I Was Never Meant to Have This Prototype CPU

HR needs you to tell the difference

between these two chips nothing how

about now what is a centaur CPU I mean

it certainly isn't the kind of thing

you'd find on new eggs or how'd we get

our hands on one I can't tell you that

but what I can tell you is that it is a

prototype x86 CPU that fits into an

Intel socket on this motherboard that

doesn't work with an Intel CPU it's not

made by Intel or AMD for that matter and

while it doesn't have much in common

physically with a mythical Beast it very

much is one just like our beastly

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[Music]

we're going to get to who Centaur is in

a moment but first what is up with this

motherboard it's got an Intel socket LGA

2011 V3 to be exact but we were told by

our anonymous source that you should not

put an Intel CPU in it so it's

physically the same but electrically

completely incompatible kind of like

when you see a USB port that's labeled

rs232 they've just reused the housing

and the pins in order to save time and

cost but all the signal in is completely

different I have never seen that done

with a CPU socket though and the

motherboard it soldered to is a trip

there's normal stuff you got what

appears to be a quad Channel memory

configuration just like we saw on the

Intel CPUs that used this socket

standard PC power inputs PCI Express

expansion slots couple m.2 storage slots

those were showing up on Intel around

this time as well but as we dig deeper

it is absolutely covered in jumpers and

dip switches and that is an indication

that this is a development platform

board so with these which I've been

instructed not to touch you can actually

change the characteristics of either the

CPU itself or the behavior of the

motherboard depending on what you're

trying to test this was a weird one for

me too it's actually got one of those

gamery segmented audio sub pcbs with a

CD audio connector okay now hold on a

second we need to take a closer look at

this moving along the bottom we've got a

USBC Port not a header an actual Port so

that probably connects either to some

kind of Hardware interface or another PC

for Diagnostic and development purposes

and then back to the front I've been

told that I should take the heat sink

off of here guess we'll put you back

later and have a look at this guy zx200

what are you interesting

USB SATA networking and PCI Express

switching that's about it it and what

that means is that this CPU is a highly

integrated s so without the platform

controller Hub that you would find on an

Intel motherboard of this generation so

it's more like a thread ripper in our

search for identifying marks we found

some cool stuff there's a bunch of probe

points on this board which are Super

useful for developers when they're

trying to figure out what's going on

with power delivery or on the various

buses and we found this little label

ch001 DC next to the Centaur Tech

technology logo and maybe more

importantly this sticker the QR code

doesn't go anywhere but Kodiak assembly

is a company that provides PCB assembly

and other fabrication services and this

date has this board manufactured in

September of 2019 that is not that long

ago most PCS these days and really for

almost the last 25 years use CPUs from

AMD and Intel a duopoly that they

maintain by refusing to license the x86

instruction set to any other part

but there is another sentaur technology

was founded in 1995 as a subsidiary of

IDT by former IBM fellow Glenn Henry to

do what IBM didn't do and the concept

was simple a small team building a low

complexity lowcost energy efficient

desktop CPU for the then new sub $1,000

PC market this became the win chip and

it was modestly successful mostly in

Market markets outside of the US

offering adequate performance at half of

the size of a contemporary Pentium class

CPU unfortunately Intel took notice and

did what Intel did best in the 9s and

absolutely crushed them centaur was

ultimately acquired then alongside cyrix

by via Technologies in

1999 their next CPU the cyx 3 found

little Commercial Success on the desktop

but in embedded systems it was so

popular that many ITX was developed

specifically to show off its successor

the C3 Now intel who had already sued

via over chipset patents in the 90s sued

via again in 2001 for x86 patent

infringement and Via counter sued for

the infringement of centaur's patents

ultimately they both settled in 2003

with a 10-year cross- licensing

agreement that stipulated that via /

Centaur could continue creating x86

designs as long as they were not in any

way compatible with Intel chipsets a fun

bit of trivia here is via used to make

motherboard chipsets and the settlement

gave them until 2017 to stop doing that

for Intel chips so that explains how

Centaur got away with building an x86

CPU but it doesn't explain why they

built it and to find that out we've got

to take a closer look at what it is

starting with what it's not it's not a

CPU it's an S so code named Centaur

halls or cha that's why our motherboard

has no chipset on it it's all on the

chip itself it's got up to eight cores

clocked it up to 2.5 GHz though 2.0 is

stock on our chip and it supports AVX

512 kind of like AMD has done on their

most recent Zen 4 architecture in such a

way that it doesn't require the chip to

be downclocked like intels did at the

time the biggest piece though is an

onboard AI accelerator code named encor

it added essentially no cost but it

could access the cpu's level three cache

and system memory extremely quickly it

was meant to be the killer app for this

platform with an extremely high-speed

bidirectional 160 gab pers second

connection to the CPU itself that's more

bandwidth than a pcie Gen 6 by6 slot

unfortunately while their idea for a

lowcost AI accelerated platform was

pretty well timed the actual execution

well not so much we'll get into that a

little bit later first did I tell you

this thing works let's fire it

[Music]

