China to Enter 7 Nm CPU Market in 2021 with x86 Zhaoxin KX-7000: PCIe 4.0, DDR5 Support

[Tsing]

Competition could be looming for Intel and AMD. Chinese CPU maker Zhaoxin is planning to release its first 7 nm processors, the mobile and desktop KX-7000 series, in 2021. These products (which will be produced by TSMC) are quite a jump for the company, as its current lineup was manufactured on the ancient 16 nm process. The SoC will support PCIe 4.0 and DDR5, while the CPU itself could feature a DirectX 12-compatible iGPU.

Unfortunately, the company’s current SoC and core design is still rather weak in terms of IPC and power efficiency. If Zhaoxin will be able to push the frequency further to as high as 3.5-4 GHz, they will close a good portion of the performance gap, but for their product to be at competitive levels with other x86 chips, in order to extract significant performance uplift from 7 and 5 nm, the company is going to step up its microarchitecture design.

 

[Brian_B]

Are these the ones that were licensed from AMD originally?

 

[Grimlakin]

Stolen designs and Chinese manufacture. You can bet money China wants tarrifs gone so they can flood the market with these below cost. But if you don't want to be spied on I wouldnt even bother.

 

[Nanobot]

Stolen designs and Chinese manufacture. You can bet money China wants tarrifs gone so they can flood the market with these below cost. But if you don't want to be spied on I wouldnt even bother.

Considering the size of their population I don't think they really need our market to survive. And if they do look outside their borders they are likely to push these to the places where they are establishing their Belt and Road initiative. There are plenty of places where they can go.

 

[Riccochet]

they'll have no problem moving them in any chicom/russia country.