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Zhaoxin's KX-7000

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Re: Zhaoxin's KX-7000

#41

Post by hypercube33 »

mrandish wrote: post #28
p1necone wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's very lopsided in favor of the GPU - if VPX is more CPU intensive that the average video game you could probably swap the 7800 xt for something much cheaper and get the same performance.

Yes, I agree. I was actually planning to retire that mobo and CPU after the GFX upgrade but that damn Haswell is so good, I didn't need to. The previous GFX card (a 1080) was the bottleneck getting 120fps reliably. I really didn't expect the i5-4590 to keep up with 120fps at low latency but got surprised.

The Intel i5 4000 series was an odd duck and keeps pace still today in a lot of things. I still have one running my Plex workload kicking around.

Re: Zhaoxin's KX-7000

#42

Post by happycube »

tempeler wrote: post #39

it seems bad investment. firstly, it's an old architecure. secondly, How will they measure the efficiency of their investments?.Instead of investing in outdated architectures, they could fund universities, or support at least two or more companies in a competitive setup — that way, something much more efficient might emerge. But when a company is state-funded in a monopolistic way, it's quite hard for it to succeed.…

As in the article, it doesn't have to be good. yet.

Re: Zhaoxin's KX-7000

#43

Post by happycube »

orangeboats wrote: post #33
snvzz wrote: post #19

Note there are competent RISC-V architectures in China which might already be faster at emulating x86 than the KX-7000 is at running it directly.

Not just RISC-V, when it comes to performance the Loongson CPUs (with the LoongArch ISA) are likely the most competitive -- the IPC of Loongson 3A6000 is around that of 10th ~ 12th gen Intel CPUs! And 3A7000 is coming soon. Zhaoxin is China's answer to "what if we need a drop-in x86 replacement immediately?" It does not represent the frontier of CPU development in the country.

It's also not the only answer, one Chinese company has rights to Zen 1. (which shows just how close AMD was to bankruptcy)

Re: Zhaoxin's KX-7000

#44

Post by tempeler »

happycube wrote: post #43
orangeboats wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not just RISC-V, when it comes to performance the Loongson CPUs (with the LoongArch ISA) are likely the most competitive -- the IPC of Loongson 3A6000 is around that of 10th ~ 12th gen Intel CPUs! And 3A7000 is coming soon. Zhaoxin is China's answer to "what if we need a drop-in x86 replacement immediately?" It does not represent the frontier of CPU development in the country.

It's also not the only answer, one Chinese company has rights to Zen 1. (which shows just how close AMD was to bankruptcy)

Rather than signaling AMD's bankruptcy, this could be seen as a strong indication of how heavily China is investing in legacy technologies. That's why I wouldn't be so quick to draw conclusions. China’s eagerness in this area doesn’t mean that the investments are efficient. What truly matters here is the ability to build a full ecosystem. They practically wiped Huawei off the global smartphone market simply by banning Google services on their devices.

Re: Zhaoxin's KX-7000

#45

Post by tempeler »

ptx wrote: post #40
tempeler wrote: post #39

it seems bad investment. firstly, it's an old architecure. secondly, How will they measure the efficiency of their investments?.Instead of investing in outdated architectures, they could fund universities, or support at least two or more companies in a competitive setup — that way, something much more efficient might emerge. But when a company is state-funded in a monopolistic way, it's quite hard for it to succeed.…

They are doing that as well. There's a lot of investment in RISC-V: https://asiatimes.com/2025/03/china-all-in-on-risc-v-open-so... For x86, supporting multiple companies would be more difficult, as they would need a license for the ISA (which Zhaoxin inherits from Via).

risc-v is much more reasonable for countries like china.What I want to emphasize is this: Instead of paying license fees for outdated x86 architectures, it would be much more beneficial to allocate those resources to universities. If you're paying for a license but can't generate a return on that investment quickly, then something is wrong.

Re: Zhaoxin's KX-7000

#46

Post by kjs3 »

orangeboats wrote: post #33
snvzz wrote: post #19

Note there are competent RISC-V architectures in China which might already be faster at emulating x86 than the KX-7000 is at running it directly.

