Huawei Works With Arm, Not Intel, on New CPU

Huawei today announced a new CPU, called Kunpeng 920, based on Arm architecture. The new 64-core CPU along with Huawei’s new TaiShan server is designed to boost the development of computing in big data, distributed storage, and Arm-native applications.William Xu, director of the board and chief strategy marketing officer of Huawei, noted that Huawei had worked extensively with Intel. But he said a diversity of applications and data is driving varied computing requirements. “Huawei has long partnered with Intel to make great achievements,” said Xu in a statement. “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.”Xu also indicated that Huawei would work with global partners to drive the development of the Arm ecosystem and “embrace a diversified computing era.”As far as Huawei’s relationship with Arm, an Arm spokesperson said in an email to SDxCentral, “Huawei is a long-term partner of Arm. They have a great track record in mobile silicon and deployed their first server silicon with Cortex-A57 in 2015/2016.”Huawei independently designed the Kunpeng 920 Arm-based server CPU using the 7nm process. The company says it significantly improves processor performance, and its power efficiency is 30 percent better than that offered by industry counterparts.Huawei today 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. Huawei will use the TaiShan servers with the Arm-based CPUs in its own Huawei Cloud infrastructure.