Huawei unveils its first ARM processor

Designed to boost the development of computing in big data, distributed storage, and ARM-native application scenarios, the chipset is Huawei’s first step into the ARM industry.

"Huawei has continuously innovated in the computing domain in order to create customer value. We believe that, with the advent of the intelligent society, the computing market will see continuous growth in the future. Currently, the diversity of applications and data is driving heterogeneous computing requirements. Huawei has long partnered with Intel to make great achievements. Together we have contributed to the development of the ICT industry. Huawei and Intel will continue our long-term strategic partnerships and continue to innovate together," said William Xu, Director of the Board and Chief Strategy Marketing Officer of Huawei.

The industry's highest-performance ARM-based CPU

Using the cutting-edge 7nm process, the CPU was independently designed by Huawei based on ARMv8 architecture license. It significantly improves processor performance by optimizing branch prediction algorithms, increasing the number of OP units, and improving the memory subsystem architecture. At typical frequency, the Kunpeng 920 CPU scores over 930 in the SPECint Benchmarks test, which is 25% higher than the industry benchmark. At the same time, power efficiency is 30% better than that offered by industry counterparts. Kunpeng 920 provides much higher computing performance for data centers while slashing power consumption.

Huawei TaiShan, ARM-based server with the industry’s best performance

Huawei also released its TaiShan series servers powered by Kunpeng 920, including three models: one with a focus on storage, another on high density, and a third focused on balancing both requirements. The TaiShan servers are built for big data, distributed storage, and ARM-native application scenarios. The ARM architecture is best suited for these scenarios with advantages in many-core and performance per watt.

Building an open and collaborative ARM ecosystem founded on shared success

Huawei continuously promotes industry cooperation in terms of hardware, basic software, and applications. Huawei has been working with industry organizations such as Green Computing Consortium (GCC), Linaro, and Open Edge and HPC Initiative (OEHI) to build an open, collaborative industry ecosystem, alongside partners such as Hortonworks, Microsoft, Oracle, SAP, SUSE, Ubuntu, and China Standard Software.

"With Kirin 980, Huawei has taken smartphones to a new level of intelligence. With products and services (e.g., Huawei Cloud) designed based on Ascend 310, Huawei enables inclusive AI for industries," William Xu noted. "Today, with Kunpeng 920, we are entering an era of diversified computing embodied by multiple cores and heterogeneity. Huawei has invested patiently and intensively in computing innovation to continuously make breakthroughs. We will work with our customers and partners to build a fully connected, intelligent world."