
AMD licences x86 tech to Chinese company - dbcooper
http://www.anandtech.com/show/10268/china-calling-amd-forms-joint-venture-for-x86-server-socs-in-china
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tcoppi
Without knowing any additional details of the agreement, I don't see how Intel
will let this slide. The terms of their agreement are mostly likely violated
at least in spirit, if not in the letter. Not only that, but it will have to
get past export controls that have very recently stopped exports of Intel
processors bound for China, I have no doubt they will find a joint venture to
develop similar processors an easy target. If it gets past that, I would
expect a lengthy lawsuit from Intel. Seems very risky from AMD's perspective.

~~~
cptskippy
All of their cross licensing agreements are private so everything is
speculation. That being said...

In 2009 AMD divested itself of it's manufacturing arm by spinning it off into
GlobalFoundries (GF) which was a joint venture with Advanced Technology
Investment Company (ATIC). Intel sued AMD, GF, and ATIC for violation of the
terms of AMD and Intel's prior cross licensing agreements.

Later that year Intel and AMD entered into a Settlement Agreement to halt
several on going lawsuits both parties had against each other. The AMD/GF/ATIC
lawsuit was one of those that was part of the settlement agreement. Under
section 4 of the settlement agreement are the mutual releases each company
agreed to. Section 4.2 is Intel's release and it states the following.

 _4.2 Intel Release. Except for the rights and obligations expressly created
or reserved by this Agreement and by the agreements described in Section 3.7,
Intel does hereby irrevocably release, acquit and forever discharge AMD, GF
and ATIC from any and all Claims that Intel ever had, now has or hereafter may
acquire against AMD, GF and ATIC, whether known or unknown, on account of any
action, inaction, matter, thing or event, that occurred or failed to occur at
any time in the past, from the beginning of time through and including the
Effective Date, including, without limitation, any and all Claims based on or
arising out of, in whole or in part, the Actions or the facts underlying the
Actions and any claims that could have been raised in the Actions up to the
Effective Date. All third parties included within the scope of the preceding
release, pursuant to Section 1.4, are expressly agreed to be third-party
beneficiaries of this Agreement._

It seems somewhat relevant to today's announcement as it seems to release AMD
from litigation for any future joint ventures it might partake in. However I'm
not a lawyer and it's entirely possible that I'm miss reading this.

~~~
paulmd
> on account of any action, inaction, matter, thing or event, that occurred or
> failed to occur at any time in the past, from the beginning of time _through
> and including the Effective Date_

I think this is the key part here - Intel is basically agreeing to never sue
about anything that happened _through and including the Effective Date_ but it
doesn't say anything about things that happen _after_ the effective date. I
really doubt Intel would agree to such a thing.

So unless AMD made the licensing agreement 7 years ago and kept it secret, it
wouldn't be covered by that agreement. That would be an interesting fuck-you
the next time one of these settlements happen, though.

~~~
tcoppi
For reference, here's the full text of the settlement(at least what was filed
publicly with the SEC)[1]

It appears during the settlement they made a new patent cross-license
agreement, which is not public of course. The new agreement is what is alleged
by sources to have expired in 2015, which is what would allow AMD to license
their IP to third-parties. It could also be that the patent agreement is more
lenient than before, because at the very least it expanded to include at least
one third party in the form of GlobalFoundries. If that is the case though,
one wonders why this hasn't already happened.

1.[https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/2488/000119312509236...](https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/2488/000119312509236705/dex101.htm)

~~~
cptskippy
Thanks, I thought I'd included the link in my post but it looks like I didn't.

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npx
Let THEM omit frame pointers for a decade or two, it is in the broader
national interests of America.

~~~
cm3
Care to explain?

~~~
npx
I have this dystopian Foxconn style vision of sweat shops where they force
people to unwind stacks in binaries compiled without frame pointers because
they're using a register starved architecture and they think that using SP as
a general purpose register will make their code run faster.

Now that I think of it, I'm beginning to understand the suicide nets.

~~~
oldmanjay
Whenever people mention the Foxconn suicide nets, I remember how nobody noted
that the measured suicide rate of Foxconn workers is and was lower than the
general population, and I laugh at humanity's prospect of ever rising above
its animal nature.

