - most importantly the US. These two "superpowers" have been clashing for ages and the Trump-era tariffs are just the latest chapter in the story. The US has already prohibited processor exports to Chinese supercomputing centers, so the concern of being cut off is not unfounded.
In regards to China what you said is very much true. As far as the Trump reference, it was inferred "...should the US be taken over by and unpredictable bully." And it's not the first comment or only comment on this thread. I come here for tech, not for peoples personal politics. I get enough of that on FB, work, the damn news, etc. I'd like one place where I don't have to listen to peoples tribalistic talking points. Anandtech needs to stay apolitical.
Actually it's not. high end tech and China has been a contentious issue long before Trump. It will be long after. As others have noted Pres. Obama banned export of high powered procs to China amongst other things. Before that, Pres. Bush, Clinton, and Bush, etc did the same thing to various degrees. There are companies that have been around for decades who's sole purpose is to comb through imported tech to ensure no back doors exist. See? It's very easy to talk about without diving into the rhetoric and cheap swipes.
1. Via already has an x86 license. 2. The current version of x86 is mostly patented by AMD, not Intel. The original x86 instruction set is no longer under patent. 3. Neither AMD nor Intel can grant a license without the others' consent.
x86 is more or less obsolete and has no use in a 8 core chip (you *need* AMD64, and likely most of the SSEn/AVXm stuff owned by Intel. MMX at least predates 2000, so should be more or less patent free, or will be soon).
Using patent-free x86 would limit you to 2GB (I think Linux had tricks to get to 3.5GB) or memory space, and it is getting harder and harder to find x86 specific software. It really isn't an option.
You might want to look up how patents work in the USA. US patents do enough damage to US innovation (you don't have to have patents debugged, it is just enough to know that they will be a roadblock to further development), China would be insane to honor US patents for internal development. Granted, I wouldn't be surprised if they casually help themselves to a windows copyright (patents means you can't redevelop something on your own, copyright basically says you can't copy something already made). There's also that little bit about how the US basically got where it is via IP theft, whether Dickens, the Bessemer process, or what. The UK spent most of Victoria's reign screaming about US piracy (IP laws didn't exist when the UK stole most of the basis of capitalism from the Dutch, and so on all the way back to Egypt and Mesopotamia).
Oh yes, the licensing issue is the first thing I thought of the moment I saw this article. I'll admit I've never heard of Zhaoxin, or the fact that they have already produced an x86 chip, but I actually find this quite astonishing. Just because Intel hasn't acted yet, doesn't mean that they won't. I don't think this is 'approved' by Intel in any way shape or form. Intel rigorously guards it's right of ownership over the x86 instruction set architecture and isn't about to license it to any one else. It doesn't need to, and probably wishes it had never granted AMD the right to use it all those years ago (although at the time it might not have had much choice - anyone know that story?). But now, especially at a time of heightened tensions with China, economically and politically, I am just amazed by this. Of course, from China's point of view, it makes perfect sense, what better than to have their own domestic supply of x86 chips. It's a good idea both economically and strategically speaking. After all, what if the trade war got really nasty, and the US government intervened and started to restrict the export of anything of strategic/technical value to China. I would be very surprised if Intel were not seriously considering their legal options right now. I totally agree with the point that you made.... yes, Via has an x86 license, but that doesn't give it the right to share it with anyone else, especially a government backed Chinese company. I just cannot imagine that this will go uncontested by Intel, and I would expect the US government to back them 100%. One little thing, quite recently, when Microsoft first announced that it was intending to do the whole Windows on ARM thing again, but this time with an x86 emulation layer, Intel actually immediately claimed that Microsoft had no right to use the x86 instruction set in its emulator, and said it would take legal action if Microsoft continued on this path. Strangely, things went very quiet after that, and we now have Windows 10 laptops running on Snapdragon processors. I don't understand what happened there, but my point is, if Intel is prepared to threaten another giant of the American tech industry over x86 infringement, then surely it's going to throw some legal obstacles into the path of this new competitor. The other thing that I find slightly puzzling here, is why a solid tech company like Via would engage in such an enterprise with the Chinese government, no less. Does it really need the business that much? Surely they must realise the risks they're taking. At the very least, they're really going to piss off Intel, but if Intel successfully litigates, then none of these chips will be sold outside of China. Perhaps that doesn't matter to them, after all, the internal demand for x86 chips in China must be huge, but I would expect Intel to litigate in China itself as well. What the result of that might be is anyone's guess. Intel would be effectively taking on the Chinese government, in China! Taiwan currently finds itself between a rock and a hard place, and I am wondering whether this somewhat unlikely alliance of Via and the mainland government is the result of some hidden political forces. Pressure from the Chinese government for some cooperation, appeasement by the Taiwanese administration. It has occurred to me that Intel could take legal action in Taiwan itself, which might be more effective than litigating in China, after all, Via is a Taiwanese company, and the chips are going to be fabbed by TSMC. If Intel has a strong case, then it puts the Taiwanese administration in a very difficult place. Another thing I am wondering about, is where exactly have Zhaoxin conjured up their microarchitecture from. Have they really designed these incredibly complex chips from scratch? Perhaps Via has all the expertise they need, but I can't help wondering if someone has been taking a very close look at Intel's silicon ......
