Zhaoxin Unveiled Next-Generation x86 SoC Plans | Hacker News Reader

Zhaoxin Unveiled Next-Generation x86 SoC Plans

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73 pointsrbanffy50 comments

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For those who don't know, Zhaoxin is a continuation of the Via x86 line. Neat to see a third vendor still kicking.

How close to governmental organizations is it?

It is a direct partnership with the Shaghai Municipal Government.

Hard pass then.

Pretty sure these aren't meant for us.

Probably building them so they don't have to use American parts. What's funny is that everyone claims that no one wants decoupling. While at the same time, everyone is also taking measures which are at once, very rational, and lead inevitably to a decoupled world.

It has more to do with state grants, which in China are quite big

Which they are forced to give. If US companies stop selling components to China, it’s back to the stone age for them.

Iran is pretty far away from the stone age, despite US sanctions. If the components can't be sold legally, they can still be smuggled. The added inefficiency would of course drive prices up, but it wouldn't be quite as disastrous as you seem to believe.

Hardly. The US is still a large trade partner for China, and an immediate stop will certainly trigger a domestic crisis, but they aren't really that dependent on the US. I'm not aware of a single item that only the US exclusively produces.

OTH China invests 95% of GDP on infrastructure (compared to 1.5% in the US), creating a huge domestic market. And a a stop of trade with the US will also mean a stop of China keeping the dollar strong - which they do because their currency is pegged to the dollar. They won't have a reason to continue this practice without trade with the US.

*9% of GDP for China of course, not 95%!

And government tech grants are very rational. We give them out in the US as well. Governments have their goals. I can understand that.

I'm just saying that the amalgamation of rational actions on the part of everyone involved has the potential to lead us to the decoupled world that everyone claims they don't want.

Of course China should fund their chip industry. It's common sense. Long term, they should probably be using their own chips. Also common sense. But imagine the same common sense being applied across the economies of all great nations in every critical sector. Think about where such measures lead in terms of global trade.

Maybe it's good? Not saying it's a definite bad thing. I'm a dad, when my kids were younger, if they couldn't get along I made them take their things and go back to their rooms. I have to admit, that made for a much more peaceful house. I'm just saying that it's probably better for the development of the children for them to peacefully play together.

Do they retain the legal agreements Via had for x86 usage?

I assume so, but the contracts are private. It certainly looks like the world wide license that Via would have had was split into 'China' and 'not China', hence how difficult these chips are to get a hold of. That being said, it's pretty much impossible to know for sure.

Fourth vendor actually! Centaur just announced a new core for the server market and even AVX-512 support.

See this https://fuse.wikichip.org/news/3099/centaur-unveils-its-new-...

Awesome! And some tensor cores for inference, neat!

Honestly, wouldn't be surprised to see more vendors spring up out of nowhere soon. The base patents are about to expire on x86_64. Everyone keeps saying that Apple is going to release an ARM laptop, but IMO a homegrown x86_64 chip is way more likely.

Apple or no Apple the Snapdragon 8cx is looking good! https://www.notebookcheck.net/Qualcomm-s-Snapdragon-8cx-amas...

Does Apple have any experience making x86_64 processors? Do they even have the license to do so?

If the parents are expired, they don't need a license. The base patents are expiring very very soon (ie. months).

Interesting proposition, something I haven't read anyone put forward before.

But Apple Scaling their current High Performance ARM design using HPC Node and higher Clock speed is likely much easier than doing a high performance x86 design.

Even Amazon decided to use ARM for their Server platform, to me I think ARM has won the game.

Apple's chip teams have worked on other ISAs before, and there's tons of ex Transmeta folk around the bay area of you need more x86 experience.

And Amazon AFAIK just cleaned up an existing ARM uarch sort of like Intrinsity's expertise. I don't think they have the experience needed to make their own high perf uarch, whether it be ARM or x86.

Zhaoxin - is a design licenses from Via, the maker of Centaur

Same vendor actually :)

For those who don't know, Zhaoxin _never_ released any x86 product. Over the last 10? years their only output have been laughable roadmaps listing non existing processors.

seriously?

They did sell Lenovo computers with renamed VIA Nano processors few years ago while claiming "Zhaoxin's home-grown x86 CPU is completely designed from the ground up within China."

