When you think about processors the first name that comes to your mind is probably Intel. They hold over 70% market share in x86 processors (basically those in desktops and laptops). The cheapest Intel CPU on Amazon costs 0.9€ and the most expensive one costs 12100€. And between those two you can find Intel offers for every budget.
Their main competitor is AMD. You probab!y also heard about them. They focus on price/performance ratio and recently started to gain the market share back thanks to very successful Ryzen series processors. They not only offered reasonable performance on the budget, but also challenged Intel at high end desktops and server markets. AMD is also responsible for processors in Xbox and Playstation consoles.
You probably also heard about Nvidia. They are known for their graphics cards, but they also made a few processors here and there. Examples would include Acer CB5-311 or HP Chromebook 14 K1. The processor in Nintendo Switch is also from Nvidia.
But what if I told you that those are not the only players in the CPU market? Zhaoxin is a joint venture, partially owned by the Chinese government. And they have been an active player on the market since 2014, when they released their first processor ZX-A. It was rather unimpressive piece of hardware, outdated by about 10 years compared even to the cheapest products of the competitors. What made matters worse, apart from miserable performance it lacked support for the most basic communication standards such as USB or SATA.
However despite humble beginnings, they were advancing their technology very rapidly. Just few months later in 2015 ZX-C was released. And it was first non-Intel and non-AMD processor to be featured in Lenovo all-in-one PCs. Not without a reason. The technological process was then outdated only by a few years, performance allowed for basic office tasks and a reasonable set of communication standards was in place.
In 2016 and 2017 Zhaoxin kept improving the technological process and today (25.09.2018) they made a very bold claim. Their upcoming Zhaoxin KaiXiaon KX-6000 processor is supposed to be performing head to head with Intel's 7th generation Intel Core i5 CPUs. It will also support all the latest and greatest instruction sets (allowing for example video editing software to function properly), supporting all the latest communication standards such as USB 3.1 gen 2 with support for USB C. They will also function with DDR4 RAM.
It does sound too good to be true. But if you went back in time to 2014 and told someone that there will be Chinese smartphone brand called Xiaomi, they will be 3rd biggest smartphone manufacturer in the world, and they will offer performance of an iPhone for 1/5th of the price, probably no one would believe you. Yet here we are.
Perhaps the story will be similar with Zhaoxin. Lenovo already promised that their first desktops Lenovo M6200 with Zhaoxin KaiXiaon KX-6000 processors will be available by the end of 2018. We will have to wait and see.