Zhaoxin Preparing Linux Kernel Support For 7-Series Centaur CPUs

Chinese company Zhaoxin that continues working on x86_64 CPUs based on VIA Centaur Technology is working on supporting their "7" family processors with the Linux kernel.

Since earlier this year we started seeing some Zhaoxin 7-Series patches while a new set was sent out this week.

These patches for the "7" family is for the ZX-F / KX-7000 hardware. This family of processors will reportedly launch formally in 2021 and be manufactured on a 7nm process and support not only PCI Express 4.0 but also offer DDR5 memory support and other advancements compared to the ZX-E / KX-6000 family.

The patches sent out on Tuesday update some of the core Centaur kernel code so the new 7 series processors take largely the existing code paths as the existing Family 6 (KX-6000 series) processors. This should provide for proper CPU initialization support once these patches are merged to mainline, which could happen as soon as Linux 5.10 later this year given how trivial the patches are. The patches don't reveal any new details on what to expect out of these next-gen Zhaoxin / Centaur processors.