I've gotten the sense that they're using them, you just can't buy them on the open market. The Chinese government has a ton of uses for passable x86 chips that they control the masks of and could easily consume the whole production line.

Leonove ThinkPads with Zhaoxin prosessors have been spotted in China. https://imgur.com/a/kIK8bmw

This is Zhaoxin press event photo.

I've used the previous generation of these for some machine control in very hostile environment (welding, plasmacutting), very reliable and cheap.

Which one exactly? Afaik all the CPUs on their roadmap never existed.

I still have the board somewhere, I will look it up when I get back.

They exist. You can buy a Lenovo Kaitian-series dekstop in China with a Zhaoxin chip. They also have a bunch of laptops. You can't outside of china because that's their agreement with Via. You can still find them on Alibaba sometimes.

I meant the "Zhaoxin's home-grown x86 CPU is completely designed from the ground up within China" CPUs, those AFAIK dont exist.

Lenovo Kaitian M6100/A6100 were real, powered by renamed VIA NANO chips. Taiwanese designed VIA Nano E-C4650 got rebadged and magically became homegrown Chinese ZX-C4650 design etc. Good old Pentium 3 Mobile AGTL+ Socket 479 bus circa 2001 vintage. https://wccftech.com/via-28nm-c4650-x86-quad-core-processor-...

Yes, the renamed original old school Centaur/VIA designs do exist, and perform at ~Intel Atom z8300 level. Good review by Chinese tech vlogger https://www.bilibili.com/video/av61782186/

I’ve read about it many times but still can’t figure it out completely.

Can a x86 license holder always use any of its new features? For example, you had a license in the 90s, can you automatically use 256, 512 width vector instructions?

Are none of those licenses untransferable in case of the company purchase or just AMD’s?

Is the license policy from Intel a result from IBM’s pressure back in the day? Did they demand multiple providers or just one alternative (AMD)?

Like all complex legal matters "it depends".

The enforcement is based on patents and contracts signed for licensing those patents. There tend to be a new set of patents for each new ISA feature. That's half the reason why the virtualization extensions are different on Intel and AMD for instance; they didn't cross license that piece.

The patents are obviously public, but we can't answer all the questions about the contracts since those tend to be private (we have seen a couple publicly due to law suits however).

AMDs initial x86 processors were indeed as an IBM mandated second source, but I think their 386 class (and definitely 486 class) processors were independently developed. I suspect Intel won't cancel existing licenses for anti-trust reasons, but also would price a new license for a lot more than in the 486 days.

AMD 386 had directly copied microcode, Intel sued and lost due to previous cross licensing agreements.

VIA x86 license expired in 2013, thats the year Zhaoxin came into existence in mainland China.

With the trade war and "national security" posture the US is doing its very best to stimulate China to become self-sufficient.

China was already doing that. One of the aims of the trade war is trying to slow them down.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Made_in_China_2025

China was stealing enough tech to do that. Also, self sufficiency was already a long term strategic goal, thus the tech stealing. It forces the issue, but hardly changes the calculus.

Previous it is a cherry-on-top, now self sufficiency is their life line. A day and night difference.

But I guess those days will arrive no matter what, as semiconductor ended its exponential growth era, the West can't have an edge forever, no matter how hard they try.

let's see what will happen when there is nothing to steal :-)

That's the same line they used on the US, Germany, and Japan when each was bootstrapping their high skill economy.

Russia also producing their own CPUs recently. They are not very competitive in consumer space, but they are not ridiculously expensive either. It's awesome to see more competition.

Producing CPU (and chips in general) are rightfully seen by all of these countries as a national security imperative.

Good. I'm not convinced that a unipolar world is a good thing. As long as open war does not occur, some national rivalry stimulates innovation just as corporate competition does. A unipolar world is like a stagnant monopoly in the business sphere. Politically you can see the effect in any one party US state (regardless of party). The party in power gets corrupt and incompetent.

Maybe China vs USA will put humanity on Mars.

No pricing, unfortunately.

This cpu may never be sold. It's an effort by the chinese government to be less dependent on american companies.

More like effort by VIA to circumvent x86 license expiry with added bonus of National IC Investment Fund grants https://www.forbes.com/sites/willyshih/2019/11/22/chinas-lat...

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