This site may earn affiliate commissions from the links on this page. Terms of apply.

Normally, when we talk most the x86 market, we're talking about two companies: Intel and AMD. If Intel had its way, there'd exist just one company, of grade. The efforts Chipzilla took to strip AMD of its x86 license went all the way to the Supreme Court earlier beingness swatted downwards. Today, these 2 firms boss more than 99 percent of the combined marketplace for x86 CPUsSEEAMAZON_ET_135 See Amazon ET commerce, with Intel property the bulk share.

But to quote a sure greenish-skinned Jedi Chief, "There is another." VIA Technologies has its own x86 license and its partnered with the Chinese government to create Zhaoxin, (the name means "trillion cadre"), a joint venture dedicated to producing homegrown x86 fries. The new KX-6000 CPU core is a successor to the KX-5000 announced before this twelvemonth. A chart comparing the two, courtesy of Anandtech, is shown beneath:

KX-5K-6K

Not much is known well-nigh the internal architectures of these CPUs. Historically, the fries out of Zhaoxin have closely echoed VIA'south own efforts. The company has released cores based on VIA'southward Isaiah and later QuadCore architectures, but the WuDaoKou compages (which the KX-5000 is based on) was its first in-house project. Information technology was expected to evangelize 25 percent higher IPS, 140 pct better performance in multi-threaded workloads, a smaller pipeline, improved OoOE engine, better co-operative prediction, and new execution unit balancing. The KX-6000 is based on an evolved version of the WuDaoKou architecture, known as LuJiaZui. Both cores use just two retentivity channels, a configuration that could cost it some performance if the compages isn't well-balanced.

Details on LuJiaZui are difficult to come past, as the nautical chart above implies. WikiChip states that the CPU should deliver upwardly to fifty percent improved performance on the basis of its clock increase. DDR4 is now supported rather than DDR3 and memory controller performance is besides said to accept improved. There'due south non much to go on as far as how fast these fries are, but I did detect some Geekbench 4 results for the KX-U5580.

U5580

It's not exactly what we'd call impressive — a Core m3-7Y30 scores roughly 3400 points in the Geekbench 4 single-thread test and 6400 – 6800 points in the multi-core test. For reference, that's a dual-cadre CPU with four threads going up against an eight-core scrap — and even so beating it in multi-threading. Merely with the KX-6000 supposedly delivering upwards to a 50 per centum improvement in performance, the new cores should be capable of besting Intel's low-stop, most-power-restrained solutions in multi-threaded code. Given that the KX family is the effect of a longstanding Chinese try to reduce its dependence on microprocessors manufactured by Western companies, Zhaoxin is clearly iterating towards that goal.

Equally of this writing, nosotros aren't aware of any plans to bring these CPUs to the United states. Give it a few more generations, and that could modify.

At present Read: VIA Technologies Subsidiary Zhaoxin Announces New x86-64 CPUs, The Worst CPUs Ever Fabricated, and VIA'due south new Isaiah x86/ARM hybrid CPU outperforms Intel in benchmarks – but will it ever come to market?