"Trillion Core" Chinese CPU vs. AMD & Intel: ZhaoXin X86 CPU Review ZX-C+ 4701
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- čas přidán 31. 03. 2020
- We're reviewing the Chinese X86 ZhaoXin ZX-C+ 4701 CPU, featuring VIA and Cyrix. This is one of the only non-Intel, non-AMD x86 CPUs being made today, and Via is a necessary component.
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We bought a $1000 computer in China by using a contact. It's not a good set of parts for the price, but that's because it's targeted for business and government office use. The THTF (TsingHua Tong Fang) ChaoXiang TZ561-V3 uses a ZhaoXin KaiXian CPU, the ZX-C+ 4701, which is a quad-core X86 CPU that is capable of running Windows without being Intel or AMD. That's done through a tangled web of companies involving Via, Cyrix, TSMC, and a couple others, and it's one of the only non-Intel, non-AMD x86 CPUs that is currently being made. We're benchmarking the ZhaoXin CPU in this content piece. Although it might not look like much today, this is China's attempt to start supplying its own silicon, and many years down the road, we're likely to see a lot more of this type of solution on the Chinese market. ZhaoXin hopes to achieve parity with AMD's Zen 2 by 2021 with its ZX-7000 CPU. We have our doubts about that, but it's a lofty goal. AMD Ryzen 3000 alternatives from someone who isn't Intel would certainly be a game changer, assuming they arrive in a timeline where it's still relevant.
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Testing, Editorial: Steve Burke
Editorial, Testing: Patrick Lathan
Video: Keegan Gallick, Andrew Coleman - Hry
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You said click next turn and leave the house. I can't leave my house. Why do you torment me so?
Just hold your breath when you go outside.
You supporting China products at this time really makes me want unsubscribe, seriously.
"Leave the house"... must be an April Fool's Joke.
Very interesting subject and extremely hard to not get into geopolitics while covering it..
Your test is invalid, you only used 4 of the 1,000,000,000,000 cores.
😂😂😂😂😂
I QUESTION YOUR TESTING METHODOLOGY :'DDD !
Not to worry. The 4 cores will self-replicate and double every 3 days, and when they hit 1 trillion, they will become airborne and implant self-replicating cores into your other devices.
Not many CZcams comments make me laugh, but you smashed it there J Bottero, I salute you 😂😭
有點誤會 have misunderstanding
因為"兆" 在中華民國-台灣Taiwan或中國-大陸 在電子(in electrictronic)方面是當作MEGA
Like Radio 1XX.X MHz We call 1XX.X 兆(M)赫(Hz)
"兆" 用在錢的單位才是1萬億 use by money is mean 1000 billion
Pls forget me english not good
Finally a cpu that is slightly worse than mine
Some are actually better in some tasks than AMDs own CPUs. They are based on Zen 1 but have some customization (Wendel from level1 thinks it is the PCI distance that is shorter). He used win10 though which obviously doesn´t have proper support for a non standard GPU.
Ahh, getting those 1.6 GHz single-core Sempron flashbacks.
It has similar singlecore scores to my terrible A9 9420 HP laptop, but mine only has 2 cores so its even worse
@@excitedbox5705 This CPU is not a Hygon CPU so it is not based on AMD Zen micro architecture; this is a completely different CPU design
@Razorsaber i have to ask, what CPU are you using
You should really include a raspberry Pi included to the comparisons...
Lol
Is it even x86 ??
@@mr.waffentrager4400 no, it uses ARM
Yessssssssssssss, but being a windows guy he may go for it if WOR project gets easier and better. I would love to see an RPI review
*edit: no it's not x86, either is apple. Risc is the future (look into Nvdia's Grace) it will be along time before they run consumer applications well, but the time of x86 will end; maybe this decade.*
edit 2: What sucks about that is all the good Risc projects are owned by ARM or other evil proprietary companies. Which is weird considering x86 hides so much more from the user (there are registers in zen 2 you can't even access!?) Sigh, but if enough people dedicate themselves we will reverse engineer or unlock enough secrets that open source Risc competitors can emerge.
Anyway's, I guess that was quite a rant. I believe some software can be proprietary (like if I sell a 3d printed part, keep the gcode is fine because your not selling the user the code. But a cpu/gpu is different. They sell me a machine and say I'm not allowed know how to use it?! So I am supposed to trust them to choose which core/thread to run my program on. Or not let me run it all because I don't have "permission"!
That's what makes me sick. I want to know the machine code, I want the pinout, and I want to be able to inspect and modify my compiler and assembler and there outputs in s meaningful way. But that's not how it's done. They give you a "drive" that will work as long as you O.S. is on their radar. Fuck that, I think a list of hardware and pinout commands (machine code) for everything the device can do should come with any logic chip, even ones with 4094 pins, or ones that fit onto a PCIEx slot.
