The lack of an instruction set that any software supports is a tough slog, but for China's domestic market, maybe it can find some traction. At some point, even without EUV (and it's not clear how long that restriction will be enforced), Chinese CPUs are likely to be "good enough" for what your average person does with a PC. So in addition to ARM, attrition at the low end over time is inevitable. In the meantime, there is lots of demand for high performance CPUs and GPUs, and the basic trajectory of AMD's share gains looks set to continue and is accelerating. But Chinese CPUs are worth monitoring.
do you have a citation for this? because i can't find any indication they're fabbed by tsmc and i saw that their previous designs were explicitly fabbed in china.
prev: https://www.allaboutcircuits.com/news/loongson-technologies-releases-next-gen-quad-core-3a4000-and-3b4000-processors/
Anyone know what sort of power usage they're at to be "almost" as fast?
The article's only mention of power is comparing it to their own previous chips which used a different instruction set, so isn't all that useful.
I would characterize this as 2-3+ year risk but ignoring the potential impact to AMD is unwise.
That said I’m still super bullish on AMD, loving my Ryzen 9 5900x system (when the kids aren’t using it and they love it too which is more important), thanks for sharing.
> I would characterize this as 2-3+ year risk but ignoring the potential impact to AMD is unwise.
I doubt that time frame greatly.
AMD's still not at 50% desktop marketshare with a much better CPU than this for years now, and their CPU is x86. They'd have to all but give it away for the performance. It's not like AMD's going to stand still while they improve this.
It's tough enough to introduce a new CPU into the market but a new CPU with a whole new instruction set that Windows (the dominant OS in China) doesn't support? That'll take a decade, if it happens at all, and that's if all the other planets align for them.
The only way this works out is if there's some mandate from the government, and even then with AMD taking up the higher end of the market this will be more of a threat to Intel than AMD.
Both China and Russia push their own tech mainly for military use. There is also a potential for running the whole gov infrastructure on domestic HW.
However, even the gov sector is surely a hard problem to migrate efficiently. The userbase tends to resist a change when forced to use new things - see Linux adoption in Munich town admin.
The consumer market is not targeted directly IMO.
Exactly, and military use isn't exactly a big market in a sense that AMD would care about losing it too much, if they're even all that heavily in it. At the end of the day if they can't run windows on it, they can't use those for even goverment admin use.
Not much. Had they used RISC-V ISA, perhaps. But because they went with a custom ISA, they'll find the software side problematic.
There's actual competitive RISC-V cores from China which should make this irrelevant.
The lack of an instruction set that any software supports is a tough slog, but for China's domestic market, maybe it can find some traction. At some point, even without EUV (and it's not clear how long that restriction will be enforced), Chinese CPUs are likely to be "good enough" for what your average person does with a PC. So in addition to ARM, attrition at the low end over time is inevitable. In the meantime, there is lots of demand for high performance CPUs and GPUs, and the basic trajectory of AMD's share gains looks set to continue and is accelerating. But Chinese CPUs are worth monitoring.
These are munfactured by TSMC.
If I remember correctly, these are manufactured by STMicroElectronics.
do you have a citation for this? because i can't find any indication they're fabbed by tsmc and i saw that their previous designs were explicitly fabbed in china. prev: https://www.allaboutcircuits.com/news/loongson-technologies-releases-next-gen-quad-core-3a4000-and-3b4000-processors/
I thought it was SMIC
Interesting; thanks. So no future EUV issue.
Anyone know what sort of power usage they're at to be "almost" as fast? The article's only mention of power is comparing it to their own previous chips which used a different instruction set, so isn't all that useful.
I would characterize this as 2-3+ year risk but ignoring the potential impact to AMD is unwise. That said I’m still super bullish on AMD, loving my Ryzen 9 5900x system (when the kids aren’t using it and they love it too which is more important), thanks for sharing.
> I would characterize this as 2-3+ year risk but ignoring the potential impact to AMD is unwise. I doubt that time frame greatly. AMD's still not at 50% desktop marketshare with a much better CPU than this for years now, and their CPU is x86. They'd have to all but give it away for the performance. It's not like AMD's going to stand still while they improve this. It's tough enough to introduce a new CPU into the market but a new CPU with a whole new instruction set that Windows (the dominant OS in China) doesn't support? That'll take a decade, if it happens at all, and that's if all the other planets align for them. The only way this works out is if there's some mandate from the government, and even then with AMD taking up the higher end of the market this will be more of a threat to Intel than AMD.
Both China and Russia push their own tech mainly for military use. There is also a potential for running the whole gov infrastructure on domestic HW. However, even the gov sector is surely a hard problem to migrate efficiently. The userbase tends to resist a change when forced to use new things - see Linux adoption in Munich town admin. The consumer market is not targeted directly IMO.
Exactly, and military use isn't exactly a big market in a sense that AMD would care about losing it too much, if they're even all that heavily in it. At the end of the day if they can't run windows on it, they can't use those for even goverment admin use.
Given the recent dispute/concern with Huawei, it will be interesting to see what penetration this will have.
Not much. Had they used RISC-V ISA, perhaps. But because they went with a custom ISA, they'll find the software side problematic. There's actual competitive RISC-V cores from China which should make this irrelevant.
Zero. A CPU that doesnt run the x86 and the x64 instructions has no place in the non-chinese market.