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Zhaoxin's x86 CPUs

en.zhaoxin.com

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Re: Zhaoxin's x86 CPUs

#61

Post by klodolph »

oh_sigh wrote: post #56
klodolph wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you aware of historical events like the 1982 Siberian pipeline explosion? It was allegedly caused by sabotaged software inserted by a Canadian company on behalf of the CIA. Modern chips are certainly dense enough and have enough layers that you can hide Trojans in them. Buying e.g. routers with Chinese ICs is a credible threat to the US government.

The explosion happened because Soviets stole control software and tried to run it on their system.

The software was not stolen, it was purchased from a Canadian company. The explosion happened because of the CIA's sabotage efforts.

Re: Zhaoxin's x86 CPUs

#62

Post by keltor »

gaius wrote: post #32
sanxiyn wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You mean ARM Holdings plc, a wholly owned subsidary of SoftBank Group Corp.?

Well, quite. Didn’t the US block the sale of MIPS to a Chinese buyer?

It wouldn't really matter anyways since the Chinese have been making MIPS64 chips for more than a decade.

The current high end chip in China is actually new arch based on the DEC Alpha.

Re: Zhaoxin's x86 CPUs

#63

Post by keltor »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #42
TazeTSchnitzel wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The People's Republic of China and the Republic of China both agree there is a single China which includes Taiwan. They differ over who should govern it.

Not all Taiwanese are pro republic of China. There is a huge split in Taiwan between mainlanders (post 1949) and natives (also descended from the mainland, just pre 1949).

Hans started moving to Taiwan in the 1600s, then you had that big influx as the Chinese Revolution wound down.

There's also Native Taiwanese - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Austronesian_peoples, they even make up about 2% of the population, I think they all want the Hans to pickup and leave their lands.

Re: Zhaoxin's x86 CPUs

#65

Post by ychen306 »

deepnotderp wrote: post #17
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.

I thought the issue is that the fallback doesn't clear the cache affected by the speculation but not speculation per se?

Re: Zhaoxin's x86 CPUs

#67

Post by oh_sigh »

klodolph wrote: post #61
oh_sigh wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The explosion happened because Soviets stole control software and tried to run it on their system.

The software was not stolen, it was purchased from a Canadian company. The explosion happened because of the CIA's sabotage efforts.

This (and many other sources online) claim that the Soviets stole it from a Canadian company:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/1...

Basically, the CIA learned that the Soviets were looking for this software, and got the Canadian company to plant a bug in it before the soviets could steal it.

Re: Zhaoxin's x86 CPUs

#68

Post by rbanffy »

skykooler wrote: post #26
deepnotderp wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

What about Atom? As I understood it Atom processors did not use speculative execution.

IIRC, the first generation Xeon Phi had cores very similar to Atoms too.

Re: Zhaoxin's x86 CPUs

#69

Post by luyi06 »

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 IS part of China.

Re: Zhaoxin's x86 CPUs

#70

Post by seanmcdirmid »

keltor wrote: post #63
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not all Taiwanese are pro republic of China. There is a huge split in Taiwan between mainlanders (post 1949) and natives (also descended from the mainland, just pre 1949).

Hans started moving to Taiwan in the 1600s, then you had that big influx as the Chinese Revolution wound down. There's also Native Taiwanese - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Austronesian_peoples , they even make up about 2% of the population, I think they all want the Hans to pickup and leave their lands.

The native natives are more aligned with the KMT (ok, super aligned). The Hans before 1949 are mostly from Fujian, who are not known for being the most patriotic (and indeed, became dominant in overseas Chinese communities in SE Asia, NYC, and so on...). Post 1949 was the rich Chinese and KMT officials from everywhere escaping the communists, who also own much of the island's economy and want closer ties to China (so they can make more money).
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