Chinese Zhaoxin has plans to threaten Intel and AMD duopoly by 2021.

[Djole123]

Zhaoxin, a relatively new fabless semiconductor company made as a joint venture between VIA and Shanghai Municipal Government, sets their new target to reach performance parity with AMD and Intel by 2021.

 

 

Their current flagship, the KX-6000, is based on the outdated 16nm architecture and features 8 cores running at 3.0GHz, and it isn't the best performer on the market. However, they set to make their new flagship, the KX-7000, on the new (unreleased) architecture based on the 7nm process. It is also set to support DDR5, PCIe Gen 4.0, and an integrated GPU. If successful, they expect to have a processor with performance that's close to AMD and Intel's counterparts. Unfortunately, they haven't published anything more exact than that, but considering their KX-6000 is on par with an i5-7400, this seems quite promising.

 

In my opinion, this is quite exciting, as AMD and Intel have had a duopoly on the CPU market for about 15 years now, and having a new x86 performer is going to shake up the market quite a bit. I hope they succeed in creating these CPUs.

 

Source:

https://www.tomshardware.com/news/china-zhaoxin-7nm-cpus-ddr5-pcie-4

[TheSLSAMG]

8 minutes ago, Djole123 said:

Their current flagship, the KX-6000, is based on the outdated 16nm architecture and features 8 cores running at 3.0GHz, and it isn't the best performer on the market. However, they set to make their new flagship, the KX-7000, on the new (unreleased) architecture based on the 7nm process. It is also set to support DDR5, PCIe Gen 4.0, and an integrated GPU. If successful, they expect to have a processor with performance that's close to AMD and Intel's counterparts. Unfortunately, they haven't published anything more exact than that, but considering their KX-6000 is on par with an i5-7400, this seems quite promising.

If the KX-6000 is only on-par with the i5-7400 while having twice as many cores on a less refined manufacturing node, I'm not sure how promising it is yet. That's really poor single-threaded performance. Moving to 7nm will improve things, but they would basically need a 2-2.5x their 16nm process' single-threaded performance to be competitive. But with that being said, I'm really interested in seeing another company join the fray.

[Djole123]

13 minutes ago, TheSLSAMG said:

If the KX-6000 is only on-par with the i5-7400 while having twice as many cores on a less refined manufacturing node, I'm not sure how promising it is yet. That's really poor single-threaded performance. Moving to 7nm will improve things, but they would basically need a 2-2.5x their 16nm process' single-threaded performance to be competitive. But with that being said, I'm really interested in seeing another company join the fray.

Considering that Zhaoxin is a relatively new spinoff of VIA (the last time VIA made a relevant CPU was in 2011, and that was a low powered 1.6GHz quad core), them making a 7400-level performer is not bad at all.

[Geoff35674567]

10 minutes ago, Tony Tony Chopper said:

Its probably just copied hardware from AMD with extra functionality added, a backdoor.

Shanghai Municipal Government. They are not even trying to hide it.

[Murasaki]

I guess this has something to do with China banning foreign technology?

[Geoff35674567]

Just now, Murasaki said:

I guess this has something to do with China banning foreign technology?

this has something to do with china removing itself from dependence on foreign technology https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sugon#Dawning_6000

[JoeCoke]

CYRIX IS BACK BOYS

 

Kind of. In a way.

[porina]

35 minutes ago, Djole123 said:

Considering that Zhaoxin is a relatively new spinoff of VIA (the last time VIA made a relevant CPU was in 2011, and that was a low powered 1.6GHz quad core), them making a 7400-level performer is not bad at all.

The joint venture is probably a requirement for Taiwan based Via to do this kind of work in China.

 

Also note Via do have a more modern CPU core that is, in theory, competitive to currently available Intel and AMD CPUs at an architecture level (IPC). More in link below. It is built on TSMC 16nm so don't expect it to be cutting edge. Imagine the same but without the AI engine, it could be made relatively compact and cheaper for general applications. Even if we assume it is like a 9900k at lower clocks, that's still plenty for most desktop applications.

 

 

[Trik'Stari]

56 minutes ago, Tony Tony Chopper said:

Its probably just copied hardware from AMD with extra functionality added, a backdoor.