My mission in life is to build an AI and test bench which will reverse engineer the machine code of any chip. This of course is going to take a lot of funding and knowledge so for now I'm trying to start a line of cases and adapter cords. My first project is the case and i/o of an ASUS prime trx-40 + Ryzen threadripper 3970x + ASUS dual rtx-3070. Its taking longer than I thought to get off the ground. But *after a while there will be some interesting stuff on my channel* (right now it's garbage though, I jumped into YT too fast and am still not ready)
@@abstractapproach634 Uhhh, RISC is now.
AMD moved to RISC over 30 years ago. X86 is not a CPU instruction set anymore, it has not been for decades. It is simply a standard so that other hardware and software manufacturers can follow to ensure forwards and backwards compatibility.
And we have had RISC computers also for decades. The IBM/Apple PowerPC, MiPS, Alpha, and Sun SPARC are just a few. And this goes back over 35 years. Intel is really the only company that is still sticking to CISC. But even that is hard to classify, as they have a CISC-RISC interpreter in their processors, so they also are really hybrids.
This guys neutral, no drama tech vid's keep me glued from start to finish. I understand
he is chaotic neutral. Throwing shade to anyone he can. That is why we love him
Agreed, no bias, no lame repetitive inside jokes, no obnoxious attitude. Just pure factual information.
Intel is confident their upcoming 14nm refresh will compete with this chip.
Not even a refresh.intel 14nm is from 2014 (I still have an 8 core 16 thread i7 from 6 years ago) and the architecture is 9 years old. 6 year old node and 9 year old architecture
I'm guessing you are refering to the i9-10980XE,
P.s. 😲 Wow! Some people just can't see Sarcasm 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
@@shaneeslick 10980XE was already released last year lol, my friend has one
I'm not. :p
Oh the stagnating innovation shills of silicon valley, our beloved supplier of over priced and nearly identically designed processors over the past ten years. Yes, Intel.
The desktop chassis is awfully reminiscent of the Lenovo Thinkstation.
Yeah it’s funny about that, the original Thinkstation chassis was actually designed in Shenzhen back in the 90’s when IBM was still in charge of........
Nah I’m kidding, the Chinese copied it!
I wonder why...
Isn't that because Lenovo is a Chinese company? Pretty sure they would be involved in this as well.
@@jmugurr994 Wouldn't be surprised if the supplier for these cases was the same company Lenovo uses. Since yes.. they are Chinese.
No!!! Are you saying china rip off designs ? That has 100% totally never happened before.
I love that you are non bias, reviewing everything I could possibly be looking at as a buyer and keeping it true and applicable. Plus that phone toss had me laughing. Real forces not just random falls. Overkill maybe, but I can relate and absorb the rich information you provide on everything. Thanks. Subscribed!
Appreciate the technical look into the Chinese CPUs and their backstory. I remember a lot of those names from seemingly long ago -- in fact my first discreet graphics card was a PCI card by S3. Curious way to reappear, but sensible enough in-context.
Finally, a processor that can slightly edge out an Atom processor or the average school computer.
i5-8400 is a pretty common high school/community college pc
@@StonedSoldering Maybe in countries that care about education
@@virtualtools_3021 US doesn't broadly but I've encountered plenty of i5 school PC's lol
It's and overclocked z560 - most all Penwell or newer Atom processors are better performing than this chip.
@@StonedSoldering My HS had i5 MacBooks, but they were only 2 cores and M A C B O O K S. They weren't even good single-threaded because of lack of cooling, but at least they had SSDs however small (128 GB). CPU was i5 5250U with 4GB RAM. Funny how people still say my HS is wasteful, but it isn't far from the truth when such terrible computers were costing them $800 each.
This Processor needs to have a death match with the Celeron D.
Not sure if that's enough competition, maybe try something like a Nokia 1600 🤔
@@markjacobs1086 You can't compare X86 with ARM architecture. An X86 would pulverize any ARM processors in-terms of desktop level multitasking no matter how weak it is.
@@DarkZerol I really don't think so with this garbage performance though.... Any other day of the week you'd be right...
@@markjacobs1086 ARM processors are not designed to run full-fledged desktop OS like Windows, most even struggle to load them up and are plague with a myriad of compatibility issue with those X86 programs. Also not forget a much smaller ARM processor have incredibly poor heat tolerance compared to something like X86 with multiple chips built-into them for maximizing space efficiency, they are designed for much lower power consumption devices.
The closest you could get is to compare something like the Intel Atom range of processors, though I'm not sure if you can still even buy them in the market these days unless maybe you are a ODM or something.
@Adria Does being a d-bag racist makes you feel any better?
Investagive journalism isn´t dead it´s alive and well here, thanks
This is crappy/biased journalism. Please, inform yourself somewhere else for the real reason of the existence of these chips.
Enlighten us, comrade. What is the REAL story here?
