Centaur Tech Announces Eight-Core x86 SoC With AI Coprocessor

VIA-owned Centaur Technology has finally announced their newest project past the decade old VIA Nano... Centaur Tech is rolling out an eight-core x86 SoC that features an integrated AI coprocessor.

The new Centaur Technology SoC features eight "new server-class x86 CPU cores" with an AI coprocessor reported to offer 20 TOPS for inference workloads. With combining the AI coprocessor onto the SoC, Centaur reports "substantial cost and power" compared to systems with dedicated accelerators. But details are still light on the specs as well as pricing.

Centaur issued a press release on Monday talking up their AI performance.

The Centaur Technology website reports this new x86 core to feature AVX-512 capabilities and other new instructions. The AI coprocessor is said to be a clean-sheet design. The SoC is fabbed on TSMC 16nm and offers 44 PCIe lanes and quad-channel DDR4-3200 support. The SoC currently is running at 2.5GHz.

Details are still very light but they are expected to release more information in the days ahead.

If/when this SoC hits retail channels, it should be well supported on Linux considering most AI inference happening there. But beyond that, as we've reported in recent kernel cycles, Centaur has been ramping up their Linux kernel support as well as for Zhaoxin CPUs that is the Chinese VIA joint venture.