I'm sure Marvel regrets selling rights to the X-Men & Spiderman to the various studios for the cash infusion. I wonder if AMD will similarly regret this, when more cash & resources come from "outside" sources to THATIC & the Hygon CPUs significantly improves over their initial Zen "licensing" deal.
How? The IP they got is for a GloFo manufacturing process, and GloFo are no longer able to deal with them. These weren't being produced in China, at least at the die level.
I was thinking if Hygon begins to improve and then eclipses AMD's own Ryzen/EPYC CPUs. Basically, you may have enabled a future competitor to jump over years/decades of in-house design with an initial starting design that would has a lot of advancements from the beginning. I'm sure it would still take years, but you would think that having one main competitor (Intel) is better than having 3-4.
@Retycint - Explain to me how you sue a Chinese company in the USA...should they fall foul of any 'agreements'. Remember the copied X5? I saw one with my own eyes - and have owned one - it was dead on copy. BMW lost that one in a Chinese court.
All they can do is try to copy the look, while everything underneath is garbage. The X5 clone with an inline-4 barely producing 110 hp or the real X5 with an inline-6 (230 hp) or V8 (340 hp). Of course, that's only power, you still have handling. If that's what you call a dead on copy, then this Hygon must be a dead on copy of Zen.
@ khanikun - I didn't stop the driver in the middle of Shanghai to ask him to show my under the hood. But, as a (then) X5 owner, I was looking at the same care, by my eyes.
Given that they were only given complete floorplans, it would take an awful lot of reverse engineering to get the core into any form that could be meaningfully improved upon.
Well, people seem willing to use Intel processors with the Management Engine subcomputer embedded, so... integrated spyware in hardware doesn't seem that far.
capacitors do come in different sizes, they also have them on enterprise ssds for the same reason as Someone else has stated. the one you linked to, is for car stereos, VERY different use cases.
It says 2.40 ounces, that's the shipping weight but for something seemingly the size of a thumbnail I don't think it needs to be 2.4 ounces, not even with packaging.
This is very possible. China has done this in a variety of other areas such as high speed rail, mass transit and aircraft design/manufacturing, letting foreign companies to bid to gain access to the Chinese market and taking their proprietary technology in the process (foreign companies must partner with a Chinese counterpart). Case in point, Chinese HSR train sets have now improved to the point that they supersede the Japanese designs they were originally based on.
That's how many countries do things. S.Korea's high speed trains originated from the French. Russia's high speed trains originated from the Germans. China's high speed trains originated from the Japanese, French, and Germans. You build upon what you learned and if they didn't want to make a new rival, they shouldn't have trained them on how to build high speed trains, just so they could try to gain a new market share.
I say just sell at a high price, to make up for these future losses, if you want to sell to China or ignore the market. Course that could also just wind up with the Chinese trying to steal your tech via hacking or whatever else.
This is the most excited I've ever gotten about someone violating import restrictions. There's a lot of strange stuff to parse through here.
1.) I'd be interested to see where the second battery's traces lead; that should help solve the mystery. 2.) I'd like to see Linux booted up and have a look at lscpu. That will probably be more helpful than CPU-Z for these chips. 3.) The Intel cooler thing is just bizarre. The cooler IP must not have been licensed, which is also an interesting nugget. 4.) I'd be very interested in having someone take a hard look at the chipset FPGA. 5.) Tangential, but I wonder if the BMC has been modified in any way.
The Intel cooler is indeed odd but it isn't unique. There is an AM4 with Intel LGA115x mounts: the Asrock X570 Phantom Gaming-ITX/TB3 is one such board.
I'll second the need to dig into the FGPA. If there is any major truth to what the tin-foil hatters are saying, that is the prime location to put a backdoor since that is reprogrammable. Outside of that, it does appear the consumer board has a SD card slot and a USB 3.0 header silk screened. I wonder if they were soldered on if they'd be active in any sort of capacity or if they're disabled out of necessity by not having enough resources on the FPGA.
I'll second that BMC differences would just be interesting.
I'm a bit surprised that the cooler mount even elicited as much as a raised eyebrow from Ian, as it's definitely been done before to utilize the smaller dimensions. Some things really are as obvious as they seem, and nothing more.
Is that a microSD slot? I was thinking it might be a SIM slot. Either way, super interesting, and I would love to see that FPGA bitstream analyzed. There are folks who can make some sense of such things, I am not one of them.
It's never been that WCCFtech couldn't produce quality journalism, it's just that 99% of the time they go for lowest denominator clickbait from the rumors of the day.
If you avoid the perpetual intel vs amd vs nvida vs samsung vs apple vs google vs ios vs android vs windows flamewar it can be decent. But the comment vomits on those articles make up 99.9% of the total site volume.
The way I have attempted to describe it is that the comment section is essentially a rolling IRC chat filled with bored teenagers attempting to out-troll each other. Whatever most recent post about Intel, AMD or Nvidia happens to show up is where the comments move to, with little to no regard given to actual article context.
It's kind of fascinating, and is absolutely a product of the utter lack of moderation.
Even ignoring the hyperbole in that comment (treason has a specific legal definition, involving actually being in a state of war), it isn't true: They got all applicable export licenses from the US government, AND even then, this article makes it pretty clear that they didn't give any Chinese company (or entity) the info they needed to start designing their own high-performance x86 cores in the future.
And even if they DID design those cores, China doesn't have a foundry to make them in.
That's in contrast to what a TON of other American companies have done when they create a joint venture to get to the Chinese market, where frequently significant amounts of IP find their way to Chinese companies.
The definition in common usage may change but sing_electric was specifically talking about the "legal definition" which does not change short of changing the law.
No, the context changes based on speaker, target audience, and tone. The definition of the words does NOT change. Language is not that fluid.
Claiming language means whatever you want it to mean is a common tactic imposed by those who would use your words against you at every possible opportunity to label you as a deragatory individual. Common vernacular does not change that rapidly.
>Claiming language means whatever you want it to mean is a common tactic imposed by those who would use your words against you at every possible opportunity to label you as a deragatory individual. Well said. I heard a similar saying before but I think this is better said.
"his article makes it pretty clear that they didn't give any Chinese company (or entity) the info they needed to start designing their own high-performance x86 cores in the future."
It DOES NOT make it clear at all. They provided the license to MODIFY the design as they see fit.
"That's in contrast to what a TON of other American companies have done when they create a joint venture to get to the Chinese market, where frequently significant amounts of IP find their way to Chinese companies."
what's loads of funny: if you were sentient at the time, yule remember that Nixon and his capitalist handlers lauded 'opening China' as access to their market by American companies. of course, those with any brains knew that China was really opened to provide billions of cheap labor bodies. hasn't changed yet.
Chinese production services provide closer and better customer support and customer oriented product development, know customer needs on lower (and middle) income levels (with knowing their own needs) on world wide comparison. Western companies complain about having less demand, but forget their own lack of flexibility and orientation towards customer needs? Give 'em protective duties or all more suitable environmental standards (but that won't be that big problem for future Chinese production also)?
China have foundries. SMIC is their biggest one. They're still limited, since all foundries are equipped with the machinery from few companies. Chinese foundries using Chinese machinery are about 15 years behind. They're at like 28 nm or something like that.
