AMD could potentially get 19 Million investment

[Deleted member 2197]

More news from AMD today as it seems the company might get a nice cash injection. Loongson Technology, a CPU joint venture between Beijing-based chip designer BLX IC Design Corp, the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Institute of Computing Technology, is set to make key investments into AMD's product lines and technologies.

Loongson and AMD have worked together before in the past. AMD’s HyperTransport and PCI South as well as North bridges were in previous Godson silicon, so for Loongson AMD is not entirely foreign territory. The two opened an R&D center in December 2003 in order to develop what the two hoped would be something to counter the goliath of Intel.

Investing in AMD’s various technologies and product lines would be a much easier transaction for Loongson. It would not have to deal with the regulatory burden the US government might impose, nor would it need to negotiate an x86 license from Intel (NASDAQ: INTC). It is not yet clear what the end result of such investments might look like, but it could be that Loongson markets future Godson systems with more AMD inside — such as GCN GPU architecture.

Loongson earns their reputation for its line of MIPS-based Godson processors. The Chinese firm has reserved 120 million yuan (around US$19.2 billion) for a series of acquisitions and strategic investments.

How much money AMD is going to retrieve we do now know, but it could be substantial.

http://www.guru3d.com/news-story/amd-could-potentially-get-9b-investment.html

 

[silent_guy]

120 million yuan is $19.2 million. Not billon.

 

[Alexko]

120 million yuan is $19.2 million. Not billon.

They actually have 120 billion RMB, or $19 billion:

http://www.vrworld.com/2015/02/09/amds-real-china-play-strategic-investment/

Which obviously doesn't mean they will invest all (or even any) of it into AMD.

 

[Grall]

As sad as this sounds, I'll have to say I'd be extremely wary of letting chinese interests buy into western high-tech industry. The risk of IP and technology leakage is incredibly substantial.

 

[rcf]

I guess the chinese should have done better, millenia ago, in order to prevent chinese science and tech from leaking into the "west".

 

[lanek]

As sad as this sounds, I'll have to say I'd be extremely wary of letting chinese interests buy into western high-tech industry. The risk of IP and technology leakage is incredibly substantial.

More than before ?

Loongson and AMD have worked together before in the past. AMD’s HyperTransport and PCI South as well as North bridges were in previous Godson silicon, so for Loongson AMD is not entirely foreign territory.

The two opened an R&D center in December 2003 in order to develop what the two hoped would be something to counter the goliath of Intel.

 

[digitalwanderer]

As sad as this sounds, I'll have to say I'd be extremely wary of letting chinese interests buy into western high-tech industry. The risk of IP and technology leakage is incredibly substantial.

DON'T SAY THAT!!!

C'mon, more monies for AMD CPU R&D? PLEASE!!!

 

[Alexko]

As sad as this sounds, I'll have to say I'd be extremely wary of letting chinese interests buy into western high-tech industry. The risk of IP and technology leakage is incredibly substantial.

I'm not sure what you mean. What are you worried about exactly?

 

[3dilettante]

When a nation is very aggressively modernizing its industries, as China is, investment in foreign companies raises the specter that the relationship will be used to siphon secrets and expertise to the local companies trying modernize. It can work short-term for a company, but it can erode its competitive edge long-term versus those local companies.
In this case, money at this point is probably not the biggest risk factor. Operating in China has probably opened AMD up to the likelihood that its R&D has made its way to other companies, and China is reticent to prosecute such actions--when it's simply not requiring confidential information be turned over to local partners by default.

 

[silent_guy]

Is there really that much to steal? How much of that IP is essential and secret?

(I would ask the same question if this were Nvidia or most other fabless companies, BTW.)

 

[Grall]

What are you worried about exactly?

That we'd give away our competitive edge, and that Chinese industries (actively aided by their gov't, as is often the case) then displaces us in the market with cheaper offerings, thus undermining the very basis of our prosperity.

 

[3dilettante]

Is there really that much to steal? How much of that IP is essential and secret?

(I would ask the same question if this were Nvidia or most other fabless companies, BTW.)

Specific implementation details and algorithms used by existing designs are not widely discussed. We may hear general descriptions about branch predictors, OoO scheduling, memory controllers, and so on, but we do not see the actual details. The complexity of modern designs and physical countermeasures make it impractical to reverse-engineer in a timely fashion.
Physical design data, validation methods, validated designs, tools, manufacturing and application performance data are valuable accumulations of information that cost a lot of time and money to generate.

AMD also had a fair presence in areas like packaging design and interfaces, although that has been successively spun off.
It's sort of like saying that the rules of baseball are public, so what benefit does a rookie have from getting knowledge from the MVP.

There are also things like the private keys used to safeguard the microcode updates, and security information like what goes into the TrustZone implementation, that could be useful if you want to be nefarious.

 

[Alexko]

That we'd give away our competitive edge, and that Chinese industries (actively aided by their gov't, as is often the case) then displaces us in the market with cheaper offerings, thus undermining the very basis of our prosperity.

But how is AMD ours? It's American, and as a public company it's owned by just about anyone anyway.

 

[3dilettante]

It's more of a political debate, but the United States does restrict the transfer or export of technologies it considers to be of strategic importance. Encryption has a history of this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Export_of_cryptography_from_the_United_States
Limits to how close to the leading edge old fab equipment could be before it couldn't be sold to certain buyers have come up before for AMD (or Globalfoundries).

Within the bounds of AMD, it's a possibility that AMD could invest a lot in advancing its IP, and then all the work that went into making its hardware, code, or interfaces functional or performant somehow finding its way into cheap competing products from local "partners" without the long lead times, risk, and overheads.

 

[Wynix]

Kinda related, though a few years old.
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/07/how-us-software-ended-up-in-chinese-assault-helicopters/

 

[Silent_Buddha]

That we'd give away our competitive edge, and that Chinese industries (actively aided by their gov't, as is often the case) then displaces us in the market with cheaper offerings, thus undermining the very basis of our prosperity.

Erm... Kind of like European industries (actively aied by their gov't, as is often the case) then displaces us in the market with cheaper offerings, thus undermining the very basis of our prosperity.

See, Boeing versus Airbus.

Granted there may have been less stealing of industrial secrets there, but just because it's Western nations doesn't mean there doesn't exist industrial espionage. Nor does it mean that Western governments aren't prone to actively helping (including funding and running, see Chevy for a limited time) local companies.

Regards,
SB

 

[Deleted member 2197]

I think there is particular concern with China especially with the direction they have been taking recently:

The Chinese government has adopted new regulations requiring companies that sell computer equipment to Chinese banks to turn over secret source code, submit to invasive audits and build so-called back doors into hardware and software, according to a copy of the rules obtained by foreign technology companies that do billions of dollars’ worth of business in China.

The new policies could further split the tech world, forcing hardware and software makers to sell either to China or the United States, or to create significantly different products for the two countries.

But many foreign companies would be unwilling to disclose code because of concerns about intellectual property, security and, in some cases, United States export law.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/29/t...ules-perturb-western-tech-companies.html?_r=0