VIA has held a license for a very long time now (they snatched up Cyrix), and they have constantly put out new processors, but for a long time they have target low performance/low power systems, of which they have shipped 10 of millions. Back in the day they even made some half-decent north and southbridges, they even were the first with AGP for socket 7, and they snatched up S3 graphics when they went bust IIRC.
Cyrix never had a 32 bit license (at least from the 486DLC to the Cx686). They had to have IBM (who had one) fab their chips for them (thus whitewashing the IP). It is possible they managed to pick one up when owned by National (I think some of their chips were fabbed by Ti (who I doubt ever had a 32 bit x86 license)).
I don't think Taurus (the Winchip) people had a full license either, but they found a way to produce their chip (and didn't appear to require the fab have a license either, the point was to convince the fab that it was worth making and splitting the chips). Via bought Taurus about the same time they bought Cyrix.
There may have been FTC reasons that forced AMD and Intel to give Via a AMD64 license, but I doubt it.
It's pretty cool to hear about China's home grown CPU projects. I owned a Loongson-based laptop a number of years ago that ran Linux off a USB drive (one that was custom fitted to match the shape of the front of the system). It was fun to tinker with and while this is probably part of China's domestic independence effort, I'd be interested in seeing it go on sale in the US. It can't hurt to have a credible third competitor in the CPU market.
Taurus had one? I know Cyrix didn't: they had to have IBM do all their manufacturing since IBM had a x86 license. There are plenty of "x86" licenses out there (i.e. 16-bit 8086 and 80286), but the only ones that cover 32 bit were Intel, AMD, and IBM. AMD only licensed AMD64 (i.e. 64-bit x86) to Intel and Intel only licensed SSE and AVX to AMD.
Taurus *might* have had some means of 32-bit x86 whitewashing that allowed others to fab their winchip: the whole concept was that it should have a better profit fabbing a winchip than SRAM. Then Intel decided to launch a price war against AMD and the winchip was to weak to justify even fabbing it. Thus VIA bought Taurus as well (later VIA chips might have been called Cyrix, but they were based on Taurus designs).
This is pretty much purely pirated (there's no reason to build 8 cores if you don't go 64-bit, and nobody else has a 64-bit license). If they make it into the western world, it will essentially be smuggling (not all that hard through alibaba and ebay, although ebay tries to remove a portion of them).
Cyrix originally didn't have an x86 license that's true, but they got a license to some of Intels patents as the fallout from litigation and they got the right to produce x86 chips at any manufacturer who had a crosslicense agreement with Intel, and later they merged with National Semiconductor who had a x-license agreement with Intel. Via then bought out Cyrix from National and entered a crosslicense agreement with them. It's a very long and strange story filled with litigation, could probably be made into a semiinteresting movie :)
And I think you mean Centaur, not Taurus, Centaur was also picked up by Via, but they never had a license that I know of, they built their WinChip processors on a RISC-design with pretty much no FP throughput at all, they were fabless so I guessed they produced them at foundries with Intel license. Furthermore Intel and VIA settled a big infringement case in 2003 which included VIA getting a license to develop and build x86 based processors as long as they are not pin- or socket compatible with Intel for 10 years, and it has probably been extended, otherwise Intel would be all over it.
China government + all its associated and/or influenced organisations makes for a fairly big market. China probably has 2 main reasons for getting these chips developed 1) Reduce dependence on the USA which has proven an unreliable trading partner with the current president. 2) Have systems without the USA based backdoors of Intel ME or AMD PSP.
If the chips are as good as a first generation Intel i3, then they would be sufficient for the majority of government PCs - if the chips can match current i5 processors then almost all government and commercial PCs could use these chips.
(It would not surprise me to find the chips having a Chinese equivalent of Intel ME to allow easier state snooping.)
China has been seeking their own x86-64 CPU's when Obama restricted sales of high-end CPU's to China in 2015. It takes time to develop CPU's and time to plan. It isn't about Trump.
Wow, so many Americans in here posting again and again that China stole the technology. Thank God the Americans don't bomb other countries to stole their resources.
Used to love Cyrix (they somehow invented cache in 386DX era) . They were a small company that gave Intel & AMD a run for their money . They were kind of AMD of today (size wise compared to INTEL and AMD) . These guys were good.
VIA has nothing to do with that great company , they just bought them.
Also that Nemiah Core with god mode is not developed by them , but bought from Centaur .
So VIA never made any CPU by themselves , just great South&Nortbridge at the time.
Now since they are chinese ( Taiwan whatever) they are playing the right cards.
VIA has great patents in their portfolio ( Cyrix, Centaur, S3) they should capitalize on that , they should have done it long ago. Having TSMC in the same country its amazing they waited so long.
Cache was an old trick by then (the 68k had something like 512B of cache. Don't laugh, that's only half of what the 486DLC had...) and I'm pretty sure invented when computers were still using magnetic core memory (I'm sure I read about them EE textbooks written before the 80386 was announced).