Agreed.

 

I can't see any major companies being dumb enough to actually buy this, based on the 100% chance of it having a back door.

[Tristerin]

What I read on the original article was:

 

We have an 8 core CPU on par with an FX 8350

[samcool55]

Well, as they say, wait for benchmarks.

If they can make a dent in the market, good!

If they can't, well hey at least they tried.

[DavidKalinowski]

5 hours ago, 2Buck said:

CYRIX IS BACK BOYS

 

Kind of. In a way.

Freakin.. I had a cyrix 233 MII back in the day socket 7 IIRC..remember how all the CPUs used the same socket at one point? wish it could go back to that.  lol

[thorhammerz]

4 hours ago, Sauron said:

It's not two wrongs - it's the same wrong that you seem to be willing to tolerate from one "side" but immediately condemn on the other.

Do as we say, not as we do .

[yian88]

As long as its RISC-V based and not x86 and it has top notch support on linux and mobile it can be a great competitor, but as long as Intel/AMD + Microsoft tripoly exists, games, pro software and developing tools  wont be made outside of the tripoly at least not on desktop/workstation/laptop devices. 

[dgsddfgdfhgs]

another dead end , go ahead

[justpoet]

"Here, just install this low price processor…don't worry, it is secure… ^{_{for us to be fed data from}} "

[Soppro]

Hmm let me guess, they're going to undercut their competition by building on top of pilfered Western technologies and then sell it at a tenth of the price ... 

[Sir0Tek]

14 hours ago, yian88 said:

As long as its RISC-V based and not x86 and it has top notch support on linux and mobile it can be a great competitor, but as long as Intel/AMD + Microsoft tripoly exists, games, pro software and developing tools  wont be made outside of the tripoly at least not on desktop/workstation/laptop devices. 

This. I want this for the desktop at similar performance to Ryzen and with decent PCIe-GPU support.

I had high hopes in Arm but they obviously turned evil.

[williamcll]

22 hours ago, Djole123 said:

Zhaoxin, a relatively new fabless semiconductor company made as a joint venture between VIA and Shanghai Municipal Government, sets their new target to reach performance parity with AMD and ARM by 2021.

 

 

 

FTFY, Intel is almost gone in terms of Chinese enterprise and AMD is having an EPYC time with tencent. 

[NeuesTestament]

I believe that when I see it.

[xAcid9]

2021? 

[williamcll]

1 hour ago, Sir0Tek said:

This. I want this for the desktop at similar performance to Ryzen and with decent PCIe-GPU support.

I had high hopes in Arm but they obviously turned evil.

What happened to that? 

[Touch My Hamm]

Would be kinda cool to get another competitor other than AMD and Intel. More competition = more performance and less cost to the consumer. I see nothing wrong here :). I wont touch on anything political or anything about China. But its great to see more companies stepping up to the plate and taking on Intel/AMD. Would be cool to see cost and performance numbers. 

[RejZoR]

Just now, GodSeph said:

Would be kinda cool to get another competitor other than AMD and Intel. More competition = more performance and less cost to the consumer. I see nothing wrong here :). I wont touch on anything political or anything about China. But its great to see more companies stepping up to the plate and taking on Intel/AMD. Would be cool to see cost and performance numbers. 

Exactly. Even if you never ever buy a Chinese CPU, if they'll be any good, AMD and Intel will have to compete, either in performance or price. Or both. Same is for AMD and NVIDIA in graphics. Even if I'm not gonna buy Intel graphic card, just having them on the market will benefit us all.

[Kisai]

21 hours ago, DavidKalinowski said:

Freakin.. I had a cyrix 233 MII back in the day socket 7 IIRC..remember how all the CPUs used the same socket at one point? wish it could go back to that.  lol

Never going to happen.

 

The reason third parties were able to produce chipsets compatible with intel chips was due to licenses. Intel stopped doing that around the Pentium 2 era. 

 

AMD, Cyrix and Intel last had a mutually compatible platform with Socket 7, and AMD wound up buying ATI where as Cyrix was bought by VIA (who bought S3) , AMD managed to finally build a non-crappy CPU with the Athlon, and Cyrix built the Geode and sold it to AMD. Cyrix hasn't built anything since.