@@TheWarmotor I'm not a "comrade" or whatever... The reasons why these chips exists is for cutting out the backdoors in the processors from the U. S. (Intel's IME and AMD's PSP), and for using their own (Chinese) encryption algorithm. It's understandable they're concerned about their own security. Also these computers/chips aren't targeted for general audience, so all these gaming benchmarks are ridiculous. They're for government/official institutions of China. Prices aren't "real" and they don't count for final users. An last, this guy is mocking about the product name, without understanding the language. The name isn't about how many cores it has. It's just a "superlative" name, as many of the U. S. companies use for their own products. It's would be something more like "Mega-Core", not "Trillion-Core".
@@audio01No one cares if its a trillion cores or megacores. many benchmark tests are arbitrary anyway and the ones used by Gamers Nexus are general benchmarks.You said a lot about security and backdoors without even regarding the secondary reasons for the creation of the CPU. While backdoors exist on other CPUs, they are designed to run on a wider market instead of a proprietary OS. If you haven't noticed, many chip vendors are banned to China due to their egregious civil rights violations and various shortages. This was said in the video. Before being a 50 Cent Soldier and a shill for the CCP, get your facts straight.
👍
Seriously among the best tech channels on CZcams right now. You guys rock!
A loose translation is "trillion core" or "mega core"...2 minutes later..."The CPU is a 2Ghz 4-core CPU".
"Mega" means million so this sounds like clickbait bullshit. Google translate doesn't recognise "zhao xin".
IT NEEDS TO BE TESTED ON ITS OWN SYSTEM TO BE LEGIT MAybe though.
@@gorgolyt Well yes Google Translate doesn't recognise Chinese written in the Latin alphabet because that's not how Chinese is normally written. Here you go: en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E5%85%86#Definitions
@@MARS-GREENH0USE I agree, although... as soon as I saw the heatsink, something seemed fishy. For 1k bucks, my man got ripped off HARD
Tony Melo sooo if intel calls their cores “quad”, they could sell a quad core CPU that has 2 “quad” cores? You can’t name thing with quantities if it’s misleading.
"so the older among you may be shocked to hear names such as VIA, Cyrix and Centaur"
i'm offended
guguigugu welcome to the club ;)
Nah you're just old, just like me.
Damn I'm offended also!
... and shocked
Yeah Steve is being an axx, calling us old. :/
haha i'm getting old! haha
This is the perfect processor to pair with America Online. Let me see if I can find one of those CD things it used to come on.
well.....it's energy efficient i guess. You could buy a calculator with more processing power.
I doubt you could find a calculator with a 2GHz processor (maybe I'm wrong though, I don't follow the calculator space closely). What's blowing my mind is the price to performance ratio of a 64-core Epyc CPU would probably be better than this, at $1000. Actually yes, it would definitely be better because the price would only increase 10-15x but the performance would be 100x better, from what we've seen im these benchmarks...
@@utubekullanicisi ..It's a joke bruh
@@aagp2 It's not a "joke". It's what's necessary to avoid hardware and microcode backdoors that literally everything else has. They may put in their own, but this is a step forward in security when the US and rest of the 14-eyes nations have been under complete surveillance but Isr*** for years.
@@VeritasEtAequitas What does that have to do with anything at all?
I was shocked when I heard him speak proper chinese with the tones, that was crazy
My Chinese is still terrible. Extremely slow progress, but learning nonetheless. I can order at a restaurant somewhat competently and ask a factory how hot something is, how long it takes, when they built or bought the machine, etc. I'm still at that stage where I don't understand 90% of the answers to my questions!
@@GamersNexus You should get a Chinese girl friends , that can speed up your Chinese spoken language learning process significantly.
Marden Blake waiting for the day GN makes a click bait vid "white guy speaks fluent Chinese and surprises locals"
@@rdxzero Followed by a video called 'did that guy just eat a bat'
@@cks5148 getting a Chinese girlfriend is probably a step too far. 🤣
This gave Steve the perfect opportunity to flex on us with his Chinese skills lol
Translation: " best processor on earth"
Lol I was confused as to why his pronunciation was quite good
I really like learning from this type of content:) great piece, I can tell how much work went into it
Very good and informative content on a subject that is not really heard of anywhere else (perhaps because it does not sell enough papers?). I, for one, would love to see more of this type of reporting.
"This is... One o... This is *the* worst that we've ever tested"
You were thinking of a way of putting it a bit more politely but then just gave up and said it how it is.
Most popular comments are sarcastic and funny and we all enjoy them but alot of non-tech savvy people won't get it and think them to be true. Be straight (not talking about sexual orientation) and real.
Haven't you noticed the rapid drop-off of "viewers" in the past 6ish weeks in tech videos? No one could care less about channels like this, sorry Steve, and I do believe you do a bloody good job (among the very best), but it is fact right now. Linus is suffering, so are the rest, I see their videos pop up in the recommended, I notice how poor the viewer count is, I take notice of it, and I get onto my daily inquirery, which is virus and or economic related.
