Zhaoxin (Shanghai Zhaoxin Semiconductor Co., Ltd.; , ) is a

fabless semiconductor company Fabless manufacturing is the design and sale of hardware devices and semiconductor chips while outsourcing their fabrication (or ''fab'') to a specialized manufacturer called a semiconductor foundry. These foundries are typically, but not exclu ...

, created in 2013 as a joint venture between

VIA Technologies VIA Technologies Inc. (), is a Taiwanese manufacturer of integrated circuits, mainly motherboard chipsets, CPUs, and memory. It was the world's largest independent manufacturer of motherboard chipsets. As a fabless semiconductor company, VIA c ...

and the

Shanghai Municipal Government The Politics of Shanghai is structured in a dual party-government system like all other governing institutions in the mainland of the People's Republic of China (PRC). In the last few decades the city has produced many of the country's eventu ...

. The company manufactures

x86 x86 (also known as 80x86 or the 8086 family) is a family of complex instruction set computer (CISC) instruction set architectures initially developed by Intel based on the Intel 8086 microprocessor and its 8088 variant. The 8086 was introd ...

-compatible desktop and laptop CPUs. The term '' Zhào xīn'' means ''million core''.In China 兆 can mean either short-scale million (1e6) or trillion (1e12). However, for IT-related topics 兆 always means mega/million in Mainland China. The processors are created mainly for the Chinese market: the venture is an attempt to reduce the Chinese dependence on foreign technology.

Background

''Zhaoxin'' is a joint venture between VIA Technologies and the Shanghai Municipal Government. In 2021 it was reported that VIA has a 14.75% shareholding in the company. China has a

domestic policy Domestic policy is a type of public policy overseeing administrative decisions that are directly related to all issues and activity within a state's borders. It differs from foreign policy, which refers to the ways a government advances its intere ...

to "replace all foreign hardware and software from its public infrastructure with homegrown solutions" by 2023 (the so-called 3–5–2 policy). VIA holds a x86 licence which allows its subsidiaries to produce compatible microprocessors; this allows Zhaoxin to develop x86 computer chips.

Architecture

The architecture of the initial ZX family of processors is a continuation of

VIA Via or VIA may refer to the following: Science and technology * MOS Technology 6522, Versatile Interface Adapter * ''Via'' (moth), a genus of moths in the family Noctuidae * Via (electronics), a through-connection * VIA Technologies, a Taiwan ...

's Centaur Technology x86-64 Isaiah design. The ZX-A and ZX-B are based on the

VIA Nano The VIA Nano (formerly Code name#Commercial code names in the computer industry, code-named VIA Isaiah) is a 64-bit CPU for personal computers. The VIA Nano was released by VIA Technologies in 2008 after five years of development by its CPU divi ...

X2 C4350AL. The ZX-B is identical to the ZX-A, except that it is manufactured by Shanghai Huali Microelectronics Corporation (HLMC) . The ZX-C is based on the VIA QuadCore-E & Eden X4. Zhaoxin calls this architecture "Zhangjiang", however it is thought that the basis is the VIA Isaiah 2 architecture. Like the VIA processors they were based on, early ZX processors were

ball grid array A ball grid array (BGA) is a type of surface-mount packaging (a chip carrier) used for integrated circuits. BGA packages are used to permanently mount devices such as microprocessors. A BGA can provide more interconnection pins than can be p ...

chips sold pre-soldered onto a motherboard. Zhaoxin came to the attention of the Northen American and European technology press when, in late 2017 and early 2018, it launched the ZX-D processor and revealed plans for future products. Zhaoxin calls the ZX-D architecture "

Wudaokou Wudaokou (), whose name is a literal reference to the fifth level crossing of the Jingbao Railway, is a neighborhood in the Haidian District of North West Beijing, famous for its close distances to universities including Tsinghua University ...

"; this is a complete re-design of the VIA Isaiah. It is also a departure from earlier microarchitectures, such as ZhangJiang, which were a lightly modified version of a VIA Technologies (Centaur) architecture. WuDaoKou was a new and complete SoC design. Changes implemented in the ZX-D included the integration of a northbridge, like in modern x86 designs, as well as the addition of Chinese cryptographic functions. The ZX-D series also had an

integrated graphics processing unit A graphics processing unit (GPU) is a specialized electronic circuit designed to manipulate and alter memory (computing), memory to accelerate the creation of Digital image, images in a frame buffer intended for output to a display device. GPUs ...