The convoluted scheme with AMD's part ownership of the Chinese companies looks like was specifically invented to prevent regulators from recognizing what was really happening.
It is still pretty dang clear: AMD Zen core goes in, China Zen core comes out. I don't think anyone didn't realize what AMD was doing, particularly as they crippled the processor.
The convoluted part-ownership scheme is because AMD can't sublicense their x86 license due to an ancient settlement with Intel. So they need to maintain >half ownership to keep Intel from suing them.
I know people that review these deals. They are smart and they aren't naive. That doesn't make them infallible, of course, but they are competent and take their job seriously.
It seems to me that you've got it backwards: This ownership structure was set up *specifically* to meet Chinese requirements for "made in China" certification (which the central government is really pushing pretty hard) while actually making as little in China as possible - even shipping dies to China for packaging.
Also, even if AMD *did* give IP to China, it's AMD's IP to give. It's not stealing if the owner gives it away. And it's not a betrayal of the USA, since the USA is supposed to be a free-market country that protects individual rights and liberties. If anyone is betraying the USA, it's the US federal government, since the US federal government would be violating Americans' rights and liberties by prohibiting voluntary market transactions (such as exports).
“ Lisa Su committed treason by exporting high tech IP to an enemy country“
I don’t understand why the US has so many sick psychopaths who see everyone as enemy. I wonder if they also see you as an enemy, do you think you would still be here spouting hate right now?
The chinese see themselves as above all other cultures, and are not only extremely racist towards those who ar enot chinese, but also employ methods such as concentration camps and "reeducation" facilities against those of certian religious and ethic backgrounds.
Don't assign the actions of the Chinese government to the people living in China in a broader sense. That is unfair to average people that are, just by nature of birth and physical location, part of the population you are giving the blanket title of racist. It's just as bad as calling everyone from Alabama a pickup truck owning, gun-brandishing redneck when we know quite well that there are reasonable, decent people living there that have to spend time contending with that label on a daily basis.
“ The chinese see themselves as above all other cultures, and are not only extremely racist towards those who ar enot chinese, ”
The first letter of any national should be capital. You’re a disrespectful person. China has thousands of years old culture. If I’m a Chinese, I would be proud of it. And there’s nothing wrong if they see themselves above other cultures because it’s the fact. They might be racists but who isn’t? If you’re talking about extreme racist, you should talk about Americans.
“ employ methods such as concentration camps and "reeducation" facilities against those of certian religious and ethic backgrounds.”
The US don’t need re-education facilities. MSM have been feeding BS to you since the day you were born. And it seems you did very good gobbling down all the BS. Now you’re only spouting fouls since you’re incapable of having any critical thinking.
You’re trying to say that you like most of the psychopaths in the US aren’t hateful but your comment shows that you are. Accusation without proof is the worst form of hatred you can give. Or maybe you’re just too stupid and lazy to find out the truth. So it’s much easier to repeat what CNN says.
Comrade sonny73n, you say "accusation without proof is the worst form of hatred" immediately after calling all americans psychopaths withut proof. You undermine your own argument, and the party expects better of you.
>And there’s nothing wrong if they see themselves above other cultures because it’s the fact. Wow, I can't imagine anybody other than a modern Red Guard(they're popping up here and there under Xi in case some people haven't noticed) saying this. These people hail the Party's words as gospel, blatantly disregarding the massive rift between the Party's words and actions, made possible only by the sore lack of accountability, in turn an inevitability stemming from the authoritarian and dictatorial nature of the regime. One proof of this is that in China you almost never win a lawsuit against the government, and you literally never win a lawsuit that leads to reforms in legislation, regardless of how the government tramples over its own laws to infringe on your rights. "Legal order" in China largely exists as excuses to prosecute the insubordinate. There's even statistics on the citation of legal code during lawsuits in China, and a conclusion was that ~90% of clauses have almost never been cited in practice, because they're effectively inapplicable. >If I’m a Chinese, I would be proud of it. This isn't outright denying that he's Chinese though.¯\_(ツ)_/¯
March 1st is the first day of a new round of crackdowns on flow of information in China, just more excuses to frame you with. https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&s... Yesterday though I personally witnessed a new mindfuck trick of the Party before my own eyes: if you try to upload an image to Wechat chat groups, it will be OCR'ed simultaneously, and if for whatever reason that meets whatever censorship standard your image is determined to be "sensitive", then it will meet one of at least four fates: 1. Fake upload: You thought you uploaded it, Wechat tells you that it's successfully sent, yet nobody in the group but you could see it. 2. Repost ban: The long press option of repost would be removed from an image. 3. Fake repost: People in the group you uploaded to could see it, but if you repost it to another group(which does not require another upload), it becomes invisible to people in that second group. 4. This is the good one: Within the same chat group, an image uploaded is only visible to certain people, and hidden from others!! I'd known the first two for quite a while, and discovered the last two yesterday, but the last one really throws a wrench into any serious discussion, especially regarding content that's wiped out from within the wall in the first place. I'm 100% certain of what I saw because regarding the fake repost issue, I was able to upload, and successfully repost an image(screenshot of a banned article) with a heavy gaussian blur, but the original was only visible to the initial group. Regarding the last issue, a guy uploaded three images, while I only saw two, and he tried uploading the missing one again, but it was still invisible to me, but all three were visible to the uploader himself and another guy in the chat group, so it's no glitch, it's intentional. I don't believe this was related to the March 1st regulations, it was most likely in place before that. The exact impact of this new legislation remains to be seen.
@ Theinsane... - I couldn't give a toss about the Muslims in China, and some might say they are 'getting some of what they deserve', after all the stabbings etc they have committed there at train stations etc, but that is by the by.
What I really wanted to say is you are dead-right on their supreamists, racist culture / attitude. This I've seen & heard with my own eyes and ears.
However, this (in my opinion), is largely the reserve of their 'elites', and government / party members.
The ordinary, everyday-Chinese, are actually nice to know.
The fun with Americans is that they start shouting and revolting for stuff that they suspect others are doing to them, when at the same time they happily do to their allies, not to mention brag about it.
The AMD/HMC/Hygon arrangement shows just how far companies will go to get the right "Made in X" on the label. No one with a sane mind and sound judgment would say that these chips were "made in China," or "designed in Chengdu" any more than anyone making a cake out of a box (with someone else's oven!) could claim that it was "homemade from scratch," just because they added in a little extra cocoa powder.
Nope. Only after the ban, when the subsidiary dissolved and some chips were able to leak out, were we able to obtain them. Up until that point it had been impossible.
With Global Foundries "diffusing" these CPUs in their NY fab and HMC now being a US sanctioned entity they cannot get more chips right now.
But as HMC has the RTL they don't really need AMD to port the chip to SMIC or TSMC (which is very willing to keep making chips for Huawei).
So at most this means that by 2022 China will have a sanction-proof high performance X86 chip (they already have the IP of the VIA Zhaoxin) and by 2025-2030 they could have a "new" derivative implementation with that achieves parity with Intel and AMD's future chips.
I would agree if Intel and AMD stop improving there designs which they won't. The other possibility is that we stop seeing foundry improvements then at that point I could see China get a little closer but that is over a decade out.
With enough money & will, couldn't they get a foundry in a couple of years? China's in it for the long game, and I can't imagine their gov't not being prepared to build one after they feel they have working designs.
