News Chinese-Produced Zhaoxin KX-6000 CPUs Purportedly Match Intel's Core i5-7400

[Admin]

China-produced Zhaoxin says its 16nm KX-6000 CPUs match Intel's Core i5-7400.

Chinese-Produced Zhaoxin KX-6000 CPUs Purportedly Match Intel's Core i5-7400 : Read more

 

[rinosaur]

This is a huge development and can't be understated. Chinese owned/produced, legitimate x86 licensed, and runs x86 Windows with very respectable performance... enough said.

 

[jimmysmitty]

This is a huge development and can't be understated. Chinese owned/produced, legitimate x86 licensed, and runs x86 Windows with very respectable performance... enough said.

Minus the hardware built in spyware. Since its co-developed by a government owned entity I wouldn't go anywhere near it.

 

[GetSmart]

These were actually VIA (also formerly Cyrix) chips, and designed by Centaur Technology. That is where that x86 licensed comes from. That KX-6000 is actually an octa-core CPU. Can find other benchmarks here https://browser.geekbench.com/v4/cpu/search?q=ZHAOXIN+KaiXian The IPC of this falls roughly around Intel's Goldmont in Intel's Apollo Lake SoC.

 

[Finstar]

Minus the hardware built in spyware. Since its co-developed by a government owned entity I wouldn't go anywhere near it.

You know Intel and AMD have those too? Only difference is that NSA controls the backdoors.
I guess that's absolutely fine though because reasons.

 

[jimmysmitty]

You know Intel and AMD have those too? Only difference is that NSA controls the backdoors.
I guess that's absolutely fine though because reasons.

The big difference is that AMD and Intel are not government owned. That makes a massive difference alone.

As for backdoors, sure. Everything has them but again the less government owned the better.

 

[hrlincon]

I doubt this advancement came without intellectual property theft. AMD, INTEL, IBM need to do their due diligence.

 

[jimmysmitty]

I doubt this advancement came without intellectual property theft. AMD, INTEL, IBM need to do their due diligence.

It was done with VIA so it probably was legitimate although I am not sure if VIAs license allows them to share the x86 IP with others, especially China where a lot of IP is heavily restricted. Not too long ago China had another CPU, the Loongson, that was their own CPU design using MIPS but had to emulate x86 and was very far from AMD or Intel in performance.

 

[GetSmart]

I doubt this advancement came without intellectual property theft. AMD, INTEL, IBM need to do their due diligence.

Zhaoxin Semiconductor is a joint venture between VIA Technologies and the Shanghai Municipal Government. As mentioned earlier, the CPU architecture is designed by Centaur Technology.

 

[Finstar]

The big difference is that AMD and Intel are not government owned. That makes a massive difference alone.

As for backdoors, sure. Everything has them but again the less government owned the better.

US government still very much has control over American companies. Remember what happened between Google and Huawei not too long ago?
They're causing hysteria by accusing others of doing something they themselves have been caught doing for years now.

 

[bit_user]

You know Intel and AMD have those too? Only difference is that NSA controls the backdoors.
I guess that's absolutely fine though because reasons.

Source?

There's no legal framework for the US government to mandate backdoors in US-made technology products. Were such a law to exist, it would probably be found unconstitutional.

I'm not saying it never happened, but I don't think it would happen today. The lack of such intentional backdoors is why the NSA hoards what hacks and security flaws it finds, without telling anyone who could fix them.

 

[bit_user]

Can find other benchmarks here https://browser.geekbench.com/v4/cpu/search?q=ZHAOXIN+KaiXian The IPC of this falls roughly around Intel's Goldmont in Intel's Apollo Lake SoC.

Well, I don't see any results at 3 GHz. The fastest are at 2.7 GHz, and don't compare all that favorably with a i5-7400.

Linux: https://browser.geekbench.com/v4/cpu/compare/13581818?baseline=12754288

Windows: https://browser.geekbench.com/v4/cpu/compare/13603358?baseline=12670754

It looks like the i5 in the Linux result might be overclocked, but I just went for the first 64-bit Linux result I found for that CPU. Anyway, if you scale up their Windows multi-core results to 3 GHz, then the i5 still pulls ahead by 16.6%.

With all that said, it does look like their multi-core is within spitting distance. Maybe a new SKU with bigger caches and faster RAM could make up the difference. But needing 8 cores to match a quad-core i5 isn't really so impressive.

What's more interesting is to look at the individual results, instead of the top-line numbers. If you eliminate a few of the outliers that probably use AVX, then even single-thread performance really isn't so far off.

I guess the point about matching Goldmont / Apollo Lake is probably enough to deprive Intel of quite a lot of low-end sales volume. But that was already moving to ARM, anyhow.

 

[bit_user]

I doubt this advancement came without intellectual property theft. AMD, INTEL, IBM need to do their due diligence.

I'm not saying there was no IP theft involved. However, you'd do well to keep in mind that most/all US technology companies have/had semiconductor design offices in China. Many (such as AMD and Nvidia) have been there for more than a decade. So, whether it happened by way of forced technology transfer or merely short-sighted US tech companies looking for low-cost skilled labor, not all of the needed expertise was attained by theft.

