Domestic Chinese CPUs: Overview of Six Major Vendors, Architectures, and Ecosystem Development

The piece continues a series on domestic hardware by focusing on Chinese CPU manufacturers, identifying six mainstream vendors—Loongson, Feiteng, Kunpeng, HaiGuang (Hygon), ShenWei, and Zhaoxin—and explaining that CPU instruction sets fall into CISC (x86) and RISC (ARM, MIPS, etc.).

Loongson, originating from the Chinese Academy of Sciences, has progressed through three generations (3A/3B series) targeting desktop, server, industrial, and embedded markets, with performance improving from SPEC scores of 2‑3 in early models to 20‑30 in the latest 5000 series, and plans for 12 nm 3A5000 and 3C5000 chips.

Feiteng, backed by the China Electronics Corporation, transitioned from early SPARC‑based designs to ARM‑based processors (FT‑1500A, FT‑2000+, FT‑2000/4), achieving up to 5.5× performance gains in servers and 2× power‑efficiency improvements, and demonstrating strong results in big‑data workloads such as Spark and Kafka.

Kunpeng, Huawei’s ARM‑v8 based line, focuses on server CPUs (up to 64 cores) with 7 nm 920 series delivering higher performance and lower power than Intel Skylake, and is complemented by AI accelerators (Ascend 310/910) and the Atlas platform for cloud and edge AI.

HaiGuang (Hygon) obtained an x86 license from AMD, enabling it to produce x86‑compatible chips and, despite past export‑control setbacks, it is rebuilding its supply chain and aiming for increased market share.

The article also highlights ecosystem efforts: extensive Linux support, contributions to OpenJDK, virtualization (KVM, Docker, Kubernetes), and partnerships with major cloud providers, illustrating a growing domestic hardware stack that spans servers, desktops, cloud, and AI applications.