But yes, Cyrix was an impressive company. The biggest irony is that they got started by making a faster floating point processor than the 80287 (possibly the 80387, but I think they made both) but were really slagged on just how bad their Quake performance was.
And as far as I know, VIA shut Cyrix down right after they bought it. All they kept was the name and the patent porfolio.
Yes you are correct , this is the irony . The CPU was pretty good at the time (I had one , huge heatsink , FSB 75Mhz a lot of overclocking ) but the FPU was not that good. Actually Quake destroyed this company without knowing it.
Old stories like 3DFx Vodoo & co :-) very funny that this still lives today in China.
I'm still surprised that chinese goverment is not buying ARM licence and produce whatever they want even big cores that run Linux without any problem. Why stick with x86 ?
Umm... am I the only one who noticed that their claims of 50% performance improvement matches up perfectly with their operating speed being exactly 50% greater. It's basically the same chip in a new process and clocked higher.
Also, the "same compute" comparison between this and a Core i5 quad core is very suspect. That leads me to believe that single-threaded performance is only slightly higher than the Via Nano this is likely based on. So eight years later, Via Tech is still running-in-place and trying to throw more cores at the problem.
At least the clock speed will make this about as fast as 1st-generation Bulldozer.
Things really shouldn't line up that exactly between 28nm and 16nm, and I'd be shocked silly if they managed to somehow get the L1 cache to act with exactly 50% lower latency (there are other issues, but that one really stands out. Same with the L2 cache, but that is more easily tweaked and the differences aren't so big).
Of course, it might be mostly small changes done by engineers, and a lot more transistors added by the Verilog compiler. That's my guess. Certainly nothing like Nahelm to Sandy Bridge, more like Sandy Bridge to Ivy Bridge (I had to go back that far since I don't think they've had a significantly bigger difference than Sandy-Ivy to this day).
China is pushing really hard to have it's own CPUs and other necessary PC-hardware. They don't want to be reliant on the US as the rest of the world when things get bad.
The US so far has bascially the rest of the world by it's balls with it's IT-products, so it's advisable to research, engineer and manufacture your own hardware. China takes a shortcut and simply steals all the technologies not giving a damn about patents as usual. And it's pretty much the sane thing to actually.
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Teckk - Monday, September 24, 2018 - link
Interesting. Maybe this or the next gen will take some share from Intel/AMD in China market.Isn't AMD also working on a JV such as this, but on the server side?
FirstStrike - Monday, September 24, 2018 - link
No they won't. This chip is born for government purchasing. No consumer or enterprise will be foolish enough to use anything other than Core/Zen.But if you count government orders as part of market share, then, yes.
Death666Angel - Monday, September 24, 2018 - link
"But if you count government orders as part of market share, then, yes." Aren't they counted usually? Seems to me any customer should be counted.Strunf - Tuesday, September 25, 2018 - link
Buying from yourself doesn't really count as buying!Death666Angel - Tuesday, September 25, 2018 - link
First of all, this is a JV, not wholly owned by the Chinese gov't. Secondly, if there are 10^9 x86 computers out there and 20% are run by AMD chips, 75% are run by Intel chips and 5% are run by "others", who cares if 2% of the Intel chips are inside computers used by Intel engineers/marketing/HR etc.? Since when is that taken into account?rahvin - Tuesday, September 25, 2018 - link
>>First of all, this is a JV, not wholly owned by the Chinese gov't.I'd like to see you prove that. In the best of cases Chinese financial transactions are black box, ventures like this are almost entirely funded with unsecured government backed loans with companies headed by high level party officials, members of the Army or intelligence apparatus.
China is not a free market, and people that assume it is simply don't understand how things work over there.
close - Tuesday, September 25, 2018 - link
"Zhaoxin, a joint venture between Via Technologies and the Chinese government".I'd like to see you prove that it isn't. I mean I have no idea but you know, burden of proof and all that. Officially it's a JV until someone can prove the contrary.
levizx - Monday, October 1, 2018 - link
and you are such an expert because? I at least lived there for 20+ year.levizx - Monday, October 1, 2018 - link
Prove what? You simply don't understand how capital works. Free market or not, it doesn't affect how ownership works. Your assumption is simply not true, and quite ridiculous.Mr Perfect - Tuesday, September 25, 2018 - link
You forget that all Chinese consumers and businesses are government, comrade.In all seriousness, if China is concerned that Intel/AMD hardware could be used by other nations to spy on them, they'll push for Chinese made hardware in any market segment they want to protect. And you don't say no to those requests.
