VIA Zhaoxin x86 4 and 8-core SoC processors launch
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uKER
One vital piece of info is missing here: what platform do these run on?
Do they hijack one of Intel's or AMD's platforms or are they intending to introduce their own?
Hilbert Hagedoorn
Administrator
These are SoC's based on a BGA package. So a platform with a chipset is not required similar to say the proc in your smartphone.
uKER
Oh, so they're staying out of the PC-building market then, and only selling to OEMs.
slimmy427
28nm...sounds like they are trying to compete with the wrong era. I would be interested to see the energy efficiency. May have something to do with the low clock frequency?
schmidtbag
Interesting... I wasn't expecting VIA to come out with such an upgrade over their previous generation, and I didn't think they were going to do laptops. I'm interested in the idea of a Zhaoxin laptop, but, VIA is notorious for their negligence with GPU drivers, on any OS. Unless they ditch their GPUs entirely, I'd rather just get a laptop based on Snapdragon, Tegra, or i.MX.
artk2219
AMD was on 28nm until just last year, and honestly i'm still amazed at what they were able to squeeze out of bulldozer at that point, and it wouldn't be the first time that via had a very efficient low power part. Their older parts did quite well against brazos and atom in the early 2010's, unfortunately their graphics have just always sucked and been poorly maintained. That being said I'd love to see some low end machines powered by these guys, they would make great low power vhosts, NAS's, SANS, fierwalls, webservers, whatever honestly.
cryohellinc
Well hey, everyone started somewhere. I hope they will mature faster, as I'm 200% certain the have a fantastic reverse engineering team. 😉
Embra
It will be interesting to see what hey come out with the next few years.
H83
Wanting to compete against AMD and Intel?... VIA is feeling very brave...
f14dude
So is this designed for Windows or Linux? or some other say.... Amiga OS? 😛
Hilbert Hagedoorn
Administrator
Hey do not mess with the Amiga, that's holy grounds and territory! 😀
sykozis
At 2.0ghz, they're not going to be competitive against anything AMD or Intel currently have. Maybe they want to compete with the Celeron J1800 and Athlon 5350?
VIA has done well with low-power processors. They've never produced a mid-range or high-end processor that was able to compete directly with their AMD or Intel counterparts though.
f14dude
I actually think the Amiga OS can use a newer processor and thought these processor might fit the bill. 😀
Joking aside, been thinking of building an Amiga OS 4.1 based machine just for fun but no way to get the part. Not easy here at the stateside anyway.
Hey Hilbert, ever think about building a machine based on Amiga OS 4.1 and OC it? Could be a great article.
Thanks.
Stairmand
Off topic but Amiga OS (4 onwards) require a PowerPC based setup. They tried to sell there own desktops based on Power PC but they were hideously expensive for the spec and limited usability.
RedSquirrel
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Fox2232
Atoms. IIRC it should be expected to have around 55~60% of intel-Core IPC, that's just bit better than Atoms which are around 50%.
With 2GHz it is quite comparable. Except here, you have 4 or 8 cores. While new Atoms are fake HT chips. One thread causes 50% load on 4 core CPU, 2 Threads extract all CPU performance, and adding 3rd is for nothing.
I expect them to be efficient in similar way as Atoms. 2 fully loaded threads in Atom x5-z8500 ate 9.6W.
Considering better IPC, if 8C chip runs at 40W, it is better than Atom.
If they were able to clock it to 4GHz, it would be only as good as 8C Bulldozer against old i5 w/ 4C. Except today 6C and 8C chips are common. So, it would need to have 12C or 16C.
Since that's not the case, it can compete only with Atoms.
rl66
No more, latest Amiga OS can run more modern hardware... but it's no more an Amiga.
Yes and there is a big market about those kind of inexpensive and silent hardware (laptop and desktop) and few competitor, it's a nice move to try out if they can do better and earn money with it.
They don't need reverse engineering, they have left Intel with everything clear, and they have still their licence X86 / X86-64.
McFly121
SOCKET ??????
kruno
Of course VIA's socket and chipset, don't expect that it will work in either AMD or Intel mobo. That kind of compatibility hasn't been seen since OG Pentium
Silva
28nm @2.0Ghz.
Bro, they're dead at start.
