Chinese companies will not have access to AMD Zen2, explains Lisa Su, who signed a tender with IP Zen, so that Chinese companies could use it.
During Computex 2019, Tom's Hardware had the opportunity to speak with Lisa Su, CEO of AMD. She was asked about many topics, including chip design licensing. The company is not granting licenses to Chinese companies. This means that chip production in China will be limited to the Zen architecture, which encompasses first and second generation Ryzen processors and APUs. Zen 2 for the third generation of Ryzen processors is currently excluded.
AMD to stop offering Zen licenses to China
The Chinese government tends to welcome domestic companies and offers them significant discounts. AMD reached an agreement to have a subsidiary in the country called Tianjin Haiguang Advanced Technology Investment Co. Ltd. (THATIC). This allowed him to access a very large potential market. He licensed x86 IPs and SoCs to Chinese companies both public and private for $ 293 million plus royalties. This agreement allowed the Chinese government to learn and stop depending on American companies.
A rather opaque and rather strange agreement that does not usually occur in other countries. So we are going to keep that AMD was strongly penetrating the Chinese market, making a lot of money.
The agreement allowed Hygon, a Chinese server provider, to design specialized Zen-based solutions. Above all, the customization had to do with aspects of cryptography to meet the requirements of the Chinese government. The first solutions were called Dhyana, which were practically the same as EPYC. Su highlights that there are other specific optimizations for the Chinese market, but does not give more details.
The always opaque agreements with China
It is not normal that a foreign company usually has the privileges of AMD and that this foreign company has so much information. Intel has an agreement with Tsinghua University, heavily influenced by the Chinese government. This would have allowed Montage Technology Global Holdings, another Chinese server provider, to develop solutions based on Intel's Xeon cores. It was also based on cryptography technologies. In this case, Intel did not give access to the main IP.
They asked Su if they would continue to work with THATIC amid the entire US-China trade war. Su was quite forceful, highlighting that "we are not discussing any additional technology transfer." He also highlights that they have hardly worked, that it has been the Chinese company that has been developing.
“THATIC was a single-generation technology license, and there are no additional technology licenses,” Su explains, to clear the air. It seems that the license for Zen will not be extended, at least for now, to Zen2.