@@minus3dbintheteens60 Pretty hilarious how wrong you were!
@@GamersNexus show me your statistics of viewers and new subscribers in march vs the rest of the year prior and after to show me how wrong I was.
11 months ago (December 19)
24 vids
6,061K views
8 months ago (march ending April 2nd [when I made this post] )
21 vids
3,630k views
Pretty hilarious how right I was 🤣🤣🤣
I'm not convinced this isn't a convoluted April Fool's prank that has gone way over my head.
Nah, the Chinese just really are fools, so everyday is fool's day.
How is it half an hour lol
Well the benchmarking section did nothing to dissuade me from thinking this was a joke but after that I slowly realised it was real.
I thought the same... but posting it April 2:nd would be breaking the rules :)
@@jamesnolan6450 would be funny if the guy who started the chinese society was just a troll
Nice original content. The historical contexts are significant and a trip down memory lane for an old tech nerd like me. I’ll try to buy something on the store, I’d like to keep seeing more of this - even if the product is unimpressive. Thanks!
That was fascinating and well done. Thanks for the content!
Now this is the stuff that puts GN above the rest. Sad to see it suffers from the VIA curse, aka insaneli high prices and restricted methods to even buy it as seen with the Via Nano series.
doesn't matter when the people printing money are buying these for security reasons. give it 5 years and they will have caught up 70% of the way
Check out Anandtech and Level1Techs, they had a look at the licenced Zen 1 chips from China and the changes AMD had to make to be allowed to licence their design. Edit: Oh lol, it's literally a minute later in the video.
Not registering on the ammeters.
Matches with performance on logo render.
Thank you, I really found this interesting and learned a lot!!
This was super interesting. Despite what a pain in the ass it might be to make, I hope you make more along these lines.
2500K: "I'm still worthy!"
AMD A8 6410:I'm still worthy
Damn, have you watched the recent GN's video about older CPU?
YES! Yes he is worthy! well i still uses one so i maybe little bit bias :)
@@gearz2570 i have a A8-6410 too 🤣🤣 btw i'm upgrading to a Ryzen 5 3600 and RX 5700 XT 🤣😥
I'm on 2600k that's about to get paired with a RTX2070 or an RX5700XT and I'm thinking of getting a 1440p monitor :~)
*CIA furiously taking notes *
Russia is switching all it's Government Computers not to ARM or RISC-V but CISC much more complex and slower but harder to hack and not reliant on US Tech to avoid a US Embargo!
They are also replacing Monolithic Kernel with Micro-Kernel for the inherent extra security and ability to reboot modules without system wide reboot and much faster start-up times when a system wide reboot is needed!
@@DarthAwar do you mean CISC ? cause LISC seems to yield no result on google
@@DarthAwar Thank you, for the (long and good) explaination !
@@DarthAwar security through obscurity rarely works out
@@TheLazyVideo In the Long Run Yes you are Right, But in the Short to Mid-Term Yes it works out very well imagine people on FreeBSD getting targeted with a super malware or hacker very very hard but not impossible but while too few people use it what is the point of targeting it?
I love this type of content! This is to me the Computer Hardware version of "Jay Leno's Garage" - where you learn simply stuff that the normal run of the mill channels will never give you, because they don't care and actually don't know much.
I would be thrilled to see more of these types of videos in the future, even if they will be infrequent!
Love this video though!
PS can only recommend the mentioned Anandtech article to everyone.
Great content. Glad I found your channel again. Keep up the good work.
One of the most fascinating uploads in a while.
Considering the chip TDP, I think it would be interesting to compare it to an Intel Atom/ AMD E series and see how far they are in perf/W
@@vyor8837 The claimed TDP is 18W, it was also made on 28nm. It's a 2 gen old part for Zhaoxin as well. The new generation isn't exactly good by any means, but is not as horrendously shit. Being $700 USD for a mobo + CPU that just beats an old FX-8100. Still trash compared to AMD or Intel, but it is showing some improvements.
@@vyor8837 If you mean the one I mentioned, I don't remember ZX's claims for that generation. The generation where they claim to be able to get Zen parity is the one after that which isn't released yet. I doubt they will reach zen parity, given how many bulldozer revisions we saw before the transition to zen however I wouldn't be surprised if the generation after that is at zen parity though. They will still be far behind, with zen 4/5 being out by that point, but it will be interesting to watch over the next decade.
@@vyor8837 Not enough publicly disclosed security vulnerabilities for that, so there's still room to grow in order to compete with the top 😂
@@vyor8837 From what I found there were some chinese news outlets claiming some level of parity with the i5-6500 or i5-7400. Some just said parity ambiguously (but referred to benchmarks which scale well with threads), some said parity in multithreaded tasks. In terms of multithreaded tasks, it depends on the benchmark. Some Chess benchmarks it performs worse, Cinebench R20 the release chips perform basically dead on the same. The engineering sample tests leaked in late 2017 had it at about 33% worse for multithreaded, while the chips were released in 2019 after delays but were at that performance.
