Zhaoxin KX-U6780A x86 CPU Tested: The Rise of China's Chips

[MasterMadBones]

People are missing the bigger picture here - Zhaoxin has made huge strides in its CPU designs over the last couple of years, and although they're still far behind, they are catching up quickly. For a company that has only started to make its own architectures very recently, being able to match Excavator in many cases is nothing short of impressive. If they're able to continue progressing like this, we could see Zen-like performance in one or two generations.

 

[artk2219]

People are missing the bigger picture here - Zhaoxin has made huge strides in its CPU designs over the last couple of years, and although they're still far behind, they are catching up quickly. For a company that has only started to make its own architectures very recently, being able to match Excavator in many cases is nothing short of impressive. If they're able to continue progressing like this, we could see Zen-like performance in one or two generations.

I agree, and while the current product is certainly unimpressive in itself right now, the fact that a relativly new company with no direct support from either of the big players was able to come up with something even remotely competitive definitely is. In all honesty its still good enough for most people out there to do basic documents and browse the web with. That GPU though, yeeesh, if anything needs more serious work right now, that part is definitely it.

 

[Geef]

If it performs better and doesn't let China view your data then I'm fine with it!

 

[Geef]

Thier "Made in China 2025" campaign is probably going to happen faster for them since after this outbreak people around the world will be buying less from China so all the sh** they make will have to go somewhere and might as well go to the people that made it.

 

[bit_user]

China CPU making Potential is in the ARM not the X86 market ... their Huwawei Kirin ARM CPU is the thing not X86 Chips.

AFAIK, all of their existing & announced edge & server-based ARM CPUs are using ARM-designed cores, though.

The big difference in this case is the amount of domestic design work they put into it, even if the cores have some lineage back to Centaur.

 

[bit_user]

If it performs better and doesn't let China view your data then I'm fine with it!

What if selling it below-cost starves Intel and AMD of needed R&D revenue, also giving Zhaoxin an eventual edge in design? 5-10 years down the road, it could conceivably mean that you'll have no non-Chinese CPU options, no matter whether there are security concerns or not.

Granted, that's an extreme scenario, but it has happened in other industries.

 

[Old SchoolAnalogKid]

" This partnership structure purportedly allows Chinese government-controlled interests to design x86 processors while staying within the legal boundaries of licensing agreements." The totalitarian Chinese govt. will NEVER stay within legal bounds of any agreements. Their next trick will be a new corona virus on the 7nm die.....

 

[jimmysmitty]

What if selling it below-cost starves Intel and AMD of needed R&D revenue, also giving Zhaoxin an eventual edge in design? 5-10 years down the road, it could conceivably mean that you'll have no non-Chinese CPU options, no matter whether there are security concerns or not.

Granted, that's an extreme scenario, but it has happened in other industries.

While China is a big market I doubt it would be enough to really threaten AMD and Intel outside of it.

I would also imagine this would end up much like Huawei and be banned in quite a few places. Being government backed so heavily means it will have holes designed for them that will be found and exploited.

 

[bit_user]

Thanks for the thorough review! I wanted to give it a close read, which I only now got around to.

other native Chinese companies have joined the fray, but with non-x86 architectures.

Indeed, RISC-V is going to be a big story. Probably the leading non-x86 ISA for China, in the foreseeable future.

ARM has the dual problems of being Japanese-owned and seemingly susceptible to US embargoes. Neither MIPS nor POWER appear to be gaining a lot of momentum, so I gather RISC V is where things are headed. I'd be surprised if MS didn't even have Windows support for it, before long.

These types of scaling losses can come from cache and fabric contention

Also memory. If bandwidth-limited, faster or wider memory would help. As for memory latency, about the only thing you can really do is tweak around with the caches.

However, what the results show is that their per-core scaling is quite good.

@PaulAlcorn , were the IPC tests single- or multi- threaded?

In the Rendering benchmarks, the LuxMark label is confusing. CPU OpenCL and CPU C++ should be two different benchmarks, each with different results. I wonder which these are. Or, is it an average of both?

