Now that AMD and Intel don’t formally promote their processors in Russia, the nation has to search out replacements to not discover itself within the stone age at some point. This week Dannie, a motherboard maker with places of work in Russia, China, Lithuania, and Turkey, launched its new motherboard primarily based on Zhaoxin’s system-on-chip. Whereas this chip can barely compete in opposition to fashionable CPUs from AMD and Intel, it’s appropriate with the overwhelming majority of apps and OSes, so it will possibly certainly change these processors.
Dannie’s MBX-Z60A micro-ATX motherboard options Zhaoxin’s eight-core KaiXian KX-6640MA system-on-chip that includes the LuJiaZui microarchitecture, a 4MB of L2 cache, and a frequency of two.10 GHz – 2.70 GHz. As well as, the SoC incorporates a built-in graphics processor, 16 PCIe 3.0 lanes, a built-on SATA controller, an built-in USB 3.0 controller, and different important I/O applied sciences. Because the chip caters to desktops and laptops, its most thermal design energy doesn’t exceed 25W.
As for specs of the MBX-Z60A motherboard, it carries two reminiscence slots for DDR4 reminiscence and has two PCIe x16 slots for add-in-boards, one M.2-2280 slot for SSDs, an M.2-2230 slot for Wi-Fi/Bluetooth adapters, and three SATA ports, experiences Habr. Exterior I/O connections are involved; the platform has USB ports, show outputs (a DisplayPort, an HDMI, and a VGA/D-Sub), a GbE connector, 3.5-mm audio enter/output, and even PS/2 ports.
From a efficiency perspective, the KaiXian KX-6640MA is slower than the KaiXian KX-U6780A processor that sits greater within the product stack and which we examined a few years in the past. Nonetheless, the lower-end one might be cheaper too, which is important for a lot of shoppers, notably those that solely run workplace purposes and don’t want severe efficiency anyway.
One of many benefits that processors developed by Zhaoxin, a three way partnership between Through Applied sciences and the Shanghai Municipal Authorities, have over different CPUs designed in China as a result of they function the x86 instruction set structure. Due to this fact, they’re appropriate with dozens of working methods (together with Home windows) and tens of 1000’s of apps. Because of this, whereas processors developed by Zhaoxin are tangibly slower when in comparison with CPUs from AMD and Intel, they’ve nonetheless been deemed an alternate due to compatibility.
In actual fact, within the current quarters, we noticed the rising adoption of Zhaoxin’s CPUs by worldwide manufacturers amid a good provide of low-end SoCs by AMD and Intel. Qnap launched a NAS primarily based on a Zhaoxin CPU a couple of 12 months in the past. Then Lenovo selected one in all such chips for its thin-and-light machine aimed on the Chinese language market and designed for presidency and government-controlled corporations that want to make use of software program supposed solely in China.
Will Dannie’s MBX-Z60A motherboard depends on Zhaoxin’s eight-core KaiXian KX-6640MA SoC to assist Russia scale back the results of worldwide sanctions and lack of AMD and Intel CPUs? For some purposes, most likely sure. Dannie can produce ‘tens of 1000’s of motherboards monthly,’ which must be sufficient to fulfill demand from numerous authorities establishments for some time. For Zhaoxin, further gross sales are a profit. However for any performance-demanding workloads, Zhaoxin’s SoCs won’t be able to interchange CPUs from AMD and Intel.