AMD licences x86 tech to Chinese company

1. http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1329517

http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1329517

>Intel might challenge the AMD deal, however the China partner apparently already has access to the technology. The Intel/AMD cross license was a five year deal that the companies failed to renew in 2015.

>The license granted rights “intended to cover only the products of the Licensed Parties.” The heavily redacted document lists a dozen exceptions to its terms, most of them not made public. Intel declined to comment on details of the patent agreement.

>“All the technologies licensed [to the China joint venture] are AMD technologies and there are no encumbrances,” said AMD’s Su. “We have closed the deal and have started execution on it,” she added noting she also doesn’t see any regulatory issues. (Recently, U.S. regulators have increased their vigilance in turning down high tech investment proposed by China.)

I have seen speculation that many of the relevant x86 patents expired in 2015.

Also not immediately obvious is where this falls under the Intel/AMD x86 cross-licensing agreement. AMD has of course done their own research.... In the meantime and at first glance, because this is a joint venture, it would appear that AMD is in the clear here as they aren’t giving the technology to another business, but rather are using it as part of a new line of products they are developing, albeit in conjunction with an outside firm.

http://www.extremetech.com/computing/227059-amd-announces-ne...

Also, another thing that everyone points out when there's a discussion about AMD being acquired, is that "Intel wouldn't allow it" because of that clause in the license agreement. I think that argument makes no sense.

The only reason Intel hasn't completely crushed AMD so far (which it could've done by keeping prices low until it eliminated AMD) in the market, is because it doesn't want to remain a monopoly in the PC market. You think Google has it bad in the EU right now? It would be far worse for Intel (which already got fined $1.5 billion in the EU for anti-competitive practices against AMD).

The second reason why it doesn't make sense is that AMD owns the 64-bit ISA rights. I'm guessing Intel would still need that to operate in all markets except IoT...

So to end that argument once and for all - of course Intel would allow AMD to be acquired, one way or another. Worst case scenario, whoever acquires AMD would have to pay slightly higher royalties to Intel for the next 5 years.

Getting back on point, as the ExtremeTech post mentions, it's likely this is only IP that AMD alone owns anyway.

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.

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.

I'm as big a lover of RISC-V as anyone (and am excited about the possibility of having a completely open CPU which you can load into a free FPGA). But it's delusional to think that x86 is "legacy" at this point.

x86 is a mature established architecture, RISC-V is not. Indeed I think the privledged mode architecture is still under development (i.e. what you required to run an actual OS rather than just embedded applications). I'm sure there are many other features x86 possesses than RISC-V lacks too.

I would have thought commercial RISC-V will be IoT/Embedded applications first. Fewer features required, lower costs (less to loose if it doesn't work out) and fairly static software supplied by a single or small group of vendors.