Hygon’s chips ‘safe’ from AMD security flaw amid China’s tech self-reliance push

Chips from Chinese semiconductor designer Hygon Information Technology were found unaffected by a recently disclosed vulnerability in products developed by its US tech licenser and former joint venture partner Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), according to analysts, which showed progress in China’s self-reliance drive. Hygon’s central processing units (CPUs), which were developed under a licence to use AMD’s X86-based Zen chip architecture, did not have the hardware security flaw that affected a range of AMD artificial intelligence chips that were widely installed in various data centres and cloud infrastructure operations, according to Chen Bingxin, an analyst at semiconductors consultancy JW Insights. Chen attributed that result to Hygon’s years of investments in redesigning AMD’s chip architecture with self-developed innovations. It underscored efforts by Chinese chip designers to become less exposed to Western technology risks. AMD and Hygon did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Wednesday. Hygon’s successful initiative to diverge from AMD’s original chip architecture marked a milestone in China, where developers are pushing for increased autonomy in core technology and security for locally designed semiconductors, according to JW Insights’ Chen. The hardware security flaw affecting AMD’s chips, code-named StackWarp, was disclosed in a report published on January 15, by the German cybersecurity institution CISPA Helmholtz Centre for Information Security. A team of researchers at the centre said the vulnerability, found in AMD’s flagship Zen 1 through Zen 5 processor families, could be exploited to bypass key cloud security features and “posed a serious risk to cloud services”. The vulnerability targeted AMD’s SEV-SNP technology, which was designed to protect its chips during sensitive cloud computing workloads, according to the researchers. Hygon, meanwhile, used its self-developed CSV3 technology on its chips for the same purpose, which made its products immune to attackers looking to exploit the StackWarp flaw, according to JW Insights’ Chen. He said the impact of AMD’s hardware security flaw showed further bifurcation in x86 chip architecture development, as Hygon showed that it had established a fully self-reliant x86 ecosystem in China. X86 was originally a family of complex computer architectures developed by US semiconductor giant Intel. Most server, desktop and laptop computers are now based on various iterations of that architecture. AMD has already released a software patch to counter the StackWarp vulnerability, but this workaround was expected to cause a loss in performance for the affected chips. That created a dilemma for cloud services operators, as they weighed security against performance amid rising AI demand. Founded in 2014, Hygon, which designs CPUs and accelerators for AI applications, is a major player in China’s drive for tech self-sufficiency. Its chips were widely used in the cloud computing, finance, energy and government sectors, according to its website.