Talk Of VIA Getting Back Into The x86 CPU Space With Zhaoxin

Making the news rounds again is word of Zhaoxin Semiconductor that is jointly owned by VIA working on modern and competitive x86 processors.

VIA still maintains an x86 license although they haven't produced any compelling CPU in many years. Months ago was the talk of this Zhaoxin company working on a new x86 CPU design and it's come up once again.

A Chinese slide acquired by Golem is reporting that their current platform supports USB 3.1 Gen1/Gen2, SATA 3.0, PCI Express 3.0, ~2.0GHz clock frequency, and DDR4 support.

Meanwhile their future work with the "KX-6000" is planning on a 3.0GHz+ clock speed and the CPU to be manufactured on a 16nm process. Further out is the planned KX-7000 with DDR5 and PCI Express 4.0.

More details in this forum thread. Do you have much faith in a third-party with an x86 license able to come up with a CPU in 2018 that can compete with AMD Ryzen and Intel Kabylake/Coffeelake? It will be interesting to see if they can actually deliver as well as how the Linux support would be. Feel free to discuss in the foruyms.