Not the same thing by any means - they don't indicate something is wrong with kernel or hardware.

The zombie process state is a normal transient state for all exiting processes where the only remaining function of the process is as a container for the exiting process's id and exit status; they go away once the parent process calls some flavor of the "wait" system call to collect the exit status. A pileup of zombies indicates a userspace bug: a negligent parent process that isn't collecting the exit status in a timely manner.

Additionally, there are a few more process accounting things, rusage, that zombie processes hold until reaped. See wait3(2), wait4(2) and getrusage(2).