VIA Getting Back Into The x86 CPU Space

[erek]

More info: http://translate.google.com/transla...mds-ryzen-einholen-1712-131908.html&sandbox=1

"The VIA Zhaoxin KX-7000 Zhaoxin wants to have achieved the performance of AMD's Ryzen ."

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"Making the news rounds again is word of Zhaoxin Semiconductor that is jointly owned by VIA working on modern and competitive x86 processors.

VIA still maintains an x86 license although they haven't produced any compelling CPU in many years. Months ago was the talk of this Zhaoxin company working on a new x86 CPU design and it's come up once again.

A Chinese slide acquired by Golem is reporting that their current platform supports USB 3.1 Gen1/Gen2, SATA 3.0, PCI Express 3.0, ~2.0GHz clock frequency, and DDR4 support.

Meanwhile their future work with the "KX-6000" is planning on a 3.0GHz+ clock speed and the CPU to be manufactured on a 16nm process. Further out is the planned KX-7000 with DDR5 and PCI Express 4.0.

More details in this forum thread. Do you have much faith in a third-party with an x86 license able to come up with a CPU in 2018 that can compete with AMD Ryzen and Intel Kabylake/Coffeelake? It will be interesting to see if they can actually deliver as well as how the Linux support would be. Feel free to discuss in the foruyms."

 

[TrailRunner]

I think that China would rather use China-sourced chips with their own spyware rather than rely on Intel and AMD chips with American spyware. So yeah, I think that this will work. In terms of Linux support - of course it will support Linux.

 

[auntjemima]

The issue is people won't want to take a chance on them. They could have the best of the best and 99% would just go eeeeeeeeehhhhhh i7.

 

[SamirD]

Via made some pretty strong in-roads in the embedded/small form factor market with their Pentium compatible chips back in the day. They also made some decent chipsets that have stuck around in the vintage scene.

I could see them coming up with something that could catch enough attention to make in-roads once again into those areas and maybe start to get up with the big boys if they have enough backing. Because the older via stuff was dirt cheap compared to the competition, but it was too little too specialized too late for them to really grab a hold and stick around.