up even the fact they got as far as

silicon power on means they were deep

into development of this platform like

real work was done and that is

mindblowing the BIOS build date is

2021 guys that is 2 and 1/2 years ago

they were still developing for this

thing and just 2 months before Intel

purchased centaur's engineering staff

from via man I feel like a kid who just

got dropped off at the playground what

do I go on first the monkey bars or the

marryg go round now because this is a

debug board there's a lot of items that

go nowhere and do nothing but there's

some really cool stuff in here oh did it

just turn off it sure did it did um

uh what I mean what all is there for us

to play with here CPU configuration

there's our 2 GHz clock speed oh

nonfused CPU ah fuses apparently there's

a whole bunch of fuses that we can blow

in here and if you're not familiar fuses

can lock functionality like uh

instruction sets or even uh CPU cache

and that's one of the ways that we get a

lower-end chip from a higher end chip so

theoretically they could put a top speec

chip in a board like this one blow up

the parts they don't need and end up

with any chip from the lineup the

concluder now hold on a sec if I'm

understanding this correctly it changes

the CPU ID to be whatever it is that I

tell it to be Intel probably wouldn't

like this for AVX

512 that would have been really useful

for this kind of application I wonder if

this thing's a PlayStation 3 emulation

monster demo board is just onboard land

enable disable I guess they hadn't put

it in the proper category yet this is

surprisingly robust and finished looking

PCI Gen 2 only though this was toward

the very end of pcie gen 2's life cycle

this is really important setting Dam

timings because oh my God those default

timings I can see why you had to put it

all in manually for now we're going to

leave all of this alone including the

ever so tempting the concluder button

and let Windows see the real deal while

we wait for it to boot by the way you

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grab it while you can hey look at that