asdfzxh - Sunday, June 9, 2019 - link
wrongSamus - Wednesday, September 26, 2018 - link
LOL, let the Chinese government buy them up. With wild claims of i5-class performance, I'll see it when I believe it and I doubt any consumer (unless these are dirt cheap) will want something in this performance class. And at 16nm, it is highly unlikely to be competitive on power efficiency. It would likely have to be 100w+ to compete with even an i5asdfzxh - Sunday, June 9, 2019 - link
Cuz you are short sighted and foolish.asdfzxh - Sunday, June 9, 2019 - link
Just you are foolish, and short-sighted. Cepu, buy, do any no matter what and any s ok.Dragonstongue - Monday, September 24, 2018 - link
hmmmm, x86 needs Intel license, I know Via has a license, but do they have ability to maintain this when they "share" to another company?x64 is pretty much AMD (though it uses x85 as backbone) I can picture AMD not giving any trouble about this they WANT an open market, and if 8 cores only operate at 3Ghz then they likely are really in any "trouble" course it all depends on how it performs and how much it costs
seems by spec alone it is "approved" by Intel, otherwise they are facing a massive lawsuit using intel proprietary stuff (AVX, SSE 4.2 and such)
edzieba - Monday, September 24, 2018 - link
"I can picture AMD not giving any trouble about this they WANT an open market"AMD are chasing the volume market, which puts them on a direct collision course with a government-backed 'domestic' volume x86 chip.
CaedenV - Monday, September 24, 2018 - link
Ya, I mean, Ryzen has done a lot of good for market share and stock prices, but AMD's money comes from GPUs and custom chip orders (like consoles).Ryzen will help their bottom line eventuially, but it is going to be a few years before it pays off.HStewart - Monday, September 24, 2018 - link
AMD does not own x64 - but Intel has rights to Core.The big issue is this is from China, and China does not have some of security rights - if this company abuses any of that they are serious trouble and more than just Intel and AMD, meaning government.
I think they are more threat to AMD instead Intel, because they cut at lower price cheaper stuff as AMD been doing.
FirstStrike - Monday, September 24, 2018 - link
Does FX series threat Ryzen? First someone has to do much better than Bulldozer family to make some noticable difference to the MSDT market.rocky12345 - Monday, September 24, 2018 - link
"AMD does not own x64 - but Intel has rights to Core."Here is a quote from Wikipedia
"The original specification, created by AMD and released in 2000, has been implemented by AMD, Intel and VIA. The AMD K8 processor was the first to implement it." They are referring to AMD64 which after Intel licensed from AMD & in turn AMD licenses x86 from Intel AMD's AMD64 is known by everyone as x86-64 now. Hope this helps and informs you that yes AMD does indeed own AMD64.
HStewart - Monday, September 24, 2018 - link
Intel was working on 64 bit - at time that AMD came out with it. Most important the original architecture was created by Intel. Upping to 64 bit at the time was seen not a big deal - just adding extra bits to original implementation.CaedenV - Monday, September 24, 2018 - link
lol, Intel's implementation was terrible though. They just finally stopped supporting those Itanium chips last year I think.rocky12345 - Monday, September 24, 2018 - link
Yes Intel was but not for the Desktop sector they had or were doing IA-64 which was totally different. It was AMD that that came up with AMD64 and a bit later on Intel decided to use that. Maybe Intel was working on 64 bit as well but they were most likely trying to adapt the IA-64 into an x86 CPU which would have pretty much screwed AMD over because you know Intel would not have licensed that to AMD and then AMD would have done their AMD64 and we would have had AMD64 & IA-64 on the market and it would have become a cluster frack for software dev's so I am glad AMD got there first and we now have a single 64 bit instruction setup and not 2 for the desktop.29a - Tuesday, September 25, 2018 - link
"cluster frack"Does this website censor comments?
Lord of the Bored - Monday, September 24, 2018 - link
AMD64 is actually a new processor mode. It is not just "protected mode, but with wider registers". And long mode behaves quite differently than protected mode, much as protected mode behaves quite differently than real mode.Anyways, it doesn't matter if it is added on to something else or not. It is still AMD's creation, and AMD holds the rights to their additions. That IS how the law works. Since APPARENTLY you can have a copyright on a frickin' microprocessor instruction set these days. I hate the world.
And Intel's 64-bit solution was a nonstarter. They created an entirely new processor architecture, and saw no reason anyone would want 64-bit x86 parts. They had no hand in extending x86, and I'm pretty sure that licensing an outsider's extensions sticks in their craw to this day. But that's what circumstances were at the time. AMD64 was a HUGE deal, and Intel was in no position to ignore it.
...
Honestly, where do you get the idea that "Upping to 64 bit at the time was seen not a big deal"? Sledgehammer lit the world on fire, and those first Opterons attracted quite a bit of attention.
Zoolook - Wednesday, September 26, 2018 - link
It could be argued that the original archiecture was created by CTC, for the 8008, Intel expanded and rewrote it for the 8080.wumpus - Thursday, September 27, 2018 - link
8086/8088 does not maintain binary compatibility with 8080, so really isn't part of the architecture. 8086 was designed to be *assembly* language compatible, so for every 8080 opcode there existed a compatible 8088 opcode, but the exact binaries needed to be reassembled and linked.If this was *perfectly* exact, presumably you could simply binary translate binaries, but I doubt all the opcodes had exactly the same size and you probably had to massage the assembly source if you were picky enough about where your memory was (and when 8088 was designed, everybody *cared* about every last byte: they were expensive). But still, not needed to rewrite *assembler* completely was unheard of, and good enough in those days.
