A new report from Transparency between the UK and China The organization claims that British company Imagination Technologies has supplied Chinese companies with critical GPU IP technologies that could be used for Chinese government, military and intelligence applications.
In the report, UKCT accuses Imagination executives and investor Canyon Bridge (which is controlled by China Reform, an arm of the Chinese government) of facilitating the transfer of key technology assets to Chinese companies, which now rival Imagination and other GPU developers. The technology would have been transferred to Son Moore for example, which has ties to a company that supplies GPUs to the Chinese military, and to Biren Technology, which is partly owned by the Russian government.
Imagination Technologies develops graphics and neural processing intellectual properties, which it then licenses to clients like Apple. Like some other large IP licensees, it can sell a real GPU or NPU model (physical IP), explain how to use it, and perhaps even help implement it in a chip design. It can also sell an architectural license, from which its partner would design a GPU from scratch, developing its own execution units (texture units, shader units, rendering back-ends, etc.), data pipelines, cache hierarchies and interconnections. like balancing the entire GPU in accordance with one’s vision.
Here are two of the report’s four key findings, with more in-depth analysis below.
- Transfer of key assets to Chinese companies: UKCT has received testimony alleging that in 2020, Imagination began transferring core assets to Chinese GPU companies through undisclosed and unusual knowledge and technology transfer agreements. Among the three Chinese companies identified as having received Imagination’s assets: one, Moore Threads, has ties to a company that supplies GPU products to the Chinese military; another, Biren Technology, is partly owned by the Russian government. These two companies have been described as China’s “premier AI chip designers” and both were sanctioned by the US government in October 2023.
- Chinese owners with close ties to the military: Imagination’s owner, China Reform, is focused on supporting China’s strategic industries and has close ties to China’s military and national security establishment, as well as investments in related industries and businesses, including a chip company that supplied a leading military company. The UKCT believes that the Chinese reform intended to exploit the imagination to serve the interests of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).
Licensing GPU technologies to China
Normally, Imagination and other intellectual property providers never transfer key knowledge or explain design decisions to clients. However, UKCT’s source – a former Imagination employee – claims this has happened with Imagination’s China-based clients, including Biren Technology (which received investment from the Russian-Chinese Investment Fund), InnoSilicon and Moore Threads.
The UKCT source revealed that the architecture licenses sold to Chinese companies included three distinct elements:
- The first included standard materials provided under Imagination’s regular licensing agreements, such as physical IP addresses, support and documentation. These standard resources do not include details on the rationale or methods behind specific design decisions.
- The second involved direct knowledge transfer, where Imagination’s senior hardware and software architects shared unique ideas with Chinese customers. This was highly unusual and had only happened once before – with Imagination’s biggest client, Apple.
- The third required the creation of new documentation specifically tailored to these Chinese customers, detailing the fundamental characteristics of Imagination’s design intellectual property (IP), including internal specifications, verification methods and design processes. This type of information is generally kept secret (although it is sometimes shared to meet compliance requirements, as it allows customers to become competitors).
The source estimated that after Imagination’s know-how is transferred to three major Chinese GPU developers, the company will be shut down. The company didn’t close its doors, but its workforce grew from 1,100 in 2016 to 804 in mid-2017 (after Apple announced plans to develop its own GPUs) and to 520 in 2023.
ImgTec denies any wrongdoing
While InnoSilicon publicly recognized use Imagination IP to develop its GPUs, Biren Technology and Moore Threads claim that their processors are based on proprietary architectures. However, it is widely believed that the founding teams of Biren and Moore Threads came from AMD and Nvidia and potentially brought trade secrets with them. (This has not been confirmed, but neither claims regarding proprietary architectures nor the assumption of third-party trade secrets exclude the possibility that the underlying instruction set architecture (ISA) or certain decisions of design comes from Imagination Technologies.)
Imagination technologiesbased in the UK, denies any wrongdoing and says its close work with Chinese clients met industry standards for architectural licensing. The company also denied transferring its proprietary know-how to its licensing partners.
“Architectural licensing agreements are completely normal in the semiconductor industry, including for Imagination,” said a statement from Imagination Technologies published by UKCT. “When we ‘deliver intellectual property,’ we deliver technology packages and license Imagination’s intellectual property rights to that technology to enable our customers to design, manufacture and sell chips incorporating our technology. (…) The specific technology packages deliverables for standard and architectural licenses vary by customer and end-use case (‚Ķ For standard and architectural license engagements, training is required to help customers understand how to design chips with Imagination Technology and, where applicable, carry out their tasks). own personalization for their authorized use only. ”
The company further argued that it would not make strategic sense to share all of Imagination Technologies’ experience and knowledge with its customers, thereby allowing them to design their own GPUs. It also denied transferring its assets to third parties in China. Now that Biren, InnoSilicon and Son Moore are on the US Department of Commerce’s Entity List and Imagination can no longer supply these companies, Chinese companies will likely have to develop new generations of GPUs independently – likely using a familiar ISA.
Chinese military links?
When China-backed Canyon Bridge took over Imagination Technologies in 2020, it immediately caused huge controversy due to its ties to the Chinese government – and the potential use of its technologies to boost military capacity and industries China’s strategic strategies. UKCT claims that Canyon Bridge not only has ties to the Chinese government through its owner, China Reform, but also has ties to the People’s Liberation Army, state-owned strategic enterprises and various Chinese companies that need AI, graphics and HPC. transformers for development and production. These companies may collaborate with Biren, InnoSilicon and Moore Threads, either directly or through intermediaries.
For example, one of the shareholders of Moore Threads is Liu Shanshan (also the company’s executive director). Shanshan is also director of Beijing Runyu Information Technology. According to the UKCT, this GPU company supplied products to China Aerospace Science and Technology Corp., a major arms manufacturer in which Chinese Reform has a stake.
UKCT plans to release a second part of its investigation, which will focus on export control laws and produce additional evidence about an employment dispute involving former Imagination CEO Dr Ron Black. You can read the full report here (PDF).