AMD Growing in China Datacenters in a different way to beat INTEl, EPYC CPUs Technological Breakthrough

AMD total revenues from China rose 58% last year and accounted for a third of its top line.

AMD Is All In For AI Market In 2018

AMD Is All In For AI Market In 2018

AMD’s CPU & GPU revenue comes from its CPUs and GPUs sales that surged 54% annually last year and accounted for 57% of the chipmaker’s top line. That growth pattern continued into the first quarter of 2018, fueled by robust demand for its Zen-based CPUs. Its total revenues from China rose 58% last year and accounted for a third of its top line. AMD’s Ryzen CPUs are reportedly gaining ground in desktops, but struggling in the notebook market, where many OEMs remain partnered with Intel. AMD now is supporting the growth of a “clone army” in China that couldactually dent Intel’s strongest market.

Chinese chipmaker Hygon recently launched Dhyana, a high-performance x86 CPU designed for Chinese data centers. That move was surprising but Hygon’s Dhyana isn’t built on some Chinese technological breakthrough, it’s based on the same technology as AMD’s Epyc CPUs. Hygon produced the clone with AMD’s blessing through a complex web of partnerships and licensing agreements. AMD did this and it could hurt Intel’s data center business. China still buys plenty of CPUs from Intel since its Xeons are still considered the “best in breed” processors for data centers, but US regulators banned Intel from selling its top chips to China’s supercomputer centers in 2015

AMD established two joint ventures with Chinese holding company THATIC — one with Chengdu Haiguang Microelectronics Technology (CHMT), and another with Haiguang IC Design, also known as Hygon. AMD owns a majority stake in CHMT, which ensures that its IP isn’t transferred to THATIC. THATIC owns a majority stake in Hygon, which licenses AMD’s IP from CHMT. Hygon designs the chips, and CHMT produces the chips through a suitable foundry and then sends them back to Hygon for packaging, marketing, and sales.

AMD’s Epyc arrived only a year ago, but it’s already causing headaches for Intel. Benchmarks found that it could outperform comparable Intel CPUs in certain high-performance computing and big data applications that require CPU cores to operate independently. Many big companies, including Microsoft and Baidu, started installing AMD’s cheaper chips in their data centers.

Tags: AMD, INTEL, intl, amd vs intel, amd datacenter, amd epyc, amd china, amd epyc chania, amd epyc army, amd epyc data centers

Mohsen Daemi
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