There's like one company that makes the machinery for the newest process nodes. Do you think they will risk guaranteed sales to the likes of Intel and AMD and sell their equipment to China? And if you think China has the ability to right now design and build a 7nm, let alone a 10nm, production facility from scratch, designing all the equipment on their own - think again.
Just because of US intervention ASML stopped on the pretext of Wassennar Arrangement + US lobby to Netherlands govt.
SMIC had violated TSMC IP and has settled for 10% stake and $200M. It was formed to produce 40nm Wafer tech. But it exists.
Innotron and JHICC are DRAM specific manufacturers. Wallst from US sold out US long back and not to steer to much into racial talk. The Elites allowed it.
US retaliation this late aint going to stop Chinese at all. Their Tanks are from Russian tech reverse engineered and Jets as well. That's Military Technology.
Just food for thought you know. At max US can slow down. But with crony capitalism like Apple due to greed they sold out. They allowed Guizhou Cloud to get keys and make all anti liberty tech which people love and push propaganda on their AppleTV. Its a shame. So AMDs part is very minor after seeing that DoD and Commerce gave free path to AMD.
"By first creating a joint venture with other Chinese companies called THATIC, then by forming two companies called HMC and Hygon each owned in different amounts between AMD and THATIC, how each business was able to discuss and control parts of the IP was sculpted in order to keep the secret sauce still in AMD’s hands, but allow the Chinese side of the ventures to request modifications"
Sounds like a recipe to circumvent US regulations or fool US regulators that the IP is not being sold to China for cheap ($200M is NOTHING for a modern core design which is a culmination of tens of years of R&D and tens of billions of USD). Especially with AMD having 51% share of THAIC, they were essentially paying themselves - while CHINA was getting all the IP.
Imagine thinking that you, as a random nobody, know more than the DoD, DoC and various other governmental agencies who actually have access to the full details of the arrangement.
Governments make really stupid decisions all the time. Haven't you noticed that? Also, the decisions that governments make don't always align well with the needs and desires of others, such as the vast majority of the populations they ostensibly represent.
It was designed to give Intel the finger. Their ancient settlement with Intel prohibits them from sublicensing the x86. They needed to maintain legal ownership at multiple stages for this project to not get them sued by Intel.
RDRAND isn't just a PRNG, it's still supposed to be based on true randomness. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RDRAND It being faster doesn't necessarily indicate lower quality. See https://crypto.stackexchange.com/questions/29894/a... for some hardware details on the circuit AMD uses to turn analogue noise into digital randomness. (Apparently sampling asynchronous ring oscillators, and feeding that through some digital mixing functions (e.g. a hash) to "whiten" the result. Intel's design is similar, but based on sampling thermal noise.)
RDSEED is merely even higher-quality randomness, suitable for seeding a PRNG instead of using directly. (It does not, as you mis-state, seed RDRAND. It's just a differently-processed way of pulling data from the same true HW randomness). Also unlike Linux /dev/random, it doesn't collect randomness from "various sources" into an entropy pool; my understanding is that all the randomness comes from a true HW RNG.
Perhaps they had to redesign (for export-control reasons) the digital mixing functions that "whiten" the hardware randomness? A much more conservative approach for RDSEED could easily explain it being much slower, like if they didn't want to trust AMD's design not to have NSA back-doors. Or simply a lower-effort or less skilled redesign by a 3rd party that wasn't part of the original design could account for it.
AMD Zen had some RDRAND bugs (like always returning -1 in some conditions) that were fixed by microcode updates; perhaps Hygon fixed that in hardware instead of microcode if there was any problem that AMD used to need to work around?
Good job in calming the concerns of many, and we appreciate it. However, nothing can change the fact that valuable American technology was transferred to a foreign and potentially hostile power, who is led by a dictatorship that violates #humanrights on a daily basis, yes continental China. Equally problematic is the fact that for a few dollars, AMD shoots on its feet, no turning back on that. It is evident that such disgrace took place under a very weak administration at home, in the current administration watch that wouldn’t happen, ever. So glad they close the deal for good!
"Equally problematic is the fact that for a few dollars, AMD shoots on its feet, no turning back on that."
How exactly did they do that? They shared designs based on their older (outdated), slower Zen core. As you can plainly see in this review, Hygon's processors are not exact setting the world on fire in terms of performance. They're slower than 3 year old Zen 1 processors and significantly slower than any Zen 2, or soon, Zen 3 processors. You're making a mountain out of a mole hill.
Perhaps, but also consider that some of the world's leading supercomputers were made with Piledriver CPUs.
Journalists like Hruska never miss an opportunity to mock AMD for its "construction core" debacle but when they talk about the poor performance of the parts they never mention how many supercomputers used them successfully. Sometimes being cheap and adequate is enough, especially when paired with high-performance GPUs.
I wouldn't be so sure that the "transfer of American tech to a foreign hostile power" won't happen under the current administration, given that they seem to have a special affinity for the Russians
>they seem to have a special affinity for the Russians Not "they", but "he". What exactly has he transferred to Russia that hasn't been stopped by congress?
I agree with the other guy. Trump was elected with promises among which reining back global military intervention was one of them, and I believe this is honestly one of his personal stances. Ukraine was a member of the USSR, one of the closest to Moscow, I would say it was quite greedy for NATO to try to turn Ukraine(do you really need to shit on their doorsteps?) and not a core interest of the US to see that through bearing the risks that come with military intervention.
Feel like I'm in a bizarro world entering this comments section. You're not the only one, but you in particular have managed to demonstrate a lack of both basic reading comprehension and general knowledge of the semiconductor market in the span of just five nearly incoherent sentences. It's like you have the memory of a goldfish with a laser focus on missing the point on any topic in order to verify your worldview, truly astonishing.
I love how people immediately jump into conclusions about the administration, despite knowing absolutely nothing. Dunning-Kruger effect at full force here
“ It’s amusing that this menu is called ‘Moksha Common Options’. Moksha being a word commonly associated with ‘enlightenment’ or ‘release’. This is either a clever word play, or someone digging out a non-contextual old Chinese to English dictionary in translation.“
Moksha is a Sanskrit word, the oldest language in the world, its not Chinese.
"Before everyone leaps to ‘creating backdoors for the Chinese government"
Yes, because apparently the first thing China demanded of AMD was the removal of PSP, a backdoor created for the American government (to spy on Americans and others).
well said. Virtually all governments are spying on people, b/c that their job to watch for bad people, whatever they see fits. If people want to complain about that, go complain to the officers who scan your body with x-ray machine in the airport. In addition, from a tech point of view, the American government has the most advanced technology.
It is interesting to see so many people in the U.S. believe that people from other country, which is thousands of miles away, are actively planning to come and take away their sh*t, while their own government launched so many wars over the last 300 years in which they took land from the Mexicans, the Spanish, and oil from the people in the Mideast. Not to mention that the Wall street bankers and politicians in the capital hill are actively taking the American's tax money and send them to big corporations.
Great article Ian/Wendell, really informative write-up on a super interesting topic!
I still can't believe that AMD was able to get the DoC, DoD, et al to sign off on this deal. And that Intel did not do a single thing to stop it. The tech may have been old, and AMD may have obfuscated its IP as much as possible, but still...as you Ian/Wendell said, one of the oddest annals of the history of semis.