So, single threaded is far worse, multithreaded is on parity with the chips. After looking into it more, it seems to be (in terms of performance) an FX-8370 (above in some benchmarks, equal in others, but you get the idea). Achieving this with 3ghz vs the 4/4.3 base/turbo of the fx-8370 shows some decent improvement over the chip GN tested. As I said before, they're still quite a ways behind but it's reaching/has reached the point where the Chinese Government can happily use them for office machines in government installations and the like, basic machines which can't be airgapped and such.
There was a lot of information in this video which makes it hard to listen too. But was interesting none the less. Congratulations to all involved the amount of research was phenomenal. Good work guys and keep healthy.
One of the rare situations where literally every component can fail simultaneously
Zhaoxin actually has some decent CPU that are now available for purchase. The KX--U6780A is 8c/8t, 2.7GHz, and supports dual channel DDR4. It performs like a lower end bulldozer
We'll try to get it! Thanks!
Damn how bad you have to be when bulldozer is what you aspire to be
@@Drdirtydee well AMD was once pretty shit too but you have to give room for them to growth. I am more welcome to new competition than ever seeing how AMD broke the monopoly of Intel and Nvidia and benefits us the end users
I wonder how good the IPC is, because 2.7GHz is a very low frequency, but if it can compete with, let's say a FX 8350, which has a 4GHz base clock and 4.2GHz turbo, if Zhaoxin could push a more reasonable clock speed, like 3.7GHz for example, that CPU may achieve a fairly decent performance.
I wonder how it will perform at 7nm, I think they were planning to switch to 7nm for their next generation.
@@stargazer162 The FX 8350 isn't a lower end Bulldozer, it's a high end Bulldozer evolution (Piledriver). A FX 4100 would fit better the description of a lower end Bulldozer CPU.
I appreciate him trying to properly pronounce the Chinese!
Thanks! I've been learning Mandarin for about a year now.
@@samwaris908 I find nearly impossible to learn any language outside the hindo-european family. Maaaaybe if I were a teenager again, but it's damn hard.
@@GamersNexus nice work! yours definitely beats everyone else i've heard that hasn't spoken chinese since birth, if that makes sense.
Sam Waris What made you want to learn it? You could follow along with Steve in picking up where you left off
@@GamersNexus I‘m a native speaker of Mandarin. Ask me if you need any help
It's fascinating and a little bit of fun to see stuff from not only the big guys. Thank you for the efforts needed for oddities like this.
I had to check whether Steve was making up a gag with the “fried oven” line. He wasn’t.
Man knows his West Taiwanese.
It takes so much longer because the manufacturer wants you to be able to take the time and reflect on your incredibly intelligent purchase decision.
Wait a second, that case is the SFF Lenovo Thinkcentre case lenovo uses since Skylake, but different colors, you truly find everything in China.
Lenovo is literally a straight-up Chinese company.
Such as Lenovo... the company from China
No quite the same
@@vlc-cosplayer China copies everything good from everyone and makes it cheaper.
This is great content, Steve. I'd love to watch more.
Okay, this was a very informative and it's very great! This is truly informational, and neutral. When my company takes off, I will donate to Patreon!
Ah back to the Socket 7 days when there were multiple choices to put in your motherboard! I miss Socket 7 :(
Ah yes I miss those days too. Placing jumpers all over the motherboard matching the speed and multiplier. Those days were the best.
K6-2 500 was the cats ass. Last semi usable socket 7 processor which could utilize Intel or AMD tech. Wouldn't that be grand if someone standardized a socket type which anyone could use? Nah, that violates every profit based principal companies use to rip off consumers, no good indeed.
well compared to now that you have CPUs with several hundred dead pins Socket 7 was better. I am not kidding either Intel sockets have dead pins meaning unused not used for electrical positive, electrical negative, ground nor the sometimes needed part of a 1 pin separator to have no cross talk signals between bigger and/or thicker parts in a electrical system.
For cross talk they have solved it already with whatever they have put into the socket then into the chip so then you only have the in, out signals then ground.
I get having "reserved" pins is a thing but when your company uses a socket for 2 CPU generations having them is just a waste of space.
@@pixels303at-odysee9 Don't forget K6-2+ for adding L2 on-die and bumping performance up by over 10% with barely any extra power. K6-III+ also kicks ass as the last-in-line performance option for SS7, but wasn't available on shelves and now is pretty difficult to attain at reasonable prices.
@@pixels303at-odysee9 Ah, yes. Companies are not allowed to make money
Love these type of videos! Ever since i got super into computer hardware ive loved learning about the past companies and the history of it all. Hearing how those companies ended up and that they still kind of exist is super cool.
Excellent piece! Got me glued to my seat the whole duration.
