Now that AMD and Intel are not officially selling their processors in Russia, the country has to look for a replacement for them, so as not to be in the Stone Age. This week, Dannie, a manufacturer of maternal boards with offices in Russia, China, Lithuania and Turkey, introduced a new motherboard based on the Zhaoxin system-on-chip. Although this chip can hardly compete with the modern AMD and Intel processors, it is compatible with the vast majority of applications and OS, therefore it can really replace these processors.

The Dannie MBX-Z60A Micro-Atx motherboard is equipped with an eight-core KAIXIAN KX-6640MA system on the Zhaoxin crystal with Lujiazui microarchitecture, 4 MB of the L2 cache and a frequency of 2.10–2.70 GHz. In addition, the SOC has a built-in graphic processor, 16 PCIe 3.0 lines, a built-in SATA controller, a built-in USB 3.0 controller and other important input and output ports. Since the chip is designed for desktop computers and laptops, its maximum calculated thermal power does not exceed 25 watts.

As for the technical characteristics of the MBX-Z60A motherboard, it has two DDR4 memory slots and two PCIe X16 slots for expansion boards, one M.2-2280 slot for solid-state drives, M.2-2230 slot for Wi-Fi. -Adapterers FI/Bluetooth and three SATA ports, reports Habr. The platform has USB ports, display outputs (DisplayPort, HDMI and VGA/D-SUB), GBE connector, 3.5 mm audit/output and even PS/2 ports.

From the point of view of KAIXIAN KX-6640MA performance, the KAIXIAN KX-U6780A processor, which is higher in the stack of products. Nevertheless, the younger version is probably also cheaper, which is important for many customers, especially for those who launch only office applications and in any case do not need serious performance.

One of the advantages of the processors developed by Zhaoxin, the joint venture of Via Technologies and the Shanghai government, compared to other processors developed in China, is that they have an architecture of set of X86 instructions. Therefore, they are compatible with dozens of operating systems (including Windows) and tens of thousands of applications. As a result, although the processors developed by Zhaoxin are noticeably slower than the AMD and Intel processors, they are still considered an alternative due to compatibility.

In fact, in the last quarters we observed the growing distribution of Zhaoxin processors with international brands against the background of an inexpensive SOC and Intel shortage. Qnap introduced NAS based on the Zhaoxin processor about a year ago. Then Lenovo chose one of these chips for its thin and lightweight machine, focused on the Chinese market and intended for state and state -controlled companies that need to use software intended exclusively for China.

Will the Dannie MBX-Z60A motherboard rely on the eight-core SOC KAIXIAN KX-6640MA from Zhaoxin to help Russia reduce the consequences of international sanctions and lack of AMD and Intel processors? For some applications, probably yes. Dannie can produce “tens of thousands of maternal boards per month”, which should be enough for some time to meet the demand from various state institutions. For Zhaoxin, additional sales are an advantage. But for any workloads demanding performance, SOC Zhaoxin will not be able to replace AMD and Intel processors.

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