Ever closer to competing with AMD and Intel, Chinese processor designers have once again scored points, although we'll have to judge them on their own merits.
The rise of Chinese research and development offices has not been a pipe dream for several years now, but Zhaoxin seems to have taken another step towards the Chinese dream of dispensing with US-developed technologies altogether. We're not there yet, but after Loongson's successive announcements last year, it's Zhaoxin's turn to showcase the KH-5000, a chip aimed at the server market.
Last year, Loongson had instead attacked the client segment with its 3A6000 and, even more so, 3B6600 chips, which were intended to compete with 13th-generation Intel processors. Loogson's most official announcement was that it was at least two generations behind Intel, and that its sole ambition was to compete with the American company's entry/mid-range: the 3B6600 was to be on a par with a 13th-generation Core i5. Even though we're still a long way from the performance of the Core i7 and Core i9, China's progress is impressive.
On paper, the KH-5000 is a very promising chip © Zhaoxin
Today, Zhaoxin is pushing the envelope even further, this time turning its attention to servers with the KH-5000, which integrates a whopping 96 cores via a chiplet architecture that allows for greater configuration modulation. The KH-5000 is also equipped with 384 MB of cache memory, and Zhaoxin makes no secret of its ambitions, hammering home the progress made over the current KH-4000: up to 96 cores (32 on the KH-4000), 30% higher IPC, 3 GHz maximum frequency (2.5 GHz on the KH-4000), 384 MB cache (64 MB on the KH-4000), 12 channels of DDR5 RAM (8 channels of DDR4 on the KH-4000) and 128 PCI Express Gen 5 lines (128 PCIe Gen 4 lines on the KH-4000).
On paper, Zhaoxin's chip has little to envy of today's best solutions, notably AMD's most powerful Threadrippers. But let's not forget that no independent journalist has yet been able to get his hands on this chip, which was presented at the Shanghai World Expo 2025. There is sometimes a gulf between the declaration of intent and the reality on the ground, but the forced march led by China seems to be bearing fruit.