I mentioned earlier that elites allowed it. Guess who ? The clue is Intel Israel. I believe the old Intel is dead esp with all the PC drivel going on in thr HR dept and BK firing pretext.
Hopefully you enabled the C-states that show as disabled in that options photo before benchmarking, as otherwise it almost certainly wouldn't be able to boost to good levels for single-threaded or low-core-count operation (because all the cores are in C0).
Did Wendell write "the charismatic Wendell" line?.....;) One of the reasons I enjoy Wendell so much is that he's such a ham--he's entertaining, rather than "charismatic", I think. A definite win for Wendell!
Actually, it never crossed my mind that AMD would have been so foolish as to sell Zen1 to China--it's nice to see I was right. Good write-up!
"What AMD did was license a single core design to HMC, along with an SoC layout. From this point on, AMD is officially ‘hands-off’,"
"The final product out of this spider web of arrangements is the Hygon Dhyana x86 core, an ‘updated Zen core for China’"
I'm confused. If it's x86, Intel needs to SUE immediately and report this to US govt. Can it run x86 code or not? If so, they should be sued. I don't get what you're saying here, how is it NOT illegal?
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ingwe - Thursday, February 27, 2020 - link
Interesting and cool that you were able to test it! This is definitely one of the reasons why I come to anandtech.sandtitz - Thursday, February 27, 2020 - link
"if you find anything out, we may confirm it"Ian, did you ask AMD for confirmation then?
romrunning - Thursday, February 27, 2020 - link
I'm sure Marvel regrets selling rights to the X-Men & Spiderman to the various studios for the cash infusion. I wonder if AMD will similarly regret this, when more cash & resources come from "outside" sources to THATIC & the Hygon CPUs significantly improves over their initial Zen "licensing" deal.ArcadeEngineer - Thursday, February 27, 2020 - link
How? The IP they got is for a GloFo manufacturing process, and GloFo are no longer able to deal with them. These weren't being produced in China, at least at the die level.romrunning - Thursday, February 27, 2020 - link
I was thinking if Hygon begins to improve and then eclipses AMD's own Ryzen/EPYC CPUs. Basically, you may have enabled a future competitor to jump over years/decades of in-house design with an initial starting design that would has a lot of advancements from the beginning. I'm sure it would still take years, but you would think that having one main competitor (Intel) is better than having 3-4.FreckledTrout - Thursday, February 27, 2020 - link
Possible but very unlikely. Especially seeing who this IP went to and there lack of innovation and creativity.Stuka87 - Thursday, February 27, 2020 - link
I am sure there is some pretty specific text in the agreement that very much limits what Hygon can and cannot do with the design.Holliday75 - Thursday, February 27, 2020 - link
Yeah its not like China is known for IP theft and producing counterfeit products the world over.Retycint - Thursday, February 27, 2020 - link
This is the x86 IP we're talking about here, and I wager this agreement is going to be taken a lot more seriously than some random startup's patentNotmyusualid - Sunday, March 1, 2020 - link
@Retycint - Explain to me how you sue a Chinese company in the USA...should they fall foul of any 'agreements'. Remember the copied X5? I saw one with my own eyes - and have owned one - it was dead on copy. BMW lost that one in a Chinese court.khanikun - Monday, March 2, 2020 - link
lol, dead on copy.All they can do is try to copy the look, while everything underneath is garbage. The X5 clone with an inline-4 barely producing 110 hp or the real X5 with an inline-6 (230 hp) or V8 (340 hp). Of course, that's only power, you still have handling. If that's what you call a dead on copy, then this Hygon must be a dead on copy of Zen.
Notmyusualid - Sunday, March 8, 2020 - link
@ khanikun - I didn't stop the driver in the middle of Shanghai to ask him to show my under the hood. But, as a (then) X5 owner, I was looking at the same care, by my eyes.TheinsanegamerN - Friday, February 28, 2020 - link
It not like China is known to struggle with producing counterfiet products of any type of technological complexity.bigvlada - Saturday, February 29, 2020 - link
Depends on the type of industry. They still struggle to build domestic equivalent of Russian Sukhoi jet fighter engines.s.yu - Sunday, March 1, 2020 - link
That's a bit too specific.Dolda2000 - Thursday, February 27, 2020 - link
Given that they were only given complete floorplans, it would take an awful lot of reverse engineering to get the core into any form that could be meaningfully improved upon.d0x360 - Thursday, February 27, 2020 - link
Even if such a thing happened who outside of china would ever use it? Surely it has hardware based spyware. There's no way I'd use this for anythingRetycint - Thursday, February 27, 2020 - link
That's a rather bold assumption to make, given that these CPUs haven't even been released yet.Lord of the Bored - Friday, February 28, 2020 - link
Well, people seem willing to use Intel processors with the Management Engine subcomputer embedded, so... integrated spyware in hardware doesn't seem that far.Notmyusualid - Sunday, March 8, 2020 - link
@ Lord - excellent point, and not me. You even made me re-check mine.sonny73n - Friday, February 28, 2020 - link
“ Surely it has hardware based spyware. There's no way I'd use this for anything”Only idiots make false accusations without any proof in public.
Why would anyone wants to spy on a foul-mouth imbecile like you?
Lord of the Bored - Saturday, February 29, 2020 - link
Ironically, comrade sonny73n, you're the one being foul-mouthed. Not d0x360.Morawka - Friday, February 28, 2020 - link
The additional and permanent hard-wired coin-cell battery makes me suspicious that it's there for backdoor access.Someone else - Sunday, March 1, 2020 - link
There is no second battery, there is a 1.0 F supercapacitator that properly powers the SRAM of the FPGA.FunBunny2 - Sunday, March 1, 2020 - link
"a 1.0 F supercapacitator"yeah. right. https://www.amazon.com/Rockford-RFC1-1-Farad-Capac...
3.2 pounds 13 x 9.5 x 4 in
Qasar - Sunday, March 1, 2020 - link
capacitors do come in different sizes, they also have them on enterprise ssds for the same reason as Someone else has stated. the one you linked to, is for car stereos, VERY different use cases.FunBunny2 - Sunday, March 1, 2020 - link
" VERY different use cases."a Farad is still a Farad, so someone is fibbing.
29a - Monday, March 2, 2020 - link
https://www.amazon.com/1-Farad-Capacitor/dp/B00070...Boy that was hard to find.
Qasar - Monday, March 2, 2020 - link
29a, exactly.Qasar - Monday, March 2, 2020 - link
the size alone shows that.go look at ssds for the enterprise market with the power back up feature, and you will see.
s.yu - Tuesday, March 3, 2020 - link
It says 2.40 ounces, that's the shipping weight but for something seemingly the size of a thumbnail I don't think it needs to be 2.4 ounces, not even with packaging.This 6 count battery bundle seems to have a shipping weight of 0.8 ounce.
https://www.amazon.com/Energizer-2032-BP-6-6-pack/...