Not just RISC-V, when it comes to performance the Loongson CPUs (with the LoongArch ISA) are likely the most competitive -- the IPC of Loongson 3A6000 is around that of 10th ~ 12th gen Intel CPUs! And 3A7000 is coming soon. Zhaoxin is China's answer to "what if we need a drop-in x86 replacement immediately?" It does not represent the frontier of CPU development in the country.

Zhaoxin is China's answer to "what if we need a drop-in x86 replacement immediately?"

Exactly this. China isn't going to be doing HPC on these, or building domestic clouds, or wooing gamers. This is a strategic project so Chinese users can continue to access the x86 ecosystem regardless of 'supply chain issues'.[1][2] And much of that ecosystem can get by with a fraction of the compute of the average gamer, it's just fine that it hits mediocre performance numbers, for now.

[1] And, sure, some national pride. No harm in that. [2] No, "emulators!" is not the only answer.

Re: Zhaoxin's KX-7000

#47

Post by MaxPock »

rjzzleep wrote: post #35
daniel_iversen wrote: post #3

This is interesting! Does anyone know how China’s reliance on chips from intel and amd is in the non-AI space (so regular consumer and server loads)? I’m wondering how it was 10 and 5 years ago, now, and how we predict in the next couple of years. Surely if they’re not mostly using their own chips they will very soon right?

They push local chips for independence, but unless the west embargoes them, I don't think you will see a major leap forward. Huawei is a whole different beast though. They have a everything from the chip design up, and by now also an operating system that has arguably both a better frontend framework and a better kernel that the Linux alternatives. When we talk about Chinese AI chips being slow we specifically talk a…

If Huawei had access to TSMC and free of sanctions,it would have run so many companies out of town.

Re: Zhaoxin's KX-7000

#48

Post by ksec »

daniel_iversen wrote: post #3

This is interesting! Does anyone know how China’s reliance on chips from intel and amd is in the non-AI space (so regular consumer and server loads)? I’m wondering how it was 10 and 5 years ago, now, and how we predict in the next couple of years. Surely if they’re not mostly using their own chips they will very soon right?

Ignoring Fabs for now which is a different sets of issues.

They have JV with ARM ( ARM China ) and AMD ( Zen 1 ), IMG ( PowerVR and MIPS ) Along with investment on RISC-V. Alibaba and Huawei are all investing into RISC-V as well. Considering they dont sell CPU I wont be surprised if China one day give away RISC-V CPU design for free.

Surprisingly ARM China issue is still somewhat unresolved and ARM now has a separate subsidiary inside China.

Re: Zhaoxin's KX-7000

#49

Post by spookie »

throwaway81523 wrote: post #34
jkampman wrote: post #23

This review is an object lesson about why there is so much more to shipping a decent processor than making a CPU core with reasonable performance (and decent is being polite given that we are talking about Bulldozer-class single-threaded perf, which most folks were beyond thrilled to abandon when Zen arrived eight years ago.) The behavior of the memory controller is wild to see in this day and age. You really don't w…

This appears to be a new x86 design, but why? I thought there was good riscv-64 stuff out there now.

They are "cooperating" with VIA. Basically, they didn't start from 0.

Re: Zhaoxin's KX-7000

#50

Post by spookie »

tempeler wrote: post #45
ptx wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are doing that as well. There's a lot of investment in RISC-V: https://asiatimes.com/2025/03/china-all-in-on-risc-v-open-so... For x86, supporting multiple companies would be more difficult, as they would need a license for the ISA (which Zhaoxin inherits from Via).

risc-v is much more reasonable for countries like china.What I want to emphasize is this: Instead of paying license fees for outdated x86 architectures, it would be much more beneficial to allocate those resources to universities. If you're paying for a license but can't generate a return on that investment quickly, then something is wrong.

You are completely misunderstanding China's goal. They want the expertise, being self-sufficient, while taking what they can so they don't start from 0.

Risc-V is arguably risky, so they have their hands on everything at the same time so they're sure they have a winner.

Markets don't matter. They want to develop the technology and have the talent to achieve it, fast.

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