Zhaoxin's x86 CPUs • Hacker News Board

Re: Zhaoxin's x86 CPUs

#31

Post by iso-8859-1 » Thu, Jan 04, 2018, 5:20 PM UTC

deepnotderp wrote: post #17

vasili111 wrote: post #15

Do they have meltdown and/or spectre bug?

They have spectre, any CPU with speculative execution and caches of any sort (excluding some capability machines, no ROP exploit machines and PLB enforced SASOS machines), including branch prediction (!) is vulnerable to spectre. (For those of you not in comp arch, that roughly translates to "literally every single non embedded CPU, and then some") That's what makes the flaw so deep and troublesome.

Is the Mill architecture solving problems orthogonal to this?

Re: Zhaoxin's x86 CPUs

#32

Post by gaius » Thu, Jan 04, 2018, 5:24 PM UTC

sanxiyn wrote: post #6

gaius wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

but its chips don’t make it out of the country because they’re largely used in products built for the Chinese government. Very wise of them. Right now the UK needs to make a serious push to make ARM our primary choice, and fabbed here too. This is as strategic as nukes.

You mean ARM Holdings plc, a wholly owned subsidary of SoftBank Group Corp.?

Well, quite. Didn’t the US block the sale of MIPS to a Chinese buyer?

Re: Zhaoxin's x86 CPUs

#33

Post by yegle » Thu, Jan 04, 2018, 5:24 PM UTC

0xcde4c3db wrote: post #3

The page says "Zhaoxin's home-grown x86 CPU is completely designed from the ground up within China", but other sources suggest that their cores are derived from Centaur microarchitecture. Anyone know what the truth is on this?

I believe this is just a bad translation from a popular Chinese propaganda (自主研发).

Re: Zhaoxin's x86 CPUs

#34

Post by hangonhn » Thu, Jan 04, 2018, 5:49 PM UTC

TazeTSchnitzel wrote: post #22

Coding_Cat wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Taiwan insist it's Chinese. Its government claims to be the rightful government of the whole of China.

The People's Republic of China and the Republic of China both agree there is a single China which includes Taiwan. They differ over who should govern it.

The new current Taiwanese administration has not confirm that the 1992 Consensus: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1992_Consensus

The Chinese government has been engaging in some saber rattling because of that.

Re: Zhaoxin's x86 CPUs

#35

Post by aidenn0 » Thu, Jan 04, 2018, 6:03 PM UTC

djsumdog wrote: post #24

sanxiyn wrote: post #2

This is VIA Technologies. Details here: http://www.tomshardware.com/news/via-chinese-x86-soc-2019,36...

Ah, the old VIA chips, which VIA built from the tech they bought from Cyrix. If you're interested in the history of Cyrix and some of the older x86 compatible chips, here's a great video on it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iWGAdoMz1c0 Also these Zhaonix's are just 32-bit right? I didn't seen anything on the site about supporting x86_64.

VIA's CPUs were from their purchase of Centaur Technology, not fro Cyrix, right? (IIRC there is a HNer that worked at Centuar for a while, perhaps they can expand).

Re: Zhaoxin's x86 CPUs

#36

Post by saas_co_de » Thu, Jan 04, 2018, 6:09 PM UTC

0xcde4c3db wrote: post #3

The page says "Zhaoxin's home-grown x86 CPU is completely designed from the ground up within China", but other sources suggest that their cores are derived from Centaur microarchitecture. Anyone know what the truth is on this?

They say it has a new microarchitecture, pipeline reduced by 5 stages, new branch prediction, new support for multi-chip-modules, and new cache coherency protocol to support that.

It seems as much a ground up design as Zen.

http://www.eefocus.com/mcu-dsp/399906/r0

Re: Zhaoxin's x86 CPUs

#37

Post by rzzzt » Thu, Jan 04, 2018, 6:11 PM UTC

aidenn0 wrote: post #35

djsumdog wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah, the old VIA chips, which VIA built from the tech they bought from Cyrix. If you're interested in the history of Cyrix and some of the older x86 compatible chips, here's a great video on it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iWGAdoMz1c0 Also these Zhaonix's are just 32-bit right? I didn't seen anything on the site about supporting x86_64.

VIA's CPUs were from their purchase of Centaur Technology, not fro Cyrix, right? (IIRC there is a HNer that worked at Centuar for a while, perhaps they can expand).

The C3 does seem to be from Centaur: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VIA_C3

Re: Zhaoxin's x86 CPUs

#38

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Jan 04, 2018, 6:44 PM UTC

sanxiyn wrote: post #6

gaius wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

but its chips don’t make it out of the country because they’re largely used in products built for the Chinese government. Very wise of them. Right now the UK needs to make a serious push to make ARM our primary choice, and fabbed here too. This is as strategic as nukes.

You mean ARM Holdings plc, a wholly owned subsidary of SoftBank Group Corp.?

[deleted]

Re: Zhaoxin's x86 CPUs

#39

Post by Chaebixi » Thu, Jan 04, 2018, 7:04 PM UTC

0xcde4c3db wrote: post #21

sanxiyn wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

VIA bought Centaur, so you can argue that, tenuously. VIA is a Taiwanese company. Some people insist that being Taiwanese is being Chinese.

Even granting the considerable stretch that the VIA acquisition somehow renders part of Austin "within China" (I'm reminded here of the Babylon 5 episode "Day of the Dead"), I have my doubts that they'd throw away all pre-acquisition IP just to be able to make this claim. I guess they might have done so regardless to develop something with a newer workflow (e.g. for better verification), but my understanding is that…

> I have my doubts that they'd throw away all pre-acquisition IP just to be able to make this claim

China doesn't seem to be above claiming that they "domestically developed" technology that they really acquired from foreigners. An example I'm aware if is China's "home grown" 3G cellular protocol called TD-SCDMA. It was really a failed European standards proposal from Siemens, but passed off as an indigenous Chinese development for prestige reasons.

See https://www.samizdata.net/2012/06/here-is-the-rac/

Re: Zhaoxin's x86 CPUs

#40

Post by pharrington » Thu, Jan 04, 2018, 7:06 PM UTC

djsumdog wrote: post #24

sanxiyn wrote: post #2

This is VIA Technologies. Details here: http://www.tomshardware.com/news/via-chinese-x86-soc-2019,36...

Ah, the old VIA chips, which VIA built from the tech they bought from Cyrix. If you're interested in the history of Cyrix and some of the older x86 compatible chips, here's a great video on it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iWGAdoMz1c0 Also these Zhaonix's are just 32-bit right? I didn't seen anything on the site about supporting x86_64.

http://en.zhaoxin.com/ZXC.aspx?seriesid=3