Shadow7037932 - Sunday, March 8, 2020 - link
If you look at the datasheet, this CPLD doesn't need RAM backup. It's using Non volatile flash to store the config.Shadow7037932 - Sunday, March 8, 2020 - link
People in Asia/S.E. Area are using devices with HiSilicon Kirin SoCs, so I doubt they'll have issues exporting it.Soppro - Sunday, March 1, 2020 - link
This is very possible. China has done this in a variety of other areas such as high speed rail, mass transit and aircraft design/manufacturing, letting foreign companies to bid to gain access to the Chinese market and taking their proprietary technology in the process (foreign companies must partner with a Chinese counterpart). Case in point, Chinese HSR train sets have now improved to the point that they supersede the Japanese designs they were originally based on.khanikun - Monday, March 2, 2020 - link
That's how many countries do things. S.Korea's high speed trains originated from the French. Russia's high speed trains originated from the Germans. China's high speed trains originated from the Japanese, French, and Germans. You build upon what you learned and if they didn't want to make a new rival, they shouldn't have trained them on how to build high speed trains, just so they could try to gain a new market share.I say just sell at a high price, to make up for these future losses, if you want to sell to China or ignore the market. Course that could also just wind up with the Chinese trying to steal your tech via hacking or whatever else.
evernessince - Thursday, February 27, 2020 - link
Licensed, not sold.SSNSeawolf - Thursday, February 27, 2020 - link
This is the most excited I've ever gotten about someone violating import restrictions. There's a lot of strange stuff to parse through here.1.) I'd be interested to see where the second battery's traces lead; that should help solve the mystery.
2.) I'd like to see Linux booted up and have a look at lscpu. That will probably be more helpful than CPU-Z for these chips.
3.) The Intel cooler thing is just bizarre. The cooler IP must not have been licensed, which is also an interesting nugget.
4.) I'd be very interested in having someone take a hard look at the chipset FPGA.
5.) Tangential, but I wonder if the BMC has been modified in any way.
Kevin G - Thursday, February 27, 2020 - link
The Intel cooler is indeed odd but it isn't unique. There is an AM4 with Intel LGA115x mounts: the Asrock X570 Phantom Gaming-ITX/TB3 is one such board.I'll second the need to dig into the FGPA. If there is any major truth to what the tin-foil hatters are saying, that is the prime location to put a backdoor since that is reprogrammable. Outside of that, it does appear the consumer board has a SD card slot and a USB 3.0 header silk screened. I wonder if they were soldered on if they'd be active in any sort of capacity or if they're disabled out of necessity by not having enough resources on the FPGA.
I'll second that BMC differences would just be interesting.
Slash3 - Thursday, February 27, 2020 - link
I'm a bit surprised that the cooler mount even elicited as much as a raised eyebrow from Ian, as it's definitely been done before to utilize the smaller dimensions. Some things really are as obvious as they seem, and nothing more.myself248 - Wednesday, March 18, 2020 - link
Is that a microSD slot? I was thinking it might be a SIM slot. Either way, super interesting, and I would love to see that FPGA bitstream analyzed. There are folks who can make some sense of such things, I am not one of them.drexnx - Thursday, February 27, 2020 - link
Never thought I'd see the day Anandtech credits WCCFtech(not that it isn't due, it's just surprising)
DanNeely - Thursday, February 27, 2020 - link
It's never been that WCCFtech couldn't produce quality journalism, it's just that 99% of the time they go for lowest denominator clickbait from the rumors of the day.drexnx - Thursday, February 27, 2020 - link
it's not like I don't open a WCCF tab right after opening my Anandtech tab every day ;)the commentariat there though, hoo boy.
DanNeely - Thursday, February 27, 2020 - link
If you avoid the perpetual intel vs amd vs nvida vs samsung vs apple vs google vs ios vs android vs windows flamewar it can be decent. But the comment vomits on those articles make up 99.9% of the total site volume.Slash3 - Thursday, February 27, 2020 - link
The way I have attempted to describe it is that the comment section is essentially a rolling IRC chat filled with bored teenagers attempting to out-troll each other. Whatever most recent post about Intel, AMD or Nvidia happens to show up is where the comments move to, with little to no regard given to actual article context.It's kind of fascinating, and is absolutely a product of the utter lack of moderation.
peevee - Thursday, February 27, 2020 - link
Lisa Su committed treason by exporting high tech IP to an enemy country.drexnx - Thursday, February 27, 2020 - link
except she didn't, and if you read the article, it's clear these chips were neutered.sing_electric - Thursday, February 27, 2020 - link
Even ignoring the hyperbole in that comment (treason has a specific legal definition, involving actually being in a state of war), it isn't true: They got all applicable export licenses from the US government, AND even then, this article makes it pretty clear that they didn't give any Chinese company (or entity) the info they needed to start designing their own high-performance x86 cores in the future.And even if they DID design those cores, China doesn't have a foundry to make them in.
That's in contrast to what a TON of other American companies have done when they create a joint venture to get to the Chinese market, where frequently significant amounts of IP find their way to Chinese companies.
bcronce - Thursday, February 27, 2020 - link
The definition of a word changes based on context, including speaker, target audience, and tone. There is no one definition.Ratman6161 - Thursday, February 27, 2020 - link
The definition in common usage may change but sing_electric was specifically talking about the "legal definition" which does not change short of changing the law.TheinsanegamerN - Friday, February 28, 2020 - link
No, the context changes based on speaker, target audience, and tone. The definition of the words does NOT change. Language is not that fluid.Claiming language means whatever you want it to mean is a common tactic imposed by those who would use your words against you at every possible opportunity to label you as a deragatory individual. Common vernacular does not change that rapidly.
s.yu - Sunday, March 1, 2020 - link
>Claiming language means whatever you want it to mean is a common tactic imposed by those who would use your words against you at every possible opportunity to label you as a deragatory individual.Well said.
I heard a similar saying before but I think this is better said.
peevee - Thursday, February 27, 2020 - link
"his article makes it pretty clear that they didn't give any Chinese company (or entity) the info they needed to start designing their own high-performance x86 cores in the future."It DOES NOT make it clear at all. They provided the license to MODIFY the design as they see fit.
Ian Cutress - Thursday, February 27, 2020 - link
Any requested modifications had to be pre-approved by AMD / AMD's side of HMC.FunBunny2 - Saturday, February 29, 2020 - link
"That's in contrast to what a TON of other American companies have done when they create a joint venture to get to the Chinese market, where frequently significant amounts of IP find their way to Chinese companies."what's loads of funny: if you were sentient at the time, yule remember that Nixon and his capitalist handlers lauded 'opening China' as access to their market by American companies. of course, those with any brains knew that China was really opened to provide billions of cheap labor bodies. hasn't changed yet.
back2future - Sunday, March 1, 2020 - link
Chinese production services provide closer and better customer support and customer oriented product development, know customer needs on lower (and middle) income levels (with knowing their own needs) on world wide comparison.Western companies complain about having less demand, but forget their own lack of flexibility and orientation towards customer needs? Give 'em protective duties or all more suitable environmental standards (but that won't be that big problem for future Chinese production also)?
