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Recently, the Dhyana processor launched by Hygon, a Chinese company, has been screened in overseas media. We have previously reported that Hygon is Tianjin Haiguang Group and Dhyana processor is a product of Haiguang and AMD. As China has emphasized in recent years Domestically produced autonomous processors, and the United States has blocked the possibility of China's imports of Intel high-performance processors, so AMD and Chinese companies in cooperation with high-performance X86 processors can not only gain an advantage in the Chinese market, but also Intel's $ 19.1 billion server The chip business poses a threat.
The Dhyana processor originated from the cooperation agreement between AMD and China Haiguang Group in 2016. AMD licenses the high-performance X86 architecture to Chinese companies. The license fee is 293 million US dollars. The Dhyana processor is the product of cooperation between the two parties, mainly for the server market. It can be said that it is a modified version of AMD EPYC processor in China.
In order to avoid possible legal troubles, AMD and China Haiguang Group have a complicated mechanism. AMD and THATIC Haiguang have established two joint ventures - Chengdu Haiguang Microelectronics Co., Ltd. (CHMT), AMD holds 51%, and the other is Chengdu Haiguang Integrated Circuit Design Company (CHICD), AMD holds 30% of shares, it can be seen that this company is dominated by China.
CHMT will be responsible for the customization of the Zen processor, while the Chinese-controlled CHICD company will customize the other parts of the SoC and marketing according to customer needs. This arrangement can please both China and the United States, on the one hand to ensure that Chinese companies can Get high-performance server processors, on the other hand, the United States does not have to worry about technology outflows.
So what impact will the cooperation between the two sides have on AMD and Intel, the largest supplier in the server market? The Motley Fool website has published an article discussing this issue in detail. They believe that AMD's revenue in this way will be lower than the revenue generated by direct sales processors, but they can use this to gain a foothold in the huge Chinese market, and more importantly, this may cause Intel to be hurt.
For Intel, AMD's EPYC processor has been in trouble for a year. In some high-performance computing and big data applications that require a CPU core in benchmarking, AMD EPYC may outperform similar Intel processors.
Many big companies, including Microsoft and Baidu, have begun to adopt cheaper AMD EPYC processors in their data centers. In June, Intel’s former CEO Ke Zaiqi admitted to AMD’s progress when meeting with analysts at Nomura Securities. But Intel is trying not to let AMD get more than 15-20% of the server processor share.
Ke Zaiqi’s statement shocked the industry, because Intel accounted for 99% of the server processor market. Last year, the company’s data center business unit revenue increased 11% to $19.1 billion, accounting for 30% of total revenue.
The EPYC processor has become a thorn in Intel. AMD's cloned processor with China may kill Intel's share in China. Last year, China's market revenue accounted for 24% of total revenue. In 2017, Intel was in the region. The growth rate is only 6%, and the growth rate in 2016 is 20%.
For AMD, the licensing of X86 processors to Chinese companies may be playing with fire, because Chinese companies were forced to share intellectual property rights with US joint ventures, but the Sino-US trade war is escalating today, which may allow AMD to market in China. Benefit.
AMD's computing and graphics division's revenue soared 54% last year, accounting for 57% of the company's revenue. As the demand for Ryzen processors has been strong, this growth trend continues into the Q1 quarter of 2018. Last year's revenue from the Chinese market It has grown by 58% and already accounts for one-third of AMD's.
According to reports, AMD's Ryzen processor already has a place in the desktop, but the notebook field is still struggling, many OEM / ODM manufacturers are more willing to cooperate with Intel, so supporting the Chinese company's clone army may eventually weaken Intel's most powerful market .