we're in Windows the first thing you'll

probably notice is we're running Windows

10 that's cuz there's no firmware TPM

and no module that we were able able to

easily find for the header that's on the

board so Windows 10 then uh we could try

to bypass the lock for Windows 11 but

I've been told realistically the

system's slow enough on 10 steam 100%

the CPU easily when downloading at I

mean let's do a quick speed test there

it is 2 GHz at super super slow timings

we'll get these tweaked we'll get these

tweaked before we do any oh my

God sorry I was about to say performance

testing but I guess I mean lack of

performance testing 350

megabit that is not fast this is cool

though it knows that it's Centaur

technology even has the right code name

it is often amazing to me how much

information something like a CPU Z is

able to pull off of Hardware that in the

wild doesn't exist in the mainboard tab

we see the chipset is made by Jin that's

name that's going to come up later also

PCI Express 3.0 now wait a second it

said pcie Gen 2 in the Bios but the bus

spec say gen 3 here honestly I would

trust CPU Z over that janky bios and gen

3 makes way more sense for that time

period because we were on the cusp of

Gen 4 by that point enough fooling

around for now though Emily's going to

get this thing dialed in and we're going

to do some performance testing and

sometime later we're going to have an

exclusive over at lm. g/f flat plane of

Emily going through everything that was

changed we've got there we go that's

more like it and I can drag a window

around now yes without it lagging behind

me I guess the first thing I want to do

is run C bench R20 look at this I'm on

the internet on a centaur loads the way

you'd expect I mean it's x86

right there's some differences but but

but mostly that is not

fast 3 hours later almost there

1660 to put that in context the ryzen 7

1700x which was not even the top

performing ship at the time came out 7

years ago and is more than double that

score I'm afraid to see what's going to

happen in gaming I'm afraid to see what

a single core run would look like how

many points was

that no no points I bet we can gain

though we'll just play older games

lighter games play Dave the diver

oh my goodness and this isn't even

because it has a mechanical hard drive

in it this is just how fast it

is I mean In fairness it does work our

next game is Doug hug which was created

as a prank I guess to generate fake

outrage around the time of the launch of

Duke Nukem Forever and uh they said they

would do it 13 years ago and actually

followed through here it is in 2024 it's

time to generate some some positivity

cuz games are just too negative

this there are sharks in the sky Let's

help this granny across the street shall

we here we go mimo let's go let's go

let's go let's go let's go come on pick

up the pace

lady yeah okay she'll make it I can't

stop frown I think it's some kind of

turn that frown upside down that's not

the same voice actor as Duke Nukem is it

it is that is John St John oh now is the

perfect opportunity to find out if that

USBC Port is in fact a functioning USBC

Port can I plug a controller into it yes

now that doesn't mean that it isn't for

Diagnostics it very likely is but it

also just happens to be a USBC Port it's

a super cool game it's a Rog light

hockey game you go on a campaign to

restore hockey to its former glory uh

there's all kinds of cool upgrades like

you can throw your stick at opponent you

can fart and push them away so they

can't body check you pretty fun and with

the latest beta supports five player

local multiplayer so you can have every

player on your team be human controlled

just don't lose a game or your

campaign's over hey look at this in the

lightest possible games we can get 150

frames per second no problem

buddy here we go here we go here we go

let's go come

on you know what it feels pretty laggy

though I'm not not going to lie it does

not feel like 150 frames per second the

point is other than being slow there's

nothing that really sets this thing

apart from any other computer that I've

used it works try C bench 2024 no

avx2 I know where we're going with this

I'm going to pretend to be a different

CPU now right that is where the

concluder comes in as far as we can tell

some applications instead of checking

the instruction set support are just

checking a list of I don't know CPU

models that are known to support the

instruction set and if you don't happen

to have it they're just spitting out an

error and cinebench 24 would be one of

them cuz according to CPU Z the CPU does

in fact support avx2 but I guess we're

about to find out if we artificially

change the reporting ID to Skylake X

will it run I mean probably won't run

but it might walk oh that's hilarious oh

Intel would would not be happy about

this it even shows an Intel logo it even

misreports does it even misreport the

socket that's super weird oh my God this

cor speed okay it has no idea what's

going on why does it say PCI E Gen 4 now

there's no way that's right hold on a

second what is our GPU reporting oh this

is fascinating no it's gen 3 wait but it

report it reports a bus interface of Gen

4 is it Gen 4 not my

knowledge yes no no what and of course C

bench 2024 totally launches in an effort

to get the end core neural processor

working we fired up Linux as well but we

had even more problems in Linux than we

did in Windows it takes forever to boot

the desktop is even laggier and our pcie

devices seem to run at incorrect speeds

also no public driver seems to exist for

the encor so we weren't able to test it

and the fonics test Suite takes forever

just to download let alone to run with

how customizable Linux is I think this

is one of if not the first time that

we've had some weird esoteric piece of

Hardware that works less completely or

less reliably on Linux than it does on

Windows but hey even Champions have bad

days all of which is interesting but

doesn't answer our big questions how did

this come to be and why Why didn't it

get over the Finish Line in order to

answer that we've got to do a little bit

of a history lesson the final

commercially released design from

centaur was the Via Nano X2 code name

Isaiah that came out back in 2011 and

was a dual core chip meant for Pico ITX

systems and meant to compete with Intel

atom now in the 2010s pretty much

everyone Intel included saw the writing

on the wall for embedded x86 not to

mention that via's patent cross license

deal with Intel with which included the

x86 license was only guaranteed until

2013 so that same year then via started

the xiaan joint venture with the

Shanghai municipal government where s

so's would be developed for the Chinese

market where uh pesky things like IP

licensing deals don't matter quite as

much but in spite of their obvious

attempts to safeguard their future by

investing in China they weren't out of

the global market just yet in 2014

rumors circulated of a Poss Centaur x86

SL arm hybrid project but nothing came

of it and then in 2019 they announced

the cha the S so that we're looking at

today the idea was that it would be

positioned against Intel's Zeon CPUs at

an estimated price of just $500 to

$1,000 which sounds like a pretty

compelling story but the headwinds were

many and they were Mighty in 2019 alone

Intel's lowcost Cascade Lake launched

Intel's high-end ice Lake SB was due to

launch and amd's epic Ram launched with

Incredible core counts that absolutely

dwarfed what Centaur Halls was expected

to deliver in the second half of 2020

not only that but gpus and AI

accelerator cards had already taken over

the task of machine learning from the

CPU and the performance was not even

close don't believe me ask Jensen hang's

accountant nvidia's Tesla T4 which was a

downclocked RTX 2070 super was 2 $2,000

in 2019 which is a lot more than one of

these but absolutely Stomps all over the

end course performance even with an

older four core Skylake CPU that cost

only

$213 so generously if we assume that

Centaur Halls launched at $500 that Zeon

plus T4 combo is 4 and half times the

price for four to five times the

performance which actually sounds pretty

reasonable until you consider that going

the other route you'd get a platform

from a company that's launched more than

one commercial chip in the past 8 years

you could use Cuda so you have broader

compatibility and you can throw consumer

gpus in these things for a lower price

too so yeah they had a good idea for

2017 but by 2019 the industry was just

moving too fast for it to make any sense

and by 2021 much of centaur's

engineering was sold over to Intel

leaving via with mainly just Cent

intellectual property which kind of

makes you wonder if intel had a hand in

Centaur Halls cancellation Centaur Halls

was as far as we know the final s so

designed in-house by Centaur and much of

its DNA is actually shared with the Xian

chips like the one that we looked at

some time ago which makes it kind of a

missing link between where xia Shin is

today and the Isaiah based via Nano and

unfortunately that's all it is a missing

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down below if you guys enjoyed this

video why not check out the one where we

looked at one of those xiaosen CPUs at

the time we were looking at it going how

did these guys get an x86 license and

well they kind of didn't I guess