Using the disable AVX option yielded some extra performance, to the tune of an extra 5.5% in the multi-threaded test and 5.8% in the single-threaded test,

What I read into the Cinebench AVX vs. non-AVX benchmarks is probably that their vector pipelines are only 128-bits wide, causing AVX instructions to be executed in two pieces. And, unlike how Zen1 managed this trick, they seem to incur some overhead in doing so.

there aren't any established SM3/SM4 tests available yet from the roster of ISVs that provide reputable test software. We're sending out requests for tests that reflect the advantages/disadvantages of those algorithms.

I wouldn't bother benchmarking them unless/until they start seeing use outside of China. Otherwise, it's irrelevant to your readership. Furthermore, comparing a feature they implement in hardware with one that other CPUs don't, basically tells us nothing about the level of sophistication and refinement in their CPUs - it's a benchmark they'll win because they're the only ones even in that particular race.

That begs the question: ...

Heh, you just had to pull that one on us.

 

[bit_user]

This CPU is extremely underwhelming and will probably only exist in the Chinese market or places that are too cheap to buy AMD or Intel.

That's a large part of the world, though. Think much of India, most of Africa, lots of South America, not to mention southeast Asia. China could dump these for next to nothing, just to start gaining marketshare and starve out the existing second-hand PC supply chain.

But, the real concern will start with subsequent generations.

While China is a big market I doubt it would be enough to really threaten AMD and Intel outside of it.

Not in the US or Europe, but there are many other markets, such as where China has been embracing with Belt & Road.

I would also imagine this would end up much like Huawei and be banned in quite a few places. Being government backed so heavily means it will have holes designed for them that will be found and exploited.

Same point as above. They're not competitive in developed countries, yet. AFAIK, those are the only ones who banned Huawei.

 

[bit_user]

Zhaoxin exist only because China's contingency plans if they are not allowed to buy intel or AMD desktop processors. Thanks to Obama's and Trump's exclusion to buy US technologies, China's 2025 plans is to get away from US technologies in the next few years.

You're ignoring the past 2+ decades of China's industrialization and modernization. For that entire time, they've been systematically moving through industries and dominating first the production and then the design. Branding and marketing of Chinese exports is still in the cradle, but that's next.

It was a foregone conclusion that China would eventually build its own CPUs. The only thing US embargoes could've possibly affected was the timescale.

 

[bit_user]

The Chinese government will put Intel out of business in less than 10 years.

Not out of business, in the same way that Japanese auto makers haven't put US car companies under. There will always be a market for Intel CPUs, but we could be seeing Intel at their all-time peak.

Intel stock will probably start tanking in roughly 5 years.

Perhaps sooner.

 

[bit_user]

RISC V is garbage, and dead in the water - deal with it - nothing new, nothing revolutionary, will go on the trash pile with the dozens of "revolutionary" other designs.

While not revolutionary, it's a better ISA than x86.

But, as x86 shows, it needn't be revolutionary. It just has to be good enough. And it clears that bar.

 

[bit_user]

Everyone who has AMD should be raising their hands...

AMD is a shell company. They don't do anything. They gave all of Intel's patents to TSMC a long time ago.

Wow, you guys are almost as misinformed as your are indignant.

 

[bit_user]

If they're able to continue progressing like this, we could see Zen-like performance in one or two generations.

That's very ambitious. Remember, their chip is 14 nm, while that Excavator is 28 nm.

Each generation should jump leaps and bounds, though. Maybe in 3-4 generations, they'll equal Zen1 in single core performance per-clock.

 

[bit_user]

That's a large part of the world, though. Think much of India, most of Africa, lots of South America, not to mention southeast Asia. China could dump these for next to nothing, just to start gaining marketshare and starve out the existing second-hand PC supply chain.

It occurred to me that they could really kill the second-hand PC market, which would have ripple effects in developed countries. Consider that a lot of US corporations lease their computers. Well, if there's no market for the leasing companies to sell the off-lease equipment, then they'll have to turn around and increase their rates to protect their margins. That means your work PC doesn't get refreshed as often and/or gets replaced with a lower-end model than what you're accustomed to using.

...heh, and another thing they could do to protect their margins is source cheap Chinese CPUs. But, I think most customers are savvy enough to demand Intel or AMD.

Either way, Chinese CPUs can be felt in the US, even well before they pose a direct competitive threat to Intel or AMD.