China is making the availability of such chips a matter of national security. If their data centers are bigger and hotter and not quite as fast, because of a fab process lag, I think they will still be just fine.
Zhaoxin is a joint venture between VIA Technologies and the Shanghai government. Century Avenue is the current architecture used by the company for its mainstream KaiXian KX-7000 processors; consequently, it is logical for Zhaoxin to align its latest server processors accordingly. Although Century Avenue is an internally developed architecture by Zhaoxin, many speculate that Century Avenue derives from Centaur Technology’s CNS core, prior to the company’s split from VIA Technologies in 2021.
Zhaoxin utilizes a chiplet design for the KH-50000, similar to AMD’s Ryzen and EPYC processors, with a greater emphasis on the latter, given the high number of cores. A chiplet design would enable Zhaoxin to push the core boundary on the KH-50000, effectively matching AMD’s EPYC 9004 (codenamed Genoa) series that tops out at 96 cores. Zhaoxin has planned two variants of the KH-50000: the flagship 96-core SKU and a more affordable 72-core SKU, both of which lack simultaneous multithreading (SMT). The KH-50000 represents a monumental leap forward for Zhaoxin, as it provides 3X more cores than the company’s existing KH-40000.
The clock speeds on the KH-50000 aren’t too shabby and fall in line with what you’d expect from a server chip. The 96-core variant has a 2.2 GHz base clock and 3.0 GHz boost clock. Since the 72-core chip has fewer cores, Zhaoxin could push the base clock to 2.6 GHz but maintained the same boost clock.
Although the company has taken the wraps off the KH-50000, it didn’t reveal the TDP or other power metrics for the upcoming server chip. The thing with a chiplet design is that Zhaoxin can effectively utilize older process nodes for the KH-50000. Sanctions don’t hurt as much if you don’t care about power consumption.
The KH-50000 embraces 2S and 4S systems, where you can accumulate up to 384 cores on the latter. Zhaoxin built its own ZPI (Zhaoxin Processor Interconnect) 5.0 for inter-chip communication.
Contrary to AI GPUs, companies in China can still acquire server chips without significant difficulty, albeit potentially at increased costs. Nonetheless, Zhaoxin continues to make considerable progress in the domestic market, and with Chinese authorities firmly committed to utilizing domestically produced technology, the company could achieve success even if the KH-50000 does not rival AMD or Intel’s latest server chips.
