Shenwei, Loongson, Haiguang and other six major domestic chip prospects analysis, who has the power to carry it?
Chips are the core of the underlying hardware infrastructure and the heart of smart devices. People are increasingly aware of the importance of chips for the development of various industries, and they have also paid more attention to domestic chip manufacturers.
After years of development, there are currently more than 140,000 chip-related companies in my country. Among them, Shenwei, Loongson, Haiguang, Zhaoxin, Kunpeng, and Phytium are the backbone representatives and jointly lead the progress of the domestic chip industry.
Which of the six major manufacturers has a broader commercial application prospect, and who has a more sustainable future? In fact, we can see some clues from now on.
Shenwei: the most important weapon of the country, special operations
Shenwei chip adopts the Alpha architecture, and later developed the SW-64-bit instruction set by itself, which is the highest degree of autonomy among the six major manufacturers, and there are no potential licensing disputes. It is mainly used in military aerospace and other places that require the most autonomy. In the field of low-level applications and supercomputing as the main direction, performance and reliability can be seen.
At present, Shenwei chips focus on the party and government and special fields, and the momentum is good. If you want to achieve commercial development in the future, you need to work more on ecology.
Loongson: Going forward bravely, with a bright future
Loongson has also achieved a high degree of autonomy. It used the MIPS architecture before, and later expanded the LoongArch instruction set based on this to achieve compatibility with the former. The product series is rich, and it has a strong momentum in the party and government market.
However, Loongson's short board is basically the same as Shenwei. To be compatible with mainstream x86 applications, LoongArch needs to be recompiled, which will cause a large performance loss. Although the ecology still needs to be supplemented, it has been gradually improved, and the future can be expected.
Haiguang: Carry forward the past and open up the future, the future can be expected
Haiguang has obtained the permanent authorization of the ZEN1 architecture and x86 instruction set from AMD, and the company has made great efforts in research and development. Three generations of products have been independently developed, each generation is stronger than the previous generation, and has a rich application ecology. From the perspective of iteration speed and product performance, Haiguang should have completed the digestion and absorption of x86 technology and mastered the core micro-architecture iteration technology, and continuous iteration is not a problem.
Today, the x86 architecture accounts for as high as 97.5% of the overall server market, and Haiguang has a very broad prospect. Although there is still a little gap with the top international products in terms of performance, it is believed that it will catch up quickly in the next few years.
Zhaoxin: The road ahead is long, with obstacles and long roads
Zhaoxin belongs to the X86 camp, which has cross-licensing from AMD and Intel. It has a flexible model and a large space for iteration. It also has CPU+GPU+motherboard chipset technology, which has been widely used in the Shanghai area.
However, because Zhaoxin only had kernel-level authorization in the early days, and later obtained the phased authorization of x86 technology through the acquisition of VIA, the R&D iteration progress is relatively slow. The performance of the current flagship product is about the same as that of AMD bulldozer architecture products a few years ago, which is different from the mainstream generation. Obviously, there is still a long way to go to achieve a performance leap.
Kunpeng: Wanli Pengcheng, relying on the wind and strength
ARM has grown rapidly in recent years, and Kunpeng has grown rapidly. Based on Huawei's rich product line and ecological layout, it has made good achievements in the commercial market.
However, the advantage of the ARM architecture lies in its excellent energy consumption ratio and multi-core performance, while the single-core performance is not outstanding. Moreover, due to authorization issues, Kunpeng can only use ARM v8. The most advanced v9 is stuck and cannot be obtained, and it cannot be iterated to v9 through self-development, otherwise it will face the risk of infringement. So its performance stops here, which is a big pity.
Feiteng: soaring and solid, with hidden worries
Phytium also belongs to the ARM architecture. Although the product line is relatively rich, the product started late and its performance is relatively weak, which limits its development.
At the same time, Phytium and Kunpeng are both brothers and sisters, and the issue of ARM architecture iteration authorization is also a hidden worry. If the status quo of "discontinued supply" cannot be changed, and a new independent instruction set cannot be developed again, I am afraid that Feiteng's prospects are not optimistic.
In summary, the rise of domestic chips is a long way to go. If we can maintain an attitude of seeking up and down, I believe that these manufacturers will have a better future.