CPUs

Zhaoxin Announces KX-40000 and KX-7000 architectures with 32 Cores and 7nm Process: Chinese Intel?

Zhaoxin, a Chinese fabless manufacturer recently announced its plans for its next-gen x86 designs. While we don’t have clear timeframes, Zhaoxin states it will be bifurcating design into two discrete architectures: The KH-40000 series and the KX-7000 series.

The KH-40000 succeeds Zhaoxin’s existing KH-30000 lineup. The first new design based on this platform will arrive in 2021. KH-30000 is a relatively conservative design, based on TSMC’s 16nm fab process (what Nvidia’s Pascal cards were built on). Zhaoxin’s main aim with KH-40000 appears to be multicore scaling. The KH-40000 will quadruple the number of cores per chip, going up to 32 cores per chip. KH-40000 will support dual-socket, meaning that 64-core dual-socket configurations are viable. KH-40000 will feature PCI-e 3 support and utilize DDR4 RAM.

What more interesting is Zhaoxin’s KX-7000 series. They indicate that KX-7000 is the future of mobile and desktop processing, with sub-7nm chips planned. KX-7000 will use a brand-new CPU architecture–instead of the iterative improvements that KH-40000 brings to the table. First-gen parts will be built on the 7nm process. Interestingly, Zhaoxin says that KX-7000 will feature a new integrated GPU as well that’s DX 12-capable. In light of the recent trade war and its increasing self-reliance in R&D, indigenous CPU and GPU design and manufacturing are becoming more and more important in China. We’ll keep you posted with future developments.

Arjun

Penguin-published author, and journalist. Loves PC hardware but has terrible hand-eye coordination. Most likely to be found playing Total War or watching weird Russian sitcoms.
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