~~~
illicium
Suicide rate or suicide attempt rate?

~~~
icebraining
Even the attempt rate in Foxconn during their worst year was less bad than the
suicide rate in the general population.

And the suicide rate was lower not only than the suicide rate in the China as
a whole, as it was lower than in _all 50 states of the United States_.

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jlawer
I am curious if this was caused by the export restrictions on Xeon & Xeon Phi
chips to the Chinese government due to the concerns about their super-
computers.

If that is the cause, it could be interesting as we may end up with AMD (and
the rest of us) getting the benefits of heavy research into upcoming
processors, simply as they become a strategic material for the Chinese
government.

The competition would benefit all of us.

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vox_mollis
This will be nice if it leads to x86 implementations devoid of ME or
equivalent transparent hardware backdoors.

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voodootrucker
This might be our one ray of hope to keep the platform open and uncompromised:

[http://mail.fsfeurope.org/pipermail/discussion/2016-April/01...](http://mail.fsfeurope.org/pipermail/discussion/2016-April/010912.html)

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nickpsecurity
x86 boxes are about to get a lot cheaper since China has cheap RTL engineers,
fabs, and assembly workers. Hopefully it gets as interesting as ARM SOC's and
boards have in Shenizen.

~~~
petra
Fabs ? last i heard the Chinese are struggling to build even 28nm fabs.

~~~
nickpsecurity
Wait, I found these that arent on the list and show they're making
SnapDragons:

[http://www.smics.com/eng/press/press_releases_details.php?id...](http://www.smics.com/eng/press/press_releases_details.php?id=299479)

[http://www.smics.com/eng/foundry/technology/highlight_28.php](http://www.smics.com/eng/foundry/technology/highlight_28.php)

~~~
tcoppi
China has caught up big time in the fab game over the past few years, though
SMIC doesn't have very much capacity for cutting-edge production and it is
basically only manufacturing Qualcomm products for 28nm afaik. You'll also
notice they didn't mention yields at all there, which are probably not very
good for 28nm, but then again no one has good yields at first, they'll catch
up in time.

~~~
nickpsecurity
Haha good catch on the yields. Yeah, they probably suck and are _strongly_
encouraging Design for Manufacturing flows to keep losses lower. That's always
true for new fabs.

Contrary to popular beliefs, though, most design starts are still in 110-350nm
range with a good chunk on 45/65nm and now interest in 28nm. China has all
that covered. So, they're only missing a small chunk of market. That said, the
cost of 28nm fab investments means they _really_ need more projects on 28nm.

Personally, I thought they were doing all the semiconductor stuff as anti-
subversion and economic imperialism. So, they'll probably keep it and work on
lower nodes going even at a loss. Just a hunch. ;)

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hawski
So when nVidia wanted x86 license for Tegra K1 they should have go to AMD?
Probably it would backfire their probable relationship with Intel. Do they
have one?

~~~
tcoppi
The landscape with regards to patents and licenses was a lot different then,
it seems like all bets might be off at this point.

~~~
tracker1
It's worth noting that a lot of 32-bit x86 is well beyond patent protections
at this point... The Pentium was released over 20 years ago now. The only
licensing needed is for certain innovations since 1996, of which is mostly
x86-64.

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zekevermillion
Andy Grove must be spinning in his grave!

~~~
coldtea
Well, his company shouldn't have adopted X86-64 from AMD then...

~~~
cm3
And join the fate of Titanic^WItanium?

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snvzz
For servers, really? I don't get it, they could just use RISC-V.

x86 has a user case: legacy software.

~~~
bryanlarsen
I'm hoping that this is really good news for Zen. Because you're right, the
server market is a lot less tied to x86 than the desktop market is.

So why would they sign this deal when it would probably be easier to use
RISC-V or ARM or MIPS or ...? Perhaps AMD gave them a private demo of Zen and
they realized that it was better than all of their other alternatives, even
including other architectures.

But if they had their hearts set on x86, unless they could get Intel to play
ball (highly unlikely), AMD was their only option even if Zen sucks.

~~~
tcoppi
I agree and think the only way they made this deal is if AMD showed that Zen
is better than any of the other alternatives. That probably isn't saying much
since most of the alternatives are pretty bad, but they probably don't have
another Bulldozer on their hands either.

