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Zhaoxin's KX-7000

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Re: Zhaoxin's KX-7000

#51

Post by 999900000999 »

OmarAssadi wrote: post #36
999900000999 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Plus the vast majority of work computers don’t need to be particularly fast. Add a lightweight Linux distro, and that’s more than enough for paperwork.

Early into high school, I needed something to take to class, but since I already had a decent desktop at home, plus we were broke, I picked up some cheap Asus K55N; AMD A8-4500M, 4GB DDR3, etc -- nothing particularly fancy; only upgrade I did to it was removing the mechanical hard drive and swapping in my old 120GB Corsair Force GT. I eventually upgraded, went off to university, etc. When I finally came home, I found…

As is the Chinese web tends to be less full of complex JavaScript and CSS tricks.

It wouldn't surprise me if these processors are more than fine for municipal workers.

Re: Zhaoxin's KX-7000

#53

Post by khedoros1 »

OmarAssadi wrote: post #36
999900000999 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Plus the vast majority of work computers don’t need to be particularly fast. Add a lightweight Linux distro, and that’s more than enough for paperwork.

Early into high school, I needed something to take to class, but since I already had a decent desktop at home, plus we were broke, I picked up some cheap Asus K55N; AMD A8-4500M, 4GB DDR3, etc -- nothing particularly fancy; only upgrade I did to it was removing the mechanical hard drive and swapping in my old 120GB Corsair Force GT. I eventually upgraded, went off to university, etc. When I finally came home, I found…

I've got a desktop with a Core2Quad Q9300, originally built in 2008. Updated the motherboard in 2010 to one with USB3, updated the GPU in 2012. Kept using that machine as my daily-driver until 2020, when I built my current desktop. The only real reason that I did that was to improve gaming performance. The machine itself still functions fine on the modern web (using an up-to-date Linux distro, of course). 8GB of RAM used to feel like a monster.

Re: Zhaoxin's KX-7000

#54

Post by vessenes »

chasil wrote: post #30
vessenes wrote: post #2

Love reading these highly detailed analyses. Short version: Zhaoxin's currently competitive with 2010/2011-era AMD and Intel, with some asterisks around RAM speed. There is to my mind a sort of race to get up to "fast enough to host H100 competitor AI hardware" with non-US IP that makes sense to engage in. In those terms, it looks like they're maybe 2 revs away -- I'm not sure what process node the KX7000 is on, but…

"Zhaoxin did not specify what process node they’re using. Techpowerup and Wccftech suggests it uses an unspecified 16nm node."

That’s pretty easily verified by a reasonably competent chip engineer and a microscope, if its 16 and they need to stay on shore only, they could be a little closer in terms of time than I speculated. SMIC at 7nm is reportedly stable; not sure about yields though.

I think if I were in charge I’d probably do a final architecture spin at 16, and then shrink that one to 7 or 5 if I could get it.

Re: Zhaoxin's KX-7000

#55

Post by RetroTechie »

ksec wrote: post #48
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…

> Considering they dont sell CPU I wont be surprised if China one day give away RISC-V CPU design for free.

Already done: https://www.cnx-software.com/2021/10/20/alibaba-open-source-... https://github.com/XUANTIE-RV

Re: Zhaoxin's KX-7000

#56

Post by camel-cdr »

RetroTechie wrote: post #55
ksec wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> Considering they dont sell CPU I wont be surprised if China one day give away RISC-V CPU design for free. Already done: https://www.cnx-software.com/2021/10/20/alibaba-open-source-... https://github.com/XUANTIE-RV

https://github.com/OpenXiangShan/XiangShan

This one is mode than twice as fast.

Re: Zhaoxin's KX-7000

#57

Post by powerapple »

hawflakes wrote: post #11

Minor nit. Compound pinyin words shouldn’t use StudlyCaps so it should be “Lujiazui”

I think it should. Chinese language does not have the concept of word in writing, there is no space, and each character is a unit in writing. Pinyin was to mark pronunciations of each characters, it would be Lu Jia Zui, meaning 3 characters. Pinyin is not English. LuJiaZui would make it easier to pronounce if you don't know Pinyin. There is no standard way to write it though, maybe Lu-Jia-Zui, Lu'Jia'Zui, or Lu'jia'zui. The most confusing and would lead to wrong pronunciation version is Lujiazui.

Re: Zhaoxin's KX-7000

#58

Post by undefuser »

vessenes wrote: post #2

Love reading these highly detailed analyses. Short version: Zhaoxin's currently competitive with 2010/2011-era AMD and Intel, with some asterisks around RAM speed. There is to my mind a sort of race to get up to "fast enough to host H100 competitor AI hardware" with non-US IP that makes sense to engage in. In those terms, it looks like they're maybe 2 revs away -- I'm not sure what process node the KX7000 is on, but…

If the goal is to make a CPU that is "fast enough to host H100 competitor AI hardware", then why bother with x64? Huawei could have just produced a powerful ARM chip to go with their new AI processor. After all, Nvidia GB200 also uses Arm-based CPUs (the Grace in GB).

Re: Zhaoxin's KX-7000

#59

Post by happycube »

tempeler wrote: post #44
happycube wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 bannin…

The license was done in 2016, though. It does not cover any later versions, and even if it did it would be cut off due to export restrictions.

Re: Zhaoxin's KX-7000

#60

Post by [deleted] »

hypercube33 wrote: post #41
mrandish wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

[deleted]
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