HStewart - Monday, September 24, 2018 - link
Intel and AMD do have differences in 64 bit implementation Intel is called EMT64 and is different than AMD64https://superuser.com/questions/383711/whats-the-d...
I saw some blubber about AMD should end license - I think out of mess - Intel and AMD - just agree that AMD can use the original architecture including name of functions and such and to satisfied Microsoft Intel will support 64 bit extensions ( this is important part - 64 bit extensions ).
MamiyaOtaru - Tuesday, September 25, 2018 - link
yeah awesome. "extended Memory 64-bit Technology (EM64T) is Intel‘s implementation of AMD‘s AMD64" with this as a reference: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X86-64#Intel_64 It lists the minor differences but it's made super obvious there that Intel licensed the base tech from AMD. "Historically, AMD has developed and produced processors with instruction sets patterned after Intel's original designs, but with x86-64, roles were reversed: Intel found itself in the position of adopting the ISA which AMD had created as an extension to Intel's own x86 processor line." etc.You either don't know WTF you are talking about, or this is a gross attempt at gaslighting
Manch - Tuesday, September 25, 2018 - link
I see you've met HStewart the Intel shill extraordinaire. LOLFritzkier - Tuesday, September 25, 2018 - link
What do you expect from HStewart?PeachNCream - Tuesday, September 25, 2018 - link
Welcome to HStewart's distorted reality where EVERYTHING is somehow related to Intel. I'm sorry you blundered into his poorly worded shill drivel. The rest of us here usually ignore him.Topweasel - Tuesday, September 25, 2018 - link
Not like being nitpicky but Intel did not License AMD64 specifically. They have had a cross licensing deal for decades. Anything one does on X86 the other then has rights to.It's one reason Intel could not push AMD out the door when they sold the Fabs. They could puff their stomach. Push for more restrictions on AMD. But if the cross license agreement comes to an end they would be paying out the nose in royalties for AMD64 for like 5 years till they had a suitable replacement.
khanikun - Wednesday, September 26, 2018 - link
I don't know if anyone remembers that time period, but Microsoft came out and said they only want to support one version of x86-64. AMD was there first and their 64 bit procs were being gobbled up by consumers, so they chose that.Intel would end up losing marketshare if they created their own x86-64 procs that was supported by nothing or blow a lot of money hoping to get MS to change their mind. The logical solution was to start using AMD64. I very much like Intel (pretty much the only thing I buy) and I still laughed during the time, when they took AMD64, renamed it EMT64 and slapped it on their P4s. We all knew it was AMD64.
sa666666 - Tuesday, September 25, 2018 - link
It's useless to argue with HStewart, particularly when you're asserting that AMD could be in any way superior to Intel. In his world, Intel is the greatest thing since sliced bread, and has basically invented every noteworthy product in tech since the beginning of time. The fact that AMD could have invented something beforehand is an affront to his very existence.TheinsanegamerN - Monday, September 24, 2018 - link
You assume china paid for the x86 license. This is china. They would just steal it.KateH - Monday, September 24, 2018 - link
hmm, is temporary blindness a symptom of China Derangement Symptom? First sentence of the article as well as the post you're replying to spells it out- VIA Technologies (a Taiwanese company) owns an x86 license. They are receiving engineering resources from Chinese state-financed engineers. VIA are not selling the license, nor are they transferring it to "China".shelbystripes - Monday, September 24, 2018 - link
It’s a joint venture with the Chinese government. Joint ventures are two-way mutually beneficial partnerships; one party does not simply sign on to provide “engineering resources”. China is getting something out of this.If they’re really just contributing engineering resources, then what they likely get out of it is giving their engineers experience on x86 architectural design, so they can build their own (unlicensed) x86 chip later. That’s not dissimilar from “stealing”.
MrSpadge - Monday, September 24, 2018 - link
Sure they get something out of it - they can buy x86 chips from a source they trust more than US based chip makers. This helps with avoiding backdoors (at least foreign ones) and supply issues should the US be taken over by and unpredictable bully.Manch - Tuesday, September 25, 2018 - link
Now it's Trumps fault VIA is working with the Chinese and the Chinese don't spy on ANYBODY!! LOL Good Lord.Leave politics off the damn page please.
Dijky - Tuesday, September 25, 2018 - link
Nobody even mentioned Trump specifically. And with the Chinese government at the core of this story, you simply can't not talk about politics.China is seeking their technological independence and influence from everyone - most importantly the US. These two "superpowers" have been clashing for ages and the Trump-era tariffs are just the latest chapter in the story.
The US has already prohibited processor exports to Chinese supercomputing centers, so the concern of being cut off is not unfounded.
