Zhaoxin

Zhaoxin (Shanghai Zhaoxin Semiconductor Co., Ltd.; ˈʒaʊʃɪn, ʈʂâu ɕín) is a fabless semiconductor company, created in 2013 as a joint venture between VIA Technologies and the Shanghai Municipal Government. The company manufactures x86-compatible desktop and laptop CPUs. The term Zhào xīn means million core. The processors are created mainly for the Chinese market: the venture is an attempt to reduce the Chinese dependence on foreign technology. Zhaoxin is a joint venture between VIA Technologies and the Shanghai Municipal Government. In 2021 it was reported that VIA has a 14.75% shareholding in the company. China has a domestic policy to "replace all foreign hardware and software from its public infrastructure with homegrown solutions" by 2023 (the so-called 3–5–2 policy). VIA holds a x86 licence which allows its subsidiaries to produce compatible microprocessors; this allows Zhaoxin to develop x86 computer chips. The architecture of the initial ZX family of processors is a continuation of VIA's Centaur Technology x86-64 Isaiah design. The ZX-A and ZX-B are based on the VIA Nano X2 C4350AL. The ZX-B is identical to the ZX-A, except that it is manufactured by Shanghai Huali Microelectronics Corporation (HLMC) . The ZX-C is based on the VIA QuadCore-E & Eden X4. Zhaoxin calls this architecture "Zhangjiang", however it is thought that the basis is the VIA Isaiah 2 architecture. Like the VIA processors they were based on, early ZX processors were ball grid array chips sold pre-soldered onto a motherboard. Zhaoxin came to the attention of the Northen American and European technology press when, in late 2017 and early 2018, it launched the ZX-D processor and revealed plans for future products. Zhaoxin calls the ZX-D architecture "Wudaokou"; this is a complete re-design of the VIA Isaiah. It is also a departure from earlier microarchitectures, such as ZhangJiang, which were a lightly modified version of a VIA Technologies (Centaur) architecture. WuDaoKou was a new and complete SoC design.