Also, China has been massively investing in the semiconductor sector, at all levels. From academic research to manufacturing and design. Even without any theft, it was probably only a matter of time that they would catch up.

Going forward, IP theft should definitely be an area of concern, but that can be hard to enforce. Anti-dumping measures are another angle that should be easier to enforce, and will be critical to a future with viable non-Chinese competitors, in the semiconductor sector.

 

[bit_user]

US government still very much has control over American companies. Remember what happened between Google and Huawei not too long ago?

That was a case where they were prevented from working with Hauwei, which is very different from being forced to introduce backdoors.

 

[Finstar]

Source?

There's no legal framework for the US government to mandate backdoors in US-made technology products. Were such a law to exist, it would probably be found unconstitutional.

I'm not saying it never happened, but I don't think it would happen today. The lack of such intentional backdoors is why the NSA hoards what hacks and security flaws it finds, without telling anyone who could fix them.

What You Need To Know About The Intel Management Engine

Over the last decade, Intel has been including a tiny little microcontroller inside their CPUs. This microcontroller is connected to everything, and can shuttle data between your hard drive and you…

hackaday.com

It's said that with Ryzen, AMD also implemented their own variant of this cancer tumor on your cpu.

 

[DavidC1]

Also, China has been massively investing in the semiconductor sector, at all levels. From academic research to manufacturing and design. Even without any theft, it was probably only a matter of time that they would catch up.

Not only that, they can go to american schools and some go back to China. The world is interconnected, eventually knowledge will be shared.

I guess the point about matching Goldmont / Apollo Lake is probably enough to deprive Intel of quite a lot of low-end sales volume.

Goldmont is far lower power, even if we consider that it has half the cores. 37W for the Zhaoxin.

 

[thegriff]

This is a huge development and can't be understated. Chinese owned/produced, legitimate x86 licensed, and runs x86 Windows with very respectable performance... enough said.

The question is, does Intels agreement with a company for x86 license also extend to a partner ie transfer of said technology. That's up to Intels lawyers, but the Chinese would ignore it anyway.

 

[Gillerer]

What about those five backdoors in Texas Instruments's network gear?

The US government and its agencies customarily issue gag orders, so regardless of whether companies comply with "requests" for assistance or resist them, the general public will not hear about them for decades.

 

[TJ Hooker]

What You Need To Know About The Intel Management Engine

Over the last decade, Intel has been including a tiny little microcontroller inside their CPUs. This microcontroller is connected to everything, and can shuttle data between your hard drive and you…

hackaday.com

It's said that with Ryzen, AMD also implemented their own variant of this cancer tumor on your cpu.

That article provides no evidence that the Intel ME has government mandated backdoors in it. The fact that the ME may have vulnerabilities does not inherently mean that those vulnerabilities were deliberately put there by Intel at the behest of the NSA. Not to mention that the exploit being referred to in that article requires local access to the PC.

 

[King_V]

What You Need To Know About The Intel Management Engine

Over the last decade, Intel has been including a tiny little microcontroller inside their CPUs. This microcontroller is connected to everything, and can shuttle data between your hard drive and you…

hackaday.com

It's said that with Ryzen, AMD also implemented their own variant of this cancer tumor on your cpu.

Beyond @TJ Hooker 's point, I will also ask . . with that Ryzen claim you make... "It's said that..." - really? By who?

 

[Math Geek]

i think most people deliberately chose to forget that win 10 is all the back door anyone needs. there is a reason that not only the US gov but also even the china gov required windows to strip out the data mining before they would use it. even china said it was too much spying even for them!!!

no reason to worry about hardware and such when the OS you are using is already doing the work for them. so MS is not a gov entity so this is ok right?? seems to be what folks are saying here. never mind that our gov has total access to that data collected by win 10. it's indirect but very clear what's going on. same goes for google, facebook, apple and so on. they collect and catalog the data and the gov let's em monetize it so long as they get to peek when they want to.

so would these china made cpu's have vulnerabilities/backdoors built in? for sure. would it make people any less secure than they already are not?? nope, won't change a thing other than expanding who is collecting the data on you.

 

[djayjp]

Apparently ARM and its related designs and vendors don't exist according to the article.

 

[Finstar]

Beyond @TJ Hooker 's point, I will also ask . . with that Ryzen claim you make... "It's said that..." - really? By who?

Let me correct my self: It's not a claim it's a fact. AMD PSP is a thing that exists. The only question is how many backdoors does it have?

 

[Finstar]

That article provides no evidence that the Intel ME has government mandated backdoors in it. The fact that the ME may have vulnerabilities does not inherently mean that those vulnerabilities were deliberately put there by Intel at the behest of the NSA. Not to mention that the exploit being referred to in that article requires local access to the PC.

Of course it doesn't, if it did have evidence then it would have been taken down long ago and it's writers would be in jail.

 

[setx]

so would these china made cpu's have vulnerabilities/backdoors built in? for sure. would it make people any less secure than they already are not?? nope, won't change a thing other than expanding who is collecting the data on you.

^ that's one of the few people here who understands what's really going on.

I'd change in that quote only one thing: "expanding" into "shifting".
And that's what it's all about: some people are really unhappy that their "right" of spying on basically anyone they want is suddenly shifting to other people.