Manch - Wednesday, September 26, 2018 - link
In regards to China what you said is very much true. As far as the Trump reference, it was inferred "...should the US be taken over by and unpredictable bully." And it's not the first comment or only comment on this thread. I come here for tech, not for peoples personal politics. I get enough of that on FB, work, the damn news, etc. I'd like one place where I don't have to listen to peoples tribalistic talking points. Anandtech needs to stay apolitical.t.s - Wednesday, September 26, 2018 - link
But what he said is true, about unpredictable bully. And it still related with replied comments. Chill.Manch - Thursday, September 27, 2018 - link
Actually it's not. high end tech and China has been a contentious issue long before Trump. It will be long after. As others have noted Pres. Obama banned export of high powered procs to China amongst other things. Before that, Pres. Bush, Clinton, and Bush, etc did the same thing to various degrees. There are companies that have been around for decades who's sole purpose is to comb through imported tech to ensure no back doors exist. See? It's very easy to talk about without diving into the rhetoric and cheap swipes.Gigaplex - Monday, September 24, 2018 - link
If they're only selling to Chinese customers, they don't need to license American patents.Sahrin - Monday, September 24, 2018 - link
1. Via already has an x86 license.2. The current version of x86 is mostly patented by AMD, not Intel. The original x86 instruction set is no longer under patent.
3. Neither AMD nor Intel can grant a license without the others' consent.
wumpus - Tuesday, September 25, 2018 - link
x86 is more or less obsolete and has no use in a 8 core chip (you *need* AMD64, and likely most of the SSEn/AVXm stuff owned by Intel. MMX at least predates 2000, so should be more or less patent free, or will be soon).Using patent-free x86 would limit you to 2GB (I think Linux had tricks to get to 3.5GB) or memory space, and it is getting harder and harder to find x86 specific software. It really isn't an option.
You might want to look up how patents work in the USA. US patents do enough damage to US innovation (you don't have to have patents debugged, it is just enough to know that they will be a roadblock to further development), China would be insane to honor US patents for internal development. Granted, I wouldn't be surprised if they casually help themselves to a windows copyright (patents means you can't redevelop something on your own, copyright basically says you can't copy something already made). There's also that little bit about how the US basically got where it is via IP theft, whether Dickens, the Bessemer process, or what. The UK spent most of Victoria's reign screaming about US piracy (IP laws didn't exist when the UK stole most of the basis of capitalism from the Dutch, and so on all the way back to Egypt and Mesopotamia).
leo_sk - Tuesday, September 25, 2018 - link
You mean intel making a lawsuit against chinese government in China?SincereSockPuppet - Wednesday, September 26, 2018 - link
Oh yes, the licensing issue is the first thing I thought of the moment I saw this article. I'll admit I've never heard of Zhaoxin, or the fact that they have already produced an x86 chip, but I actually find this quite astonishing. Just because Intel hasn't acted yet, doesn't mean that they won't. I don't think this is 'approved' by Intel in any way shape or form. Intel rigorously guards it's right of ownership over the x86 instruction set architecture and isn't about to license it to any one else. It doesn't need to, and probably wishes it had never granted AMD the right to use it all those years ago (although at the time it might not have had much choice - anyone know that story?). But now, especially at a time of heightened tensions with China, economically and politically, I am just amazed by this. Of course, from China's point of view, it makes perfect sense, what better than to have their own domestic supply of x86 chips. It's a good idea both economically and strategically speaking. After all, what if the trade war got really nasty, and the US government intervened and started to restrict the export of anything of strategic/technical value to China. I would be very surprised if Intel were not seriously considering their legal options right now.I totally agree with the point that you made.... yes, Via has an x86 license, but that doesn't give it the right to share it with anyone else, especially a government backed Chinese company. I just cannot imagine that this will go uncontested by Intel, and I would expect the US government to back them 100%. One little thing, quite recently, when Microsoft first announced that it was intending to do the whole Windows on ARM thing again, but this time with an x86 emulation layer, Intel actually immediately claimed that Microsoft had no right to use the x86 instruction set in its emulator, and said it would take legal action if Microsoft continued on this path. Strangely, things went very quiet after that, and we now have Windows 10 laptops running on Snapdragon processors. I don't understand what happened there, but my point is, if Intel is prepared to threaten another giant of the American tech industry over x86 infringement, then surely it's going to throw some legal obstacles into the path of this new competitor.
The other thing that I find slightly puzzling here, is why a solid tech company like Via would engage in such an enterprise with the Chinese government, no less. Does it really need the business that much? Surely they must realise the risks they're taking. At the very least, they're really going to piss off Intel, but if Intel successfully litigates, then none of these chips will be sold outside of China. Perhaps that doesn't matter to them, after all, the internal demand for x86 chips in China must be huge, but I would expect Intel to litigate in China itself as well. What the result of that might be is anyone's guess. Intel would be effectively taking on the Chinese government, in China!
Taiwan currently finds itself between a rock and a hard place, and I am wondering whether this somewhat unlikely alliance of Via and the mainland government is the result of some hidden political forces. Pressure from the Chinese government for some cooperation, appeasement by the Taiwanese administration.
It has occurred to me that Intel could take legal action in Taiwan itself, which might be more effective than litigating in China, after all, Via is a Taiwanese company, and the chips are going to be fabbed by TSMC. If Intel has a strong case, then it puts the Taiwanese administration in a very difficult place.
