Zhaoxin, a joint venture between the Chinese based SASAC and Taiwan-based Via Technologies has been selling graphic cards for some time now.
The number of developers shrank by two during the late 2000s, and there was an intense competition between NVIDIA and ATI Technologies.
Zhaoxin has arrived just recently. The top graphic card of the company, KaiXian, KX-6000, has eight LujiaZui graphic cards and four dual cores. Its performance is similar to Intel’s seventh-generation core I5.
In a recent video, Zhaoxin mentioned that it had a standalone graphic processor. The company is going to release it in 2021. The processor will support Direct X11 or Direct X12 level feature set. Moreover, the CPU will have a TDP of 70 watts. These features are awesome and competitive to some extent. However, the graphic card won’t be able to compete with the likes of AMD and Nvidia in high-end graphic cards, like GeForce RTX 3000.
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Unlike the company’s KaiXian KX-6000 that are made by TSMCs 16nm FinFET technology, the GPU is made using the 28nm planar fabrication process. The choice of production seems odd, however, Zhaoxin wants to contact TSMC’s rival SMIC to make its GPU cut the overall costs and produce something better.
Zhaoxin also wants to address markets beyond gaming with its GPU and high-performance computing. If Zhaoxin proceeds to the market, its biggest challenge will be GPU related patents.
AMD and Nvidia have a vast graphic processing portfolio, and both companies have been monetizing their content. They are licensing it to other parties, including developers like Arm.
Via Technologies owned several patents it acquired with S3 in the early 2000s. However, in 2011, several patents were sold to HTC, which is controlled by the same person as Via Technologies.
Zhaoxin hasn’t commented on the story. We will keep you posted with further updates.
