VIA Technologies reveals plans for x86-64 CPUs to compete against AMD and Intel

VIA Technologies planning 2018 return to x86-compatible CPUs with China's Zhaoxin Semiconductor

Taiwan-based technology firm VIA Technologies - which holds a licence to produce x86-compatible CPUs as a result of its 1999 acquisition of Cyrix - has been somewhat tight-lipped about its plans for mainstream microprocessors.

Indeed, it has been almost four years since it showed off an updated version of its 2008 Isaiah x86 processor architecture.

Now, though, the company appears to be working on a new roadmap for a fresh line-up of x86 CPUs based on a behind-the-scenes partnership with China's Zhaoxin Semiconductor, a fab-less semiconductor company founded by the Shanghai Municipal Government, which it jointly owns with VIA.

They've now working on new updates to VIA's x86-compatible line of CPUs, the ZX-A, ZX-B, and ZX-C respectively. The firms have also just released ZX-D processors under the KX-5000 family name.

While the companies have retained almost total radio silence on these processors, a photo shared by German website PC Games Hardware provides an insight into VIA and Zhaoxin's plans.

The 64-bit KX-5000 (also known as 'Wudaokou') will come with four and eight cores. They will run up to a stately 2GHz in terms of clock cycles and, presumably, will also support x86-64.

According to tech hardware site Hexus, VIA and Zhaoxin are manufacturing the CPUs using TSMC's 28nm process. Hence, they are unlikely to trouble Intel or AMD just yet. They will, though offer DDR4 support for PCI-E 3.0, SATA 3 and USB 3.1.

There's not a great deal of information about the chips yet, but it's reported that Lenovo is consider using them in lower-end products.

VIA and Zhaoxin are expected to unveil the new products some time during 2018 and will presumably have hardware partners firmed up by then, too. They're expected to launch a new version of ‘Wudaokou', which will be called KX-6000 'Lujiazui'.

However, an updated version of the chip is planned that will use a 16nm TSMC manufacturing process and offer a clock speed of 3GHz - providing more of a challenge to AMD and Intel if the architecture stacks up in real-world testing and benchmarking.