Zhaoxin's x86 CPUs • Hacker News Board

Re: Zhaoxin's x86 CPUs

#11

Post by madez » Thu, Jan 04, 2018, 3:00 PM UTC

dogma1138 wrote: post #5

gaius wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

but its chips don’t make it out of the country because they’re largely used in products built for the Chinese government. Very wise of them. Right now the UK needs to make a serious push to make ARM our primary choice, and fabbed here too. This is as strategic as nukes.

It's too late for that ARM is no longer a UK company.

The argument of national security goes a long way.

Re: Zhaoxin's x86 CPUs

#12

Post by sharemywin » Thu, Jan 04, 2018, 3:03 PM UTC

I surprised most cpu chips don't have government back-doors in them.

Re: Zhaoxin's x86 CPUs

#13

Post by Proven » Thu, Jan 04, 2018, 3:03 PM UTC

gaius wrote: post #4

sanxiyn wrote: post #2

This is VIA Technologies. Details here: http://www.tomshardware.com/news/via-chinese-x86-soc-2019,36...

but its chips don’t make it out of the country because they’re largely used in products built for the Chinese government. Very wise of them. Right now the UK needs to make a serious push to make ARM our primary choice, and fabbed here too. This is as strategic as nukes.

Statist nonsense

Re: Zhaoxin's x86 CPUs

#14

Post by TwoNineA » Thu, Jan 04, 2018, 3:05 PM UTC

sharemywin wrote: post #12

I surprised most cpu chips don't have government back-doors in them.

Intel ME?

Re: Zhaoxin's x86 CPUs

#15

Post by vasili111 » Thu, Jan 04, 2018, 3:09 PM UTC

Do they have meltdown and/or spectre bug?

Re: Zhaoxin's x86 CPUs

#16

Post by Coding_Cat » Thu, Jan 04, 2018, 3:20 PM UTC

sanxiyn wrote: post #9

0xcde4c3db wrote: post #3

The page says "Zhaoxin's home-grown x86 CPU is completely designed from the ground up within China", but other sources suggest that their cores are derived from Centaur microarchitecture. Anyone know what the truth is on this?

VIA bought Centaur, so you can argue that, tenuously. VIA is a Taiwanese company. Some people insist that being Taiwanese is being Chinese.

Taiwan insist it's Chinese. Its government claims to be the rightful government of the whole of China.

Re: Zhaoxin's x86 CPUs

#17

Post by deepnotderp » Thu, Jan 04, 2018, 3:22 PM UTC

vasili111 wrote: post #15

Do they have meltdown and/or spectre bug?

They have spectre, any CPU with speculative execution and caches of any sort (excluding some capability machines, no ROP exploit machines and PLB enforced SASOS machines), including branch prediction (!) is vulnerable to spectre. (For those of you not in comp arch, that roughly translates to "literally every single non embedded CPU, and then some")

That's what makes the flaw so deep and troublesome.

Re: Zhaoxin's x86 CPUs

#18

Post by jjawssd » Thu, Jan 04, 2018, 3:23 PM UTC

sharemywin wrote: post #12

I surprised most cpu chips don't have government back-doors in them.

ARM Trustzone

http://www.arm.com/products/processors/technologies/trustzon...

AMD PSP

http://www.amd.com/en-us/innovations/software-technologies/s...

Re: Zhaoxin's x86 CPUs

#19

Post by pjc50 » Thu, Jan 04, 2018, 3:33 PM UTC

madez wrote: post #11

dogma1138 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's too late for that ARM is no longer a UK company.

The argument of national security goes a long way.

It certainly goes a long way towards redirecting money to favoured state companies and building protectionist barriers, yes. Whether it provides any actual security is another matter.

Re: Zhaoxin's x86 CPUs

#20

Post by dschuetz » Thu, Jan 04, 2018, 3:34 PM UTC

sharemywin wrote: post #12

I surprised most cpu chips don't have government back-doors in them.

Those mentioned are surely just convenience features ;) to believe that a single intelligence agency might exploit them in some way is clearly a conspiracy theory! ;) ;)