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AMD has entered a licensing agreement with a consortium of public and private Chinese companies, that will use its x86 chip tech for server products.
As the news broke, AMD’s stock value surged by more than 39 per cent.
AMD’s new joint venture with THATIC (Tianjin Haiguang Advanced Technology Investment) will see the x86 tech used to build SoCs for the Chinese server market.
The chipmaker expects the total value of the deal to be $293 million, with $52 million in revenue recognised over the course of 2016.
It is thought that Intel – who, according to Mercury Research, powered 99.4 per cent of all corporate data centres in 2015 – may challenge the licence under its own technology exchange deal with AMD, which states that x86 technology cannot be sub-licensed.
There is a case that the US government may even get involved, as transferring x86 technology ‘affects national security’, according to ElectronicsWeekly.
This deal could be a huge comeback for AMD in the global market. The firm once claimed nearly a third of the market, but in 2015 only held 0.6 per cent. Plus, in addition to its new revenue stream and potentially becoming a bigger player in the Chinese market, the deal isn’t costing AMD a penny as the IP already exists.
In other AMD news, the firm has officially confirmed market positioning for its upcoming Polaris chips for the first time ever.
AMD said in an official statement: “AMD demonstrated its Polaris 10 and 11 next-generation GPUs, with Polaris 11 targeting the notebook market and “Polaris” 10 aimed at the mainstream desktop and high-end gaming notebook segment.
“Polaris architecture-based GPUs are expected to deliver a 2x performance per watt improvement over current generation products and are designed for intensive workloads including 4K video playback and virtual reality (VR).”