Excellent research, thanks for doing this, keep up the good work.
I'm suprised that the CPU even works with windows 10 without being unstable.
You can run Windows 10 on a potato. Running a server on W10 with an Athlon II. The old ass HDD is actually the bottleneck lol
@@MikePWJr It's not about the performance, it's about the stability.
@@MikePWJr yea. Im surprised mostly about the reverse engineering of the ISA enough to work with windows 10 and regular applications. Morden x86 is very bloated and hard to fully reverse engineer so I thought it was x86-64 but only with the essential instructions to run the OS and a few special programs with sub-par stability.
@@andrew8293 Well the video stated that they have a relationship with Via and Cyrix. See back in the day Intel actually sold rights to manufacture x86 processors. This is how AMD got access to it, and later when Intel tried to revoke all licenses and started suing various manufacturers, various lawsuits came about. AMD one a royalty free license to the Am386 design and owned the rights to any design built from that base point. Other companies like Via and Cyrix started about reverse engineering versions of the architecture as well based on this base architecture back then as well. That's how they made and sole processors that were compatible through the 90's and even early 2000's (Via was big in the small form factor x86 PC market back in the mid 2000's, I remember building one myself).
Now here's the thing. That base x86 architecture, that's what Windows cares about! All new expansions of the x86 instruction set are tacked on to the end. Note, AMD and Intel have been independently developing the architecture since this split way back when. This means that through the 90's and into the early 2000's Microsoft was contending with the fact that there were 2 independent big players as well as a bunch of small players. So design wise the kernel has been contending with this fact the entire time.
So, it's designed in a way to deal with that. The kernel will use a newer instruction if it's available, otherwise falling back to a software based solution if the instruction doesn't exist. So as long as you have that base x86 architecture, Windows doesn't care, it'll keep trucking on forward.
At one cost... PERFORMANCE.
Hence why this CPU is dog ass slow. It just doesn't have all those newer high-end math instructions. Hence why all the benchmarks they employed were god awful. It was doing all that math in software! I bet it performs just fine as a general purpose UI processor. It probably runs word processors just fine (which is what a government office computer is going to need).
This is why dude man in the video later talked about hitting the road running. They don't have as much to make up from here. All they have to do is develop those newer faster instructions.
And here's the nice thing here... they don't actually have to reverse engineers those.
The instructions are defined. We know their interface... the way to call them, and the way to use their results. That's all that's really needed. And of course we know them, because if we didn't the likes of Microsoft, Apple, the linux community, and any other OS developer out there could not reliably create software that runs on that processor.
Furthermore, if you want a very stable OS that runs across decades of hardware (like Windows), you're not going to exploit those functions/instructions. Like... OK, if f(x) is defined to take inputs on registers 1 and 2, and have an output in register 0. Just because it MIGHT also place a remainder in some other register because it used it as a scratch register. You don't read that register for anything. It's not part of the definition. This means it's unreliable... if you did rely on that, and then the hardware manufacturer changed its internal behaviour, then your software breaks! This concept is called encapsulation. And as a software engineer, even if you know how to break encapsulation, you do so at your own risk. And this is how an OS like Windows operates... (and of course Windows has become more stable over the years for various reasons... including respecting these things and purging parts of the kernel that exploit hacks like this).
Of course in more embedded systems where you know the specific hardware, you can exploit it willingly, to get that extra edge. Say in things like video game consoles.
So, the jobs of these companies are really to come up with their own implementations of those instructions. Just making sure that inputs and outputs are shaped the same as the definition is. And as long as they do that they'll have nearly perfect stability (of course perfect stability is impossible... there's all sorts of mishaps that can impact this... but they're severely limited at this point because OSs compensate for it). The problem here isn't stability... it's creating performant hardware implementations of these instructions and packing them into the silicone. That's the intellectual property that AMD and Intel hold on to. In simple terms... it's not knowing if they need to implement square-root, that they know. It's knowing how to create an algorithm on silicone that does square-root as fast as AMD/Intel can do it in their chips (replace sqrt with a far more complicated instruction).
Of course, software that is designed to directly access specific instructions can become more unstable because they do have much higher expectations on the hardware you're running. Software that more directly accesses hardware to perform more time sensitive processes like video games, renderers, etc which need to perform more modern maths. These will become far more unstable and is why most of the tests that failed in this video were related to these.
Mind you things from here get a little more complicated into regards of x86-64, since this is technically a different set of instructions developed by AMD on top of x86 and holds the licensing rights to. But this problem is just legal licensing issues (hence the videos long rambling about the complicated business relationships and how AMD was involved but no longer involved due to various legal/political hub-bub). But the hardware side principal stands the same. The right to sell hardware the uses the instruction sets has nothing to do with how stable it will be.