khanikun - Monday, March 2, 2020 - link
China have foundries. SMIC is their biggest one. They're still limited, since all foundries are equipped with the machinery from few companies. Chinese foundries using Chinese machinery are about 15 years behind. They're at like 28 nm or something like that.FreckledTrout - Thursday, February 27, 2020 - link
AMD was given the green light to do this by the DoD and DoC. Seriously, read the article first comment second.peevee - Thursday, February 27, 2020 - link
The convoluted scheme with AMD's part ownership of the Chinese companies looks like was specifically invented to prevent regulators from recognizing what was really happening.itsmydamnation - Thursday, February 27, 2020 - link
thats not even remotely a complex company structure, you want to see an actual complex company structure try the old CVC (F1) strcture. https://joesaward.wordpress.com/2011/05/03/news-co...Lord of the Bored - Friday, February 28, 2020 - link
It is still pretty dang clear: AMD Zen core goes in, China Zen core comes out. I don't think anyone didn't realize what AMD was doing, particularly as they crippled the processor.The convoluted part-ownership scheme is because AMD can't sublicense their x86 license due to an ancient settlement with Intel. So they need to maintain >half ownership to keep Intel from suing them.
sing_electric - Friday, February 28, 2020 - link
I know people that review these deals. They are smart and they aren't naive. That doesn't make them infallible, of course, but they are competent and take their job seriously.It seems to me that you've got it backwards: This ownership structure was set up *specifically* to meet Chinese requirements for "made in China" certification (which the central government is really pushing pretty hard) while actually making as little in China as possible - even shipping dies to China for packaging.
Mikewind Dale - Thursday, February 27, 2020 - link
Also, even if AMD *did* give IP to China, it's AMD's IP to give. It's not stealing if the owner gives it away. And it's not a betrayal of the USA, since the USA is supposed to be a free-market country that protects individual rights and liberties. If anyone is betraying the USA, it's the US federal government, since the US federal government would be violating Americans' rights and liberties by prohibiting voluntary market transactions (such as exports).sonny73n - Friday, February 28, 2020 - link
“ Lisa Su committed treason by exporting high tech IP to an enemy country“I don’t understand why the US has so many sick psychopaths who see everyone as enemy. I wonder if they also see you as an enemy, do you think you would still be here spouting hate right now?
TheinsanegamerN - Friday, February 28, 2020 - link
The chinese see themselves as above all other cultures, and are not only extremely racist towards those who ar enot chinese, but also employ methods such as concentration camps and "reeducation" facilities against those of certian religious and ethic backgrounds.but sure, prattle on about how hateful the US is.
PeachNCream - Friday, February 28, 2020 - link
Don't assign the actions of the Chinese government to the people living in China in a broader sense. That is unfair to average people that are, just by nature of birth and physical location, part of the population you are giving the blanket title of racist. It's just as bad as calling everyone from Alabama a pickup truck owning, gun-brandishing redneck when we know quite well that there are reasonable, decent people living there that have to spend time contending with that label on a daily basis.yannigr2 - Friday, February 28, 2020 - link
Trying to find the wrongs to others, is just an excuse to hide your wrongs.Look, they (Chinese) are worst that us (Americans).
Don't expect much support with that kind of logic. The lesser evil is not good.
sonny73n - Saturday, February 29, 2020 - link
“ The chinese see themselves as above all other cultures, and are not only extremely racist towards those who ar enot chinese, ”The first letter of any national should be capital. You’re a disrespectful person.
China has thousands of years old culture. If I’m a Chinese, I would be proud of it. And there’s nothing wrong if they see themselves above other cultures because it’s the fact.
They might be racists but who isn’t? If you’re talking about extreme racist, you should talk about Americans.
“ employ methods such as concentration camps and "reeducation" facilities against those of certian religious and ethic backgrounds.”
The US don’t need re-education facilities. MSM have been feeding BS to you since the day you were born. And it seems you did very good gobbling down all the BS. Now you’re only spouting fouls since you’re incapable of having any critical thinking.
You’re trying to say that you like most of the psychopaths in the US aren’t hateful but your comment shows that you are. Accusation without proof is the worst form of hatred you can give. Or maybe you’re just too stupid and lazy to find out the truth. So it’s much easier to repeat what CNN says.
Lord of the Bored - Saturday, February 29, 2020 - link
Comrade sonny73n, you say "accusation without proof is the worst form of hatred" immediately after calling all americans psychopaths withut proof. You undermine your own argument, and the party expects better of you.s.yu - Sunday, March 1, 2020 - link
>And there’s nothing wrong if they see themselves above other cultures because it’s the fact.Wow, I can't imagine anybody other than a modern Red Guard(they're popping up here and there under Xi in case some people haven't noticed) saying this.
These people hail the Party's words as gospel, blatantly disregarding the massive rift between the Party's words and actions, made possible only by the sore lack of accountability, in turn an inevitability stemming from the authoritarian and dictatorial nature of the regime. One proof of this is that in China you almost never win a lawsuit against the government, and you literally never win a lawsuit that leads to reforms in legislation, regardless of how the government tramples over its own laws to infringe on your rights. "Legal order" in China largely exists as excuses to prosecute the insubordinate. There's even statistics on the citation of legal code during lawsuits in China, and a conclusion was that ~90% of clauses have almost never been cited in practice, because they're effectively inapplicable.
>If I’m a Chinese, I would be proud of it.
This isn't outright denying that he's Chinese though.¯\_(ツ)_/¯
March 1st is the first day of a new round of crackdowns on flow of information in China, just more excuses to frame you with.
https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&s...
Yesterday though I personally witnessed a new mindfuck trick of the Party before my own eyes: if you try to upload an image to Wechat chat groups, it will be OCR'ed simultaneously, and if for whatever reason that meets whatever censorship standard your image is determined to be "sensitive", then it will meet one of at least four fates:
1. Fake upload: You thought you uploaded it, Wechat tells you that it's successfully sent, yet nobody in the group but you could see it.
2. Repost ban: The long press option of repost would be removed from an image.
3. Fake repost: People in the group you uploaded to could see it, but if you repost it to another group(which does not require another upload), it becomes invisible to people in that second group.
4. This is the good one: Within the same chat group, an image uploaded is only visible to certain people, and hidden from others!!
I'd known the first two for quite a while, and discovered the last two yesterday, but the last one really throws a wrench into any serious discussion, especially regarding content that's wiped out from within the wall in the first place.
I'm 100% certain of what I saw because regarding the fake repost issue, I was able to upload, and successfully repost an image(screenshot of a banned article) with a heavy gaussian blur, but the original was only visible to the initial group. Regarding the last issue, a guy uploaded three images, while I only saw two, and he tried uploading the missing one again, but it was still invisible to me, but all three were visible to the uploader himself and another guy in the chat group, so it's no glitch, it's intentional.
I don't believe this was related to the March 1st regulations, it was most likely in place before that. The exact impact of this new legislation remains to be seen.
Notmyusualid - Sunday, March 1, 2020 - link
@ Theinsane... - I couldn't give a toss about the Muslims in China, and some might say they are 'getting some of what they deserve', after all the stabbings etc they have committed there at train stations etc, but that is by the by.What I really wanted to say is you are dead-right on their supreamists, racist culture / attitude. This I've seen & heard with my own eyes and ears.
However, this (in my opinion), is largely the reserve of their 'elites', and government / party members.
The ordinary, everyday-Chinese, are actually nice to know.
