Zhaoxin discrete GPU

[Kaotik]

Apparently Zhaoxin, known for their chinese "homebred" (read: licensed from VIA) x86 CPUs, is planning a discrete GPU.
Currently only known details include planned 70W TDP and 28nm TSMC process.
https://www.guru3d.com/news-story/a...ans-for-a-dedicated-graphics-card-series.html



With CPUs it was simple, they got the license and tech from VIA, but who's to blame on the GPU-side? VIA sold S3 Graphics to HTC ages ago, so that road should be limited to what they already have in their iGPUs which is ancient technology in every way, so scaling that up doesn't sound right.

 

[Deleted member 13524]

VIA sold S3 Graphics to HTC ages ago, so that road should be limited to what they already have in their iGPUs which is ancient technology in every way, so scaling that up doesn't sound right.

Well 28nm is close to 9 years old anyway...
S3's latest efforts were the 2008 Chrome 400/500 GPUs which were based on unified shaders. It doesn't say it supports DX12 or Vulkan so for all we know it could be an OpenGL 3.0 GPU based on the old S3 Chrome.
It could also be based on Vivante tech which seems to scale reasonably well, or it could be PowerVR since Imagination is now owned by a chinese equity fund.

Regardless, 70W on 28nm in 2021 means it's probably going to have a hard time matching a Renoir or Ice Lake iGPU.

 

[AlexV]

Apparently Zhaoxin, known for their chinese "homebred" (read: licensed from VIA) x86 CPUs, is planning a discrete GPU.
Currently only known details include planned 70W TDP and 28nm TSMC process.
https://www.guru3d.com/news-story/a...ans-for-a-dedicated-graphics-card-series.html

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With CPUs it was simple, they got the license and tech from VIA, but who's to blame on the GPU-side? VIA sold S3 Graphics to HTC ages ago, so that road should be limited to what they already have in their iGPUs which is ancient technology in every way, so scaling that up doesn't sound right.

VIA and HTC are not really independent entities, are they? IIRC it was more a case of moving assets / IP around to guard HTC against litigation.

 

[Deleted member 13524]

VIA and HTC are not really independent entities, are they?

IIRC their CEOs are (were?) husband and wife.

 

[Kaotik]

IIRC their CEOs are (were?) husband and wife.

Had to check into this, it turns out both VIA and HTC have been (co-)founded by Cher Wang, she's also "chairperson" in both.

 

[Deleted member 13524]

Had to check into this, it turns out both VIA and HTC have been (co-)founded by Cher Wang, she's also "chairperson" in both.

AFAIK she is still CEO of HTC and her husband is the CEO of VIA.

 

[Kaotik]

AFAIK she is still CEO of HTC and her husband is the CEO of VIA.

Yves Maitre took over CEO position at HTC last year, but you're right about her husband Chen Wen-ch'i being CEO of VIA

 

[Ailuros]

If that's any sort of indication https://gfxbench.com/device.jsp?ben...&D=VIA Alliance Elite2000 (development board) then current Manhattan3.0 results show performance which is 5 Apple Ax smartphone generations behind (Apple A8).

On a sidenote Vivante was acquired by VeriSilicon in 2015 and they've released a GC8000 with unknown performance characteristics ever since, but up to GC7000 it all used to look good only on paper.