Another thing I am wondering about, is where exactly have Zhaoxin conjured up their microarchitecture from. Have they really designed these incredibly complex chips from scratch? Perhaps Via has all the expertise they need, but I can't help wondering if someone has been taking a very close look at Intel's silicon ......
Zoolook - Wednesday, September 26, 2018 - link
Conspiracy much ?VIA has held a license for a very long time now (they snatched up Cyrix), and they have constantly put out new processors, but for a long time they have target low performance/low power systems, of which they have shipped 10 of millions.
Back in the day they even made some half-decent north and southbridges, they even were the first with AGP for socket 7, and they snatched up S3 graphics when they went bust IIRC.
To top it all, it was founded in CA, US.
wumpus - Thursday, September 27, 2018 - link
Cyrix never had a 32 bit license (at least from the 486DLC to the Cx686). They had to have IBM (who had one) fab their chips for them (thus whitewashing the IP). It is possible they managed to pick one up when owned by National (I think some of their chips were fabbed by Ti (who I doubt ever had a 32 bit x86 license)).I don't think Taurus (the Winchip) people had a full license either, but they found a way to produce their chip (and didn't appear to require the fab have a license either, the point was to convince the fab that it was worth making and splitting the chips). Via bought Taurus about the same time they bought Cyrix.
There may have been FTC reasons that forced AMD and Intel to give Via a AMD64 license, but I doubt it.
wumpus - Thursday, September 27, 2018 - link
Looks like there were FTC reasons. Or at least enough to for Intel to make a deal with AMD's IP...PeachNCream - Monday, September 24, 2018 - link
It's pretty cool to hear about China's home grown CPU projects. I owned a Loongson-based laptop a number of years ago that ran Linux off a USB drive (one that was custom fitted to match the shape of the front of the system). It was fun to tinker with and while this is probably part of China's domestic independence effort, I'd be interested in seeing it go on sale in the US. It can't hurt to have a credible third competitor in the CPU market.TheinsanegamerN - Monday, September 24, 2018 - link
China wouldn't have the right patents to sell this here. I HIGHLY doubt the x86 license is legit.KateH - Monday, September 24, 2018 - link
you doubt that VIA has a legitimate x86 license? Im laughing! Google who that is and their product history, Ill wait...wumpus - Tuesday, September 25, 2018 - link
Taurus had one? I know Cyrix didn't: they had to have IBM do all their manufacturing since IBM had a x86 license. There are plenty of "x86" licenses out there (i.e. 16-bit 8086 and 80286), but the only ones that cover 32 bit were Intel, AMD, and IBM. AMD only licensed AMD64 (i.e. 64-bit x86) to Intel and Intel only licensed SSE and AVX to AMD.Taurus *might* have had some means of 32-bit x86 whitewashing that allowed others to fab their winchip: the whole concept was that it should have a better profit fabbing a winchip than SRAM. Then Intel decided to launch a price war against AMD and the winchip was to weak to justify even fabbing it. Thus VIA bought Taurus as well (later VIA chips might have been called Cyrix, but they were based on Taurus designs).
This is pretty much purely pirated (there's no reason to build 8 cores if you don't go 64-bit, and nobody else has a 64-bit license). If they make it into the western world, it will essentially be smuggling (not all that hard through alibaba and ebay, although ebay tries to remove a portion of them).
Zoolook - Wednesday, September 26, 2018 - link
Cyrix originally didn't have an x86 license that's true, but they got a license to some of Intels patents as the fallout from litigation and they got the right to produce x86 chips at any manufacturer who had a crosslicense agreement with Intel, and later they merged with National Semiconductor who had a x-license agreement with Intel.Via then bought out Cyrix from National and entered a crosslicense agreement with them.
It's a very long and strange story filled with litigation, could probably be made into a semiinteresting movie :)
And I think you mean Centaur, not Taurus, Centaur was also picked up by Via, but they never had a license that I know of, they built their WinChip processors on a RISC-design with pretty much no FP throughput at all, they were fabless so I guessed they produced them at foundries with Intel license.
Furthermore Intel and VIA settled a big infringement case in 2003 which included VIA getting a license to develop and build x86 based processors as long as they are not pin- or socket compatible with Intel for 10 years, and it has probably been extended, otherwise Intel would be all over it.
wumpus - Thursday, September 27, 2018 - link
I'd love to know what AMD said when Intel handed VIA a AMD64 license:) I'd assume they aren't allowed to be AMD (socket) compatible either.DigitalFreak - Monday, September 24, 2018 - link
"China wouldn't have the right patents to sell this here. I HIGHLY doubt the x86 license is legit."They've already announced their next CPU and named it after you - UDumFook
Duncan Macdonald - Monday, September 24, 2018 - link
China government + all its associated and/or influenced organisations makes for a fairly big market. China probably has 2 main reasons for getting these chips developed1) Reduce dependence on the USA which has proven an unreliable trading partner with the current president.
2) Have systems without the USA based backdoors of Intel ME or AMD PSP.
If the chips are as good as a first generation Intel i3, then they would be sufficient for the majority of government PCs - if the chips can match current i5 processors then almost all government and commercial PCs could use these chips.