(iGPU) based on

S3 Graphics S3 Graphics, Ltd (commonly referred to as S3) was an American computer graphics company. The company sold the Trio, ViRGE, Savage 3D, and Chrome series of graphics processors. Struggling against competition from 3dfx Interactive, ATI and Nvid ...

technology (previously owned by VIA). The former ZX naming was dropped around 2018 in favour of the KX ("KaiXian") designation for desktop processors and the KH ("KaisHeng") designation for server processors. The successor to the ZX-D, the KX-6000

system on a chip A system on a chip or system-on-chip (SoC ; pl. ''SoCs'' ) is an integrated circuit that integrates most or all components of a computer or other electronic system. These components almost always include a central processing unit (CPU), memory ...

(also called ZX-E), was demonstrated to the press in September 2018. The architecture, an evolution of the ZX-D architecture, was called "

Lujiazui Lujiazui, also known under its Shanghainese name Lohkatse (, , lit. meaning " heLu (surname 陸), Lu family's mouth"), is a locality in Shanghai, a peninsula formed by a bend in the Huangpu River. Since the early 1990s, Lujiazui has been dev ...

". The KX-6000 was formally launched in 2019. In June 2019 the KX-6000 was reported to being built on a 16 nm TSMC process. The chip has a DirectX 11.1 compatible iGPU. In 2022, Zhaoxin was noted to have added ZX-E specific compiler support for the

GNU Compiler Collection The GNU Compiler Collection (GCC) is an optimizing compiler produced by the GNU Project supporting various programming languages, hardware architectures and operating systems. The Free Software Foundation (FSF) distributes GCC as free software ...

. The successor to the KX-6000, the ZX-F or KX-7000 processor series, was initially planned for release in 2021. As of December 2022 there had been no launch and no further announcements about the processors, however. The KX-7000 chip wass planned to be released on a 7 nm process with DDR5 support.

Discrete GPU

In 2020 Zhaoxin announced it was planning to release a dedicated graphics card.

Summary of architecture

Uses

Zhaoxin processors have mainly been used for Chinese laptops.

Performance

The Zhaoxin ZX-C+ 4701 CPU was reviewed in 2020, and showed significantly worse performance against older Intel (i5 2500K) and AMD (Athlon 3000G) processors. The ZX-D was noted to have roughly the performance of the Intel Silvermont (Avoton) processors (which were launched in 2013). The ZX-E / KX-6000 is reported to have a 50% performance increase over the KX-5000, and comparable performance to a 7th generation Intel i5 core processor from 2016 (namely the Core i5-7400). The 8-core ZX-E U6780A was reviewed by

Linus Tech Tips Linus Gabriel Sebastian (born August 20, 1986) is a Canadian YouTuber. Sebastian is best known for creating and hosting YouTube channels that cover technology, especially ''Linus Tech Tips'' (LTT)''.'' His channels have a combined subscriber ...

in August 2020. The review processor was benchmarked to be slightly slower than a 3rd generation Intel i5 quad-core processor (originally released in 2012–2013) using

Cinebench Cinema 4D is a 3D software suite developed by the German company Maxon. Overview As of R21, only one version of Cinema 4D is available. It replaces all previous variants, including BodyPaint 3D, and includes all features of the past 'Studio' ...

. Gaming performance was noted to be poor, whilst the machine itself was noted to be expensive for its performance by 2020 standards. Tom's Hardware also reviewed the U6780A and reported poor gaming performance in 2020. The aim for the ZX-F series is for performance parity with the 2018 series

Ryzen Ryzen ( ) is a brand of multi-core x86-64 microprocessors designed and marketed by AMD for desktop, mobile, server, and embedded platforms based on the Zen microarchitecture. It consists of central processing units (CPUs) marketed for mainst ...

processors (i.e. the AMD

Zen+ Zen ( zh, t=禪, p=Chán; ja, text= 禅, translit=zen; ko, text=선, translit=Seon; vi, text=Thiền) is a school of Mahayana Buddhism that originated in China during the Tang dynasty, known as the Chan School (''Chánzong'' 禪宗), and ...

microarchitecture, the predecessor to AMD

Zen 2 Zen 2 is a computer processor microarchitecture by AMD. It is the successor of AMD's Zen and Zen+ microarchitectures, and is fabricated on the 7 nanometer MOSFET node from TSMC. The microarchitecture powers the third generation of Ryzen proce ...

References

Notes

External links

Zhaoxin homepage

WikiChip article on Zhaoxin
{{VIA VIA Technologies x86 microprocessors Microprocessors made in China Technology companies established in 2013 Technology companies of China Companies based in Shanghai Fabless semiconductor companies