China following its national program of technological independence of Western hardware has taken another step towards creating its own x86 computers, in 2018 the national companies VIA and Zhaoxin already presented us with an ambitious roadmap for this, now we have user-level results . In Chinese stores, the Zhaoxin C1888 motherboard can now be purchased with a processor welded in a BGA socket of the KX-6000 series called KX-U6780A made in 16nm.
For now, VIA and Zhaoxin seem to be completing their route plan and with this new processor KX-6000 implanted in the domestic market. We are surprised to see that for the future KX-7000 model we have support for DDR5 and PCIe 4.0, two options that will undoubtedly put it at a high level, it remains to be seen if we will have a reduction in manufacturing nm.
The Zhaoxin KX-U6780A processor as we see in the specifications has eight x86 cores up to 2.7 GHz, has 8 MB of L2 cache, SSE 4.2 instruction support and AVX virtualization among others, has its own undefined integrated GPU compatible with DirectX 11, OpenGL 3.2 and OpenCL 1.1, the set has a consumption of 70W TPD. It supports dual-channel DDR4-3200 RAM, it also has SATA 3, USB 3.1 and PCIe 3.0 connectivity.
The Zhaoxin C1888 motherboard that comes with this welded processor allows you to mount two SO-DIMM DDR4-3200 modules, it has a PCI Express x16 slot, an M.2 mSATA slot and a Mini PCI Express slot for Wi-Fi. It has a 12V 4-pin connector, 24-pin ATX connector but also supports power from an external DC adapter. It has HDMI output, mini D-Sub, USB 3.0 x 2, USB 2.0 x 2, Gigabit Ethernet x 2 plus audio input and output.
The performance seems to be similar to an Intel Core i5-7400 at the CPU level, although anew model called KX-U6880A with higher performance has already been announced. In the videos that we attached you can see several performance tests with current applications and games, the first one has English subtitles.
Naturally, this processor raises many suspicions, but ¿who do you prefer to spied you, US or China? both do. Many countries and users will be interested in closing backdoors hardware to one side or another. Maybe will see soon mini PC’s with this processor in the global online stores, we will inform you.
- The price of the Zhaoxin KX-U6780A processor + C1888 board is RMB 4300 RMB equivalent to $619 (€559) in the Taobao online store, the distribution will take place on March 9 and is intended for the economic compact gaming sector.