(It would not surprise me to find the chips having a Chinese equivalent of Intel ME to allow easier state snooping.)
wurryno - Monday, September 24, 2018 - link
China has been seeking their own x86-64 CPU's when Obama restricted sales of high-end CPU's to China in 2015. It takes time to develop CPU's and time to plan. It isn't about Trump.yannigr2 - Monday, September 24, 2018 - link
Wow, so many Americans in here posting again and again that China stole the technology. Thank God the Americans don't bomb other countries to stole their resources.Speedfriend - Monday, September 24, 2018 - link
Maybe they should ask Imagination Technology how they feel about Americans stealing intellectual property!bji - Monday, September 24, 2018 - link
How do you know they are Americans posting? Oh that's right you don't. Now whose prejudices are showing?CrispySilicon - Monday, September 24, 2018 - link
https://www.tomshardware.com/news/x86-hidden-god-m...I'm guessing that IP is going kept current..... (hint hint, nudge nudge, wink wink)
RaduR - Monday, September 24, 2018 - link
Used to love Cyrix (they somehow invented cache in 386DX era) . They were a small company that gave Intel & AMD a run for their money . They were kind of AMD of today (size wise compared to INTEL and AMD) . These guys were good.VIA has nothing to do with that great company , they just bought them.
Also that Nemiah Core with god mode is not developed by them , but bought from Centaur .
So VIA never made any CPU by themselves , just great South&Nortbridge at the time.
Now since they are chinese ( Taiwan whatever) they are playing the right cards.
VIA has great patents in their portfolio ( Cyrix, Centaur, S3) they should capitalize on that , they should have done it long ago. Having TSMC in the same country its amazing they waited so long.
wumpus - Thursday, September 27, 2018 - link
Cache was an old trick by then (the 68k had something like 512B of cache. Don't laugh, that's only half of what the 486DLC had...) and I'm pretty sure invented when computers were still using magnetic core memory (I'm sure I read about them EE textbooks written before the 80386 was announced).But yes, Cyrix was an impressive company. The biggest irony is that they got started by making a faster floating point processor than the 80287 (possibly the 80387, but I think they made both) but were really slagged on just how bad their Quake performance was.
And as far as I know, VIA shut Cyrix down right after they bought it. All they kept was the name and the patent porfolio.
RaduR - Tuesday, October 2, 2018 - link
Yes you are correct , this is the irony . The CPU was pretty good at the time (I had one , huge heatsink , FSB 75Mhz a lot of overclocking ) but the FPU was not that good. Actually Quake destroyed this company without knowing it.Old stories like 3DFx Vodoo & co :-) very funny that this still lives today in China.
I'm still surprised that chinese goverment is not buying ARM licence and produce whatever they want even big cores that run Linux without any problem. Why stick with x86 ?
oRAirwolf - Monday, September 24, 2018 - link
I am honestly kind of surprised that the Chinese government was willing to work with a Taiwanese company.serendip - Monday, September 24, 2018 - link
Foxconn has a massive presence in China and it's a Taiwanese company. You can't get to that size without having government support.mode_13h - Tuesday, September 25, 2018 - link
What GPU is that? In-house design? Vivante? Imagination PowerVR?wrkingclass_hero - Tuesday, September 25, 2018 - link
Umm... am I the only one who noticed that their claims of 50% performance improvement matches up perfectly with their operating speed being exactly 50% greater. It's basically the same chip in a new process and clocked higher.defaultluser - Tuesday, September 25, 2018 - link
Right, it's just a clock bump.Also, the "same compute" comparison between this and a Core i5 quad core is very suspect. That leads me to believe that single-threaded performance is only slightly higher than the Via Nano this is likely based on. So eight years later, Via Tech is still running-in-place and trying to throw more cores at the problem.
At least the clock speed will make this about as fast as 1st-generation Bulldozer.
wumpus - Thursday, September 27, 2018 - link
Things really shouldn't line up that exactly between 28nm and 16nm, and I'd be shocked silly if they managed to somehow get the L1 cache to act with exactly 50% lower latency (there are other issues, but that one really stands out. Same with the L2 cache, but that is more easily tweaked and the differences aren't so big).Of course, it might be mostly small changes done by engineers, and a lot more transistors added by the Verilog compiler. That's my guess. Certainly nothing like Nahelm to Sandy Bridge, more like Sandy Bridge to Ivy Bridge (I had to go back that far since I don't think they've had a significantly bigger difference than Sandy-Ivy to this day).
jrs77 - Tuesday, September 25, 2018 - link
China is pushing really hard to have it's own CPUs and other necessary PC-hardware. They don't want to be reliant on the US as the rest of the world when things get bad.The US so far has bascially the rest of the world by it's balls with it's IT-products, so it's advisable to research, engineer and manufacture your own hardware. China takes a shortcut and simply steals all the technologies not giving a damn about patents as usual. And it's pretty much the sane thing to actually.
wurryno - Tuesday, September 25, 2018 - link
They didn't steal from Via Tech.Same as Via, AMD and IBM have both licensed their IP to Chinese companies. Zen and Power9 respectively