The return of an old rocker, such as VIA Technologies, sounds, at the moment and on paper, very interesting and it does so thanks to the Government of China and Zhaoxin Semiconductor and it will surely present battle to Intel and AMD.

Wow, it seems that an old rocker has gotten the 'itch', to return to fight in the market of x86 processors. We are talking about VIA Technologies, which for many years was a major processor manufacturer, until Intel and AMD left it far behind and the company faced serious financial problems. This time he comes back, with help. The Government of China will support the Zhaoxin Semiconductor company, which is jointly owned by VIA and which is seen as a new workhorse in the industry.

The company VIA continues to retain the x86 license, although many calendar pages have passed since it manufactured the last relevant processor. Zhaoxin enters the game because he is working on the development of a new x86 design for processors. No details have been revealed in this regard, but it meets the demands of the current market, which means that it will work at more than 2.0GHz, will have USB 3.1 Gen1 and Gen2 compatibility, will have SATA 6Gpbs ports, PCIe 3.0 ports and will support DDR4 memories.

That will be the basis, because it seems that later on it will launch a new processor, known as VIA KX-6000, for now, which will work at a frequency higher than 3.0GHz and that will be based on TSMC's 16nm FinFET +. The plans of the companies do not stop at that and is that in the longer term they have the VIA KX-7000 planned, which will already operate with DDR5 memories and will make use of the PCIe 4.0 interface.

We do not know which market these processors will be destined for, but it does not seem logical that they compete with the high-end of AMD and Intel, so it will seek to enter the entry range, compact equipment and possibly also enter the laptop market. They may also be developing something for servers and data centers, a market that moves a lot of money. We look forward to seeing what VIA offers in this new phase.

Source: Phoronix