TLDR;
Via and Cyrix are involved, and they already did most of the leg work of gaining access to the x86 architecture back in the 80's and 90's, as well as more leg work in more recent years with AMD to get the x86-64 base architecture. Tacked on with the fact that Microsoft explicitly designs their OS to be fault tolerant due to its need to support decades worth of evolving hardware. Means it can be very stable as long as the core x86 instruction set exists, if only at the impact of performance.
@@lordofduct well I just read the TLDR because you wrote a lot. I thought the same thing about Cyrix and Via but they reverse engineered the 386 and 486 and partly the 586 before going out of busniess. Windows 10 relies on AMD's AMD64. (64 bit) and Intel's 686/786 (32 bit) ISAs which are much more complex than the old 386-586 ISAs. Especially since Intel and AMD change it all the time.
Edit: I read about the faster math functions and the fact that we know how the I/O works it was easy to make a chip thats compatible. That probably helped a lot but that probably isn't enough to make a chip that stable on an OS they have no control over.
I love the research you do and how deep you go with things. Your definitely the most informative electronics channel I watch. Keep the good info coming!
i like those sneak-peaks at future reviews on your table :) look at all of those cpu's :o
Very interesting, Mr. Nexus. Thank you
It would be interesting to see just how far back in the Intel/AMD land you have to go to hit similar performance. Like, would a P4D or Socket 939 Athlon X2 keep up?
By far this is my favorite sorts of content from you guys. These sorts of inside baseball history type of stuff is hard to come by especially in tech space. Thanks and keep these types of video coming! Also check out Technology Connections, they do historical contents on tech as well!
You may want to offer this piece in an article for The Drive or the National Interest. Excellent work.
Recommend getting a low current clamp with a BNC connector to go to an oscilloscope. A 30 amp clamp with small jaws would give you more accurate readings with the kind of work you guys are doing. Plus, on an oscilloscope you can see a lot of detail about what’s going on with current draw in the circuit.
9:33 did u just say "leave the house"?
-_o?
Good point. Maybe don't do that!
@@GamersNexus by the time its your turn again coronavirus will be over
@@WayStedYou 😂😂
When I heard the price I thought that was an april fools
This is one of my favourite GN videos of all time. That must have been a ton of work to compile all that info.
Wow. This is excellent. More journalism than many media outlets. Keep it coming.
Good. I'm glad my Commodore 64 is still King of the PC's.
the good old days where it used to take at least 10 min to load a game from a tape
@@bjorn1583 300 baud master race :)
better upload this video in 1st april with title "The fastest CPU in 2020 : ZhaoXin ZX Dominator CPU!".
Andreecko Little pink army and Chinese internet commenters feel satisfied
I’ve seen you on Linus tech tips and thought you were his employee 👀 but I’m happy I ran into your channel! I’m subscribed now😁
Imagine watching this video and that’s the cpu you’re using... and you pay $1000 usd damn!
My first motherboard was a VIA, fond memories of that K6-2+ system.
Yeah, pretty sure mine was too, a BioStar I think.
My first build was a K6-2 as well, but I can't remember if it was a Via or SiS chipset... Had a 3DFX Voodoo1 tho ;)
Good ole times :)
P3 500 slot on a dfi with ye good ole' via 133. First PC
Thinking of those days makes me tear up a little
Thank God it comes with a DVD RW drive. It's a perfect companion for my VIA Nehemiah C3.
First video of you people I watched in a while, if you make more content like this, I'll come back :-)
Thank you for the extremely interesting and very well researched video. And a big thank you for making an effort to correctly pronounce all the chinese names. The joke about the tones and the stir-fry oven made me laugh :D
兆 can mean either mega/million or trillion. We're not even at a trillion transisors on current reticle limits lol.
We're also not at a million cores. Pretty sure the name is not meant to imply the specs on the product. Very ambitious on the naming!
@@GamersNexus maybe they are saying it takes a million minutes to complete their benchmarkd
兆 means mega (million) in electronic context.
How do you get anything done in a language that has that kind of ambiguity? Numbers should be constant :)
@@MrGencyExit64 it's all dependent on context. for example, the word "theory" In a scientific context is vastly different from its normal definition.
Day 4 of asking tech Jesus what kind of shampoo and conditioner he used
He made an entire episode on it.
Why look at those split ends !
He uses thermal paste
That was beautifully interesting - nice work!
This is great content. i'm sure it took a hell of a lot longer than this 29 minutes. Much appreciated
i thought via never left
I never thought I'd see a 2500k on a graph again :')
(love that cpu)
Since it's almost impossible to get a GPU these days, I've been considering getting one of those APU's, so at least I finally got to see some benchmarks on those xD. Unfortunately it's just as impossible finding an APU.
i still have an i5-2320 around from my last pc.
for an early quad core cpu its actually not that bad.
For relatively new x86 contenders its pretty impressive to see homegrown silicon. Give ot a few years and if ARM isnt ruling the desktop world itll probably be a worthy alternative if you're in China or east asia
Its still an AMD design. And they cant alter it really, only suggest new "things".