Notmyusualid - Sunday, March 1, 2020 - link
@ me - bloody spell-check!yannigr2 - Friday, February 28, 2020 - link
The fun with Americans is that they start shouting and revolting for stuff that they suspect others are doing to them, when at the same time they happily do to their allies, not to mention brag about it.sing_electric - Thursday, February 27, 2020 - link
The AMD/HMC/Hygon arrangement shows just how far companies will go to get the right "Made in X" on the label. No one with a sane mind and sound judgment would say that these chips were "made in China," or "designed in Chengdu" any more than anyone making a cake out of a box (with someone else's oven!) could claim that it was "homemade from scratch," just because they added in a little extra cocoa powder.soliloquist - Thursday, February 27, 2020 - link
Excellent write-up. Very interesting and informative. Thanks!crimson117 - Thursday, February 27, 2020 - link
Typo? "and only then we were able to obtain the chips due to the current US Entity List ban"shouldn't it be: "and only then we were **unable** to obtain the chips due to the current US Entity List ban"
Ian Cutress - Thursday, February 27, 2020 - link
Nope. Only after the ban, when the subsidiary dissolved and some chips were able to leak out, were we able to obtain them. Up until that point it had been impossible.crimson117 - Thursday, February 27, 2020 - link
Thanks, that makes more sense.kobblestown - Thursday, February 27, 2020 - link
What about some Linux benchmarks? At least the Plus version should perform much better on Linux. Also, why not show performance for single socket?Ian Cutress - Thursday, February 27, 2020 - link
Wendell is going to cover some Linux in his review no doubt, so I left that to him.Arsenica - Thursday, February 27, 2020 - link
With Global Foundries "diffusing" these CPUs in their NY fab and HMC now being a US sanctioned entity they cannot get more chips right now.But as HMC has the RTL they don't really need AMD to port the chip to SMIC or TSMC (which is very willing to keep making chips for Huawei).
So at most this means that by 2022 China will have a sanction-proof high performance X86 chip (they already have the IP of the VIA Zhaoxin) and by 2025-2030 they could have a "new" derivative implementation with that achieves parity with Intel and AMD's future chips.
FreckledTrout - Thursday, February 27, 2020 - link
I would agree if Intel and AMD stop improving there designs which they won't. The other possibility is that we stop seeing foundry improvements then at that point I could see China get a little closer but that is over a decade out.romrunning - Thursday, February 27, 2020 - link
With enough money & will, couldn't they get a foundry in a couple of years? China's in it for the long game, and I can't imagine their gov't not being prepared to build one after they feel they have working designs.rrinker - Thursday, February 27, 2020 - link
There's like one company that makes the machinery for the newest process nodes. Do you think they will risk guaranteed sales to the likes of Intel and AMD and sell their equipment to China? And if you think China has the ability to right now design and build a 7nm, let alone a 10nm, production facility from scratch, designing all the equipment on their own - think again.Quantumz0d - Thursday, February 27, 2020 - link
Just because of US intervention ASML stopped on the pretext of Wassennar Arrangement + US lobby to Netherlands govt.SMIC had violated TSMC IP and has settled for 10% stake and $200M. It was formed to produce 40nm Wafer tech. But it exists.
Innotron and JHICC are DRAM specific manufacturers. Wallst from US sold out US long back and not to steer to much into racial talk. The Elites allowed it.
US retaliation this late aint going to stop Chinese at all. Their Tanks are from Russian tech reverse engineered and Jets as well. That's Military Technology.
Just food for thought you know. At max US can slow down. But with crony capitalism like Apple due to greed they sold out. They allowed Guizhou Cloud to get keys and make all anti liberty tech which people love and push propaganda on their AppleTV. Its a shame. So AMDs part is very minor after seeing that DoD and Commerce gave free path to AMD.
peevee - Thursday, February 27, 2020 - link
"By first creating a joint venture with other Chinese companies called THATIC, then by forming two companies called HMC and Hygon each owned in different amounts between AMD and THATIC, how each business was able to discuss and control parts of the IP was sculpted in order to keep the secret sauce still in AMD’s hands, but allow the Chinese side of the ventures to request modifications"Sounds like a recipe to circumvent US regulations or fool US regulators that the IP is not being sold to China for cheap ($200M is NOTHING for a modern core design which is a culmination of tens of years of R&D and tens of billions of USD). Especially with AMD having 51% share of THAIC, they were essentially paying themselves - while CHINA was getting all the IP.
Retycint - Thursday, February 27, 2020 - link
Imagine thinking that you, as a random nobody, know more than the DoD, DoC and various other governmental agencies who actually have access to the full details of the arrangement.Oxford Guy - Thursday, February 27, 2020 - link
Appeal to authority fallacy.Governments make really stupid decisions all the time. Haven't you noticed that? Also, the decisions that governments make don't always align well with the needs and desires of others, such as the vast majority of the populations they ostensibly represent.
Notmyusualid - Sunday, March 1, 2020 - link
@ Oxford +1.Lord of the Bored - Friday, February 28, 2020 - link
It was designed to give Intel the finger. Their ancient settlement with Intel prohibits them from sublicensing the x86. They needed to maintain legal ownership at multiple stages for this project to not get them sued by Intel.anarekist - Thursday, February 27, 2020 - link
that was a great and detailed article, very much appreciated.Notmyusualid - Sunday, March 1, 2020 - link
I very much enjoyed it also.PeterCordes - Thursday, February 27, 2020 - link
RDRAND isn't just a PRNG, it's still supposed to be based on true randomness. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RDRANDIt being faster doesn't necessarily indicate lower quality. See https://crypto.stackexchange.com/questions/29894/a... for some hardware details on the circuit AMD uses to turn analogue noise into digital randomness. (Apparently sampling asynchronous ring oscillators, and feeding that through some digital mixing functions (e.g. a hash) to "whiten" the result. Intel's design is similar, but based on sampling thermal noise.)
RDSEED is merely even higher-quality randomness, suitable for seeding a PRNG instead of using directly. (It does not, as you mis-state, seed RDRAND. It's just a differently-processed way of pulling data from the same true HW randomness). Also unlike Linux /dev/random, it doesn't collect randomness from "various sources" into an entropy pool; my understanding is that all the randomness comes from a true HW RNG.
Perhaps they had to redesign (for export-control reasons) the digital mixing functions that "whiten" the hardware randomness? A much more conservative approach for RDSEED could easily explain it being much slower, like if they didn't want to trust AMD's design not to have NSA back-doors. Or simply a lower-effort or less skilled redesign by a 3rd party that wasn't part of the original design could account for it.
AMD Zen had some RDRAND bugs (like always returning -1 in some conditions) that were fixed by microcode updates; perhaps Hygon fixed that in hardware instead of microcode if there was any problem that AMD used to need to work around?
Duto - Thursday, February 27, 2020 - link
Good job in calming the concerns of many, and we appreciate it. However, nothing can change the fact that valuable American technology was transferred to a foreign and potentially hostile power, who is led by a dictatorship that violates #humanrights on a daily basis, yes continental China. Equally problematic is the fact that for a few dollars, AMD shoots on its feet, no turning back on that. It is evident that such disgrace took place under a very weak administration at home, in the current administration watch that wouldn’t happen, ever. So glad they close the deal for good!sarafino - Thursday, February 27, 2020 - link
"Equally problematic is the fact that for a few dollars, AMD shoots on its feet, no turning back on that."How exactly did they do that? They shared designs based on their older (outdated), slower Zen core. As you can plainly see in this review, Hygon's processors are not exact setting the world on fire in terms of performance. They're slower than 3 year old Zen 1 processors and significantly slower than any Zen 2, or soon, Zen 3 processors. You're making a mountain out of a mole hill.
