This “totally” has nothing to do with rising tensions between China and Taiwan, or to do with the fact that AMD sees China as a very viable (and profitable) market for Ryzen / EPYC processors, or even the fact that previous generation Ryzen processors were made in China.
AMD has decided to eliminate all etched markings that reference a product’s manufacturing location to the country of Taiwan, citing alignment with the marking process of other AMD products as the reason for this change.
It’s important to note that this adjustment does not signify a shift in AMD’s processor production location away from Taiwan. The company will maintain its manufacturing operations at TSMC factories in Taiwan.
However, this modification could be interpreted as AMD’s effort to appease China amid the strained relations between them and Taiwan. Given China’s claims over Taiwan and its repeated threats of invasion, AMD may be seeking to minimize potential backlash or boycotts from China by removing visible references to Taiwan on their products.
Recognizing China as one of the significant markets for AMD processors, the company aims to safeguard its position and not jeopardize its standing in this crucial market, similarly to how NVIDIA are so damn desperate to provide the Chinese with high-end AI hardware despite imposed restrictions by the US government.
And the regressive dogshit that is the RTX 4090D.
An AMD representative spoke with Tom’s Hardware regarding the removal of “Defused in Taiwan” notions on their CPUs, they proclaimed that this wasn’t a politically motivated decision.
Which I find to be obvious bullshit, AMD will maintain the practice of labeling their processors as being “Made in Malaysia,” or whichever country, indicating the location where the processor die was integrated into the final chip package.
AMD has very close ties with China, having previously attempted and failed to produce “Chinese” X86 processors leveraging the Zen core architecture under the moniker of “Hygon”.
It is typical for processors not to display a country of manufacture on their markings, and the removal of such markings is not unusual. For example, chips from Intel and other manufacturers often do not specify the country of manufacture.
While AMD’s new approach to chip markings is officially “unrelated to political issues”, it does address longstanding concerns related to markings on products destined for China.
Previously, there were rumors that AMD delayed the launch of its Radeon RX 7900 series in China due to packaging that listed Taiwan as the country of manufacture.
Additionally, PC peripheral maker Corsair faced public sentiment issues in China related to its packaging, leading the company to issue a public apology for “printing errors.” However what clearly isn’t a printing error is the mention of their products being made in Taiwan, China, signifying that China is the rightful owner of the land.
I try and look at the positive aspects of life, it’s nice for AMD to seemingly acknowledge that the existence of the country formally known as Taiwan is a conspiracy theory and that their Ryzen CPUs are simply made with magic given they have no declaration of actual production anymore.