@@blitzwing1 And is'nt the other chinese based CPU maker a deal with VIA since they are the only X86 license out there other then Intel and AMD?
@@Jeroensgambling this has nothing to do with the AMD/ china venture. This is a chinese company that bought VIA, and this is an original x86 design
I love this type of content. You did a great job presenting the material and keeping from going all "Ben Stein" boring. Keep up the good work.
So, to sum it all up, this CPU isn't even just an April Fool's joke, but a joke every other day of the year as well. Bravo.
Uh, is that all you got from this video? Performance is bad, but what's *extremely* interesting is the nexus of international politics, intellectual property, and microprocessors.
I won't call it a joke because it is their last last gen product and CPUs are not some tools you can make from your backyard.
Taken alone it's a joke compared to current gen cpu's, but taken in context it's a step along a path towards China's cpu independence from US designs. Every few years their designs get better and eventually they'll be competitive.
@@soupwizard This is so true. Russia also started to developing their own PC processors and have same goal to get cpu independence from foreign designs.
Steve: History lesson
Bottles of liquid: Trembling with adoration for their lord and master
Great video you guys. Like the effort.
this is what i love from GN, real research, educated guesses, even a little bit of politycal analysis, love you guys, this was an amazing and informative video
Trillion Core?! What is this nonsense Steve?! Informative video once again
I like how he actually used the proper Chinese pronunciation of the CPU.
Yes I was impressed, it's good both that was decent and thar he cared to get it right
pretty sure hes been to china multiple times and can speak a decent amount of it
@@byr0n Well he didn't realize that Xin means heart and is borrowed to mean core/chip, because he says "Long Xin literally means dragon chip", when no, it literally means dragon heart and is a play on words as a CPU name.
He actually bothered to try to pronounce the tones and he pronounced Shanghai right.
I loved my Cyrix
+1 to Steve getting through the Dept. of Commerce statement on the first try.
Pity you can't do a benchmark against a Raspberry Pi 4. That would be interesting.
S3? Now that is a name I haven't heard in a long time.
Very informative. I hope you guys keep covering these Chinese companies’ strides
thanks so much for the review! btw your sound recording levels are making your audio really loud. maybe turn down the mic pick up.
Man, if that's how slow one of their Trillion-Core CPUs are, I'd hate to see how one of their quad-cores are.
No thanks , had my fill of chinese junk
It's the company name. That's like complaining that the XBox is not shaped like an X.
@@wothin But it was shaped like an X. It was shaped like a box with an X growing out of it. It was a literal X box.
@@wothinwe get it you're humorless
This one is a quad core but no threads
I'm ready with my Cyrix T-Shirts from when I worked there in the 90's. Go Cyrix!
Were you there for the big robbery? They say it was an inside job...
@@CH-pv2rz No. That was before my time there.
You realize, your version of hell will be attempting to configure and overclock Cyrix in every motherboard configuration, just as payback of the frustration you caused humankind. LOL
@@richardtucker5686 Ha! In my defense, I was in IT, not engineering.
@@fogllama Thank God, because fried oven is what you get if you overclock a cyrix processor
I needed this. Great video
I knew Via had start doing some work with the government over there but I didn't know anything had actually come out of it. Good work. I'm just sad that we don't see more work out of Via directly, it was always kind of cool seeing those compact x86 boards that they came out with.
Actually curious how this would stack up against the lowest clocked Phenom quadcore (Phenom 1, not 2).
This was running at 2GHz right? I was really wondering what kind of perf/watt and IPC this thing was getting. They may be closer than we realize, if they can scale their silicon to higher power at some point.
Catching up. Good video. Thank you
Very interesting! Thank you for your research.
Maybe it should be renamed "Trillion Hour" to reflect the render and loading times.
oh, don't be so DIRTY, SANCHEZ.....there I said it....
So this is where Cyrix's license went. Interesting. I like to see these alternatives made, even if they won't directly compete with the US market, pressure from them making Chinese super computers might get the government to invest more in innovation from AMD and Intel. In the end I like seeing unique hardware and a possibility of a competitive drive for these companies.
@matt thomas wtf? Where did you get that from? I mean then paying AMD and Intel to engineer better chips for them. This has nothing to do with intellectual property. All 3 companies have the current rights to produce x64 CPUs. Plus I highly doubt AMD or Intel would want to steal ideas from a Chinese company that's behind them currently in innovation.
In 1993 or 94 (long time ago) I witnessed the installation of a couple circuit boards into the bridge computers on the USS Nimitz. For a cost of about $5,000 for each cpu. These boards upgraded the bridges computer system to the PENTIUM 90! Down clocked. Street value at the time - $120 in Seattle. HooRay for government spending!(The circuit boards were estimated to cost ruffly $20,000 each.)
great stuff bud, this is good info !! thx