The United States adds THATTIC, who had a Zen license, to the blacklist along with Huawei
The THATIC company, with which AMD had a commercial agreement to market processors for Zen-based data centers, was banned.
A few weeks ago, AMD CEO Lisa Su was asked if they were licensing Zen 2 in China . Su commented that they weren't currently working on it, nor were there any discussions about it. What is certain is that AMD was offering the Zen license to a Chinese company. Specifically, Tianjin Haiguang Advanced Technology Investment Co. (THATIC) could manufacture semi-custom processors for data centers using Zen. Until the United States intervened.
And it is that after vetoing Huawei, now five Chinese companies have been added with which American companies will not be able to work. Among them is THATIC, which has a contract with AMD to use Zen on its own processors. So the pressures on China are growing.
The United States vetoes THATIC, which has an agreement with AMD
China lags far behind the United States in developing and manufacturing processors. Chinese companies have a long way to go. AMD would have helped THATIC with a strategic license that allowed it to earn revenue without doing anything. But it is that Chinese companies related to the government could no longer buy Intel Xeon processors. So the AMD-THATIC deal was critical.
AMD owns 51 percent of Haiguang Microelectronics Co (HMC) that helps in the manufacturing process for Zen @ 14nm products. They basically produce the Hygon Dhyana, a slightly modified copy of the EPYC.
THATIC is on the same list as Huawei, so relations with AMD have been terminated. The United States Department of Commerce hides that the company is associated with Sugon. The latter designs and sells supercomputer systems to Chinese companies, including companies affiliated with or owned by state or military agencies.
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From AMD they emphasize that Hygon and HMC do not have Zen schemes. What these companies sell are EPYC processors with additional logic blocks to add more security. Something that could be an express demand of the US government.
Source: wccftech