Oxford Guy - Friday, February 28, 2020 - link
Perhaps, but also consider that some of the world's leading supercomputers were made with Piledriver CPUs.Journalists like Hruska never miss an opportunity to mock AMD for its "construction core" debacle but when they talk about the poor performance of the parts they never mention how many supercomputers used them successfully. Sometimes being cheap and adequate is enough, especially when paired with high-performance GPUs.
29a - Monday, March 2, 2020 - link
There is one in the Top 500 and it's ranked 481.Retycint - Thursday, February 27, 2020 - link
I wouldn't be so sure that the "transfer of American tech to a foreign hostile power" won't happen under the current administration, given that they seem to have a special affinity for the Russianss.yu - Sunday, March 1, 2020 - link
>they seem to have a special affinity for the RussiansNot "they", but "he".
What exactly has he transferred to Russia that hasn't been stopped by congress?
jospoortvliet - Monday, March 2, 2020 - link
Pretty much Syria, for one... and if he wasn't dragging his feed on support for Ukraine perhaps it would be free of russian soldiers by now as well.I know, it isnt intellectual property hehe
scineram - Tuesday, March 3, 2020 - link
Ok, moron. Last time I checked those are independent states, not US property. But wasn't Ukraine invaded under, I don't know, Obama?Notmyusualid - Sunday, March 8, 2020 - link
+1s.yu - Tuesday, March 3, 2020 - link
I agree with the other guy. Trump was elected with promises among which reining back global military intervention was one of them, and I believe this is honestly one of his personal stances. Ukraine was a member of the USSR, one of the closest to Moscow, I would say it was quite greedy for NATO to try to turn Ukraine(do you really need to shit on their doorsteps?) and not a core interest of the US to see that through bearing the risks that come with military intervention.dijitalbroadside - Friday, February 28, 2020 - link
Feel like I'm in a bizarro world entering this comments section. You're not the only one, but you in particular have managed to demonstrate a lack of both basic reading comprehension and general knowledge of the semiconductor market in the span of just five nearly incoherent sentences. It's like you have the memory of a goldfish with a laser focus on missing the point on any topic in order to verify your worldview, truly astonishing.Lord of the Bored - Friday, February 28, 2020 - link
"#humanrights"? Does this look like Twitter to you?jospoortvliet - Monday, March 2, 2020 - link
Best response.scineram - Tuesday, March 3, 2020 - link
It's probably a CIA Pete "supporter", assigned to his next mission.wr3zzz - Thursday, February 27, 2020 - link
Really excellent journalism. It's nice to see hard (pun intended) facts addressing what people just have been speculating and spinning.Hrel - Thursday, February 27, 2020 - link
Holy shit! The Obama administration was actively supporting the theft of American intellectual property! Biggest news in this misdirect of an article.Retycint - Thursday, February 27, 2020 - link
I love how people immediately jump into conclusions about the administration, despite knowing absolutely nothing. Dunning-Kruger effect at full force heres.yu - Sunday, March 1, 2020 - link
It seems quite clearly sarcastic to me.jospoortvliet - Monday, March 2, 2020 - link
Sarcasm doesn't translate well to online communication... sadly.Sailor23M - Thursday, February 27, 2020 - link
“ It’s amusing that this menu is called ‘Moksha Common Options’. Moksha being a word commonly associated with ‘enlightenment’ or ‘release’. This is either a clever word play, or someone digging out a non-contextual old Chinese to English dictionary in translation.“Moksha is a Sanskrit word, the oldest language in the world, its not Chinese.
Oxford Guy - Thursday, February 27, 2020 - link
"Before everyone leaps to ‘creating backdoors for the Chinese government"Yes, because apparently the first thing China demanded of AMD was the removal of PSP, a backdoor created for the American government (to spy on Americans and others).
dickeywang - Tuesday, May 12, 2020 - link
well said.Virtually all governments are spying on people, b/c that their job to watch for bad people, whatever they see fits. If people want to complain about that, go complain to the officers who scan your body with x-ray machine in the airport.
In addition, from a tech point of view, the American government has the most advanced technology.
It is interesting to see so many people in the U.S. believe that people from other country, which is thousands of miles away, are actively planning to come and take away their sh*t, while their own government launched so many wars over the last 300 years in which they took land from the Mexicans, the Spanish, and oil from the people in the Mideast. Not to mention that the Wall street bankers and politicians in the capital hill are actively taking the American's tax money and send them to big corporations.
Talking about missing the big picture...
warreo - Friday, February 28, 2020 - link
Great article Ian/Wendell, really informative write-up on a super interesting topic!I still can't believe that AMD was able to get the DoC, DoD, et al to sign off on this deal. And that Intel did not do a single thing to stop it. The tech may have been old, and AMD may have obfuscated its IP as much as possible, but still...as you Ian/Wendell said, one of the oddest annals of the history of semis.
Quantumz0d - Friday, February 28, 2020 - link
I mentioned earlier that elites allowed it. Guess who ? The clue is Intel Israel. I believe the old Intel is dead esp with all the PC drivel going on in thr HR dept and BK firing pretext.Notmyusualid - Sunday, March 8, 2020 - link
Nuts.Hifihedgehog - Friday, February 28, 2020 - link
Coronavirus not included ;PGreenReaper - Friday, February 28, 2020 - link
Hopefully you enabled the C-states that show as disabled in that options photo before benchmarking, as otherwise it almost certainly wouldn't be able to boost to good levels for single-threaded or low-core-count operation (because all the cores are in C0).Rudde - Saturday, February 29, 2020 - link
"Interestingly enough, the same delays for RDSEED for the server chips are also seen on Ryzen Mobile and Ryzen Desktop APUs."Not only that, the L2 cache has the same latency as Ryzen APUs, while Ryzen 1000 series had a longer latency.
It is clear that Dhyana branched out of the more optimised Zen.
WaltC - Sunday, March 1, 2020 - link
Did Wendell write "the charismatic Wendell" line?.....;) One of the reasons I enjoy Wendell so much is that he's such a ham--he's entertaining, rather than "charismatic", I think. A definite win for Wendell!Actually, it never crossed my mind that AMD would have been so foolish as to sell Zen1 to China--it's nice to see I was right. Good write-up!
TheRuchika - Monday, March 2, 2020 - link
Doesn't sound bad for a starthispeeding - Friday, March 6, 2020 - link
good news,Anandtech in the china GFW list because the paperTheJian - Sunday, March 8, 2020 - link
"What AMD did was license a single core design to HMC, along with an SoC layout. From this point on, AMD is officially ‘hands-off’,""The final product out of this spider web of arrangements is the Hygon Dhyana x86 core, an ‘updated Zen core for China’"
I'm confused. If it's x86, Intel needs to SUE immediately and report this to US govt. Can it run x86 code or not? If so, they should be sued. I don't get what you're saying here, how is it NOT illegal?
stoatwblr - Monday, April 27, 2020 - link
That "second battery" looks like a 1-wire license key of some type.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1-Wire
They're used a lot to enable features in systems or disable systems if missing (things like enabling raid5/6 on intel server boards etc)