Chinese Domestic Chipmaker, Zhaoxin, Preps KX-6000G CPU With A 1.5 TFLOPs Integrated GPU That’s As Fast As NVIDIA’s Decade-Old GT 630
To elaborate things, Zhaoxin is a Chinese chip manufacturer that offers both CPU and GPU IPs based on its own architectures. The manufacturer’s next-generation KX-6000 CPU lineup will be replacing their KX-5000 and ZX-200 CPUs which have been on the market from 2017-2018. The latest chips are expected to feature 4 cores, 8 threads, up to 3.0 GHz clock speeds, DDR4 DRAM support, PCIe 3.0 I/O, and a homegrown 16nm architecture. Last month, we talked about how the KH-4000 series CPUs from Zhaoxin managed to deliver single-core performance close to AMD’s 1st Gen Ryzen CPUs based on the Zen architecture. Compared to the KX lineup which is primarily aimed at the domestic consumer segment, the KH series is aimed primarily at the server segment and offers up to 16 cores, and 16 threads. It is also based on a 16nm process node though the architecture is not as updated as the KX-6000G CPUs. So coming back to the Zhaoxin KX-6000G CPUs which we may as well refer to as APUs since they utilize the same Zhaoxin-made ZX C1080 GPU that is featured on the Glenfly Arise-GT-10C0 dGPU that was launched in the Chinese domestic market just a few days ago. Now the same discrete chip has been packaged within the Zhaoxin’s KX-6000G CPUs. The naming scheme and the design of the chip sounds a lot like AMD’s Ryzen Desktop APUs which also utilize a discrete GPU architecture and have the “G” label attached to them. According to Zhaoxin, the CPU packs 8 cores and 16 threads which is made possible through fusing two dies on the same package. The standard version of the KX-6000 CPUs only comes with the C-960 integrated GPU that offers VGA, HDMI, DP support at up to 4K resolutions. The new integrated GPU not only offers increased performance but also better graphics capabilities. For starters, in 3DMark 11, the Zhaoxin integrated GPU scores around 1000 points which is an over 3x increase compared to the older GPU. It comes with a brand new graphics and image processing engine that is compatible with Galaxy Kirin KOS, Tongxin Software UOS, Windows, & various other Chinese mainstream operating systems. The chip also offers full compliance with DirectX 11, Open GL 4.5, and OpenGL 1.2 APIs while outputting a native 4K display. While it is a huge improvement over its predecessor, the integrated chip is still only on par with an NVIDIA GT 630 graphics card in the 3DMark 11 (Performance) benchmark which scores similar points. (Score from Vmodtech’s GT 630 review): The Zhaoxin KX-6000G CPU was also tested in GLMark 2 where it scored 3116 points, An NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650 scored 10,516 points in the same benchmark. As for the CPU, the Zhaxoin chip scores over 15,000 MIPS in multi-threading decompression which puts it faster than the AMD Ryzen 3 1300X and close to Intel’s Core i5-7500. We used the following scores from TechSpot’s review to make a comparative chart: With that said, Chinese GPU makers are trying their best to reach parity with AMD & NVIDIA GPUs since 2016. Recently, Jing Jiawei and Innosilicon teased their plans to offer GTX 1080 and Vega class performance in the coming years. Zhaoxin is also working on a range of x86 processors that may rival AMD’s first-generation Ryzen CPUs while Loongson is targetting Zen 3 performance with its upcoming CPUs by 2023.