After 2018, the uncertainty of the global chip industry chain has increased, and "chip shortage" has become a common dilemma faced by the world. my country has also regarded the development of the semiconductor industry as a basic work of the digital economy. Especially under the trend of decoupling between China and the United States, the domestic emphasis on underlying technologies such as chips has increased.
However, the design of high-end processors is complex and difficult, and it is not easy to figure out, understand and innovate from scratch. In order to catch up with the foreign mainstream as soon as possible, the six major manufacturers of Loongson, Shenwei, Kunpeng, Phytium, Haiguang, and Zhaoxin have chosen different technology paths to open up their own roads that are also breakthroughs in China's CPU industry.
Haiguang innovates based on x86 digestion and absorption. Due to the advantages of x86 architecture cross-licensing, manufacturers in this camp have a large space for independent iterations and no worries. Manufacturers such as Haiguang and Zhaoxin adopt the route of introduction first and then innovation similar to the high-speed rail model, and conduct independent research and development and design based on the authorization of advanced architecture and micro-architecture.
Taking Haiguang as an example, it has independently iterated several generations of products on the basis of ZEN1 authorization for many years. Now the performance of the latest Haiguang No. 3 processor is close to ZEN3, but its single-core and multi-core performance improvement methods have been compared with AMD’s only single-core processor. Nuclear performance is done in a completely different way. Previously, Haiguang also stated that it has completed the digestion and absorption of x86 technology, and the product is the best proof.
With a development history of more than 30 years, x86 has high performance, strong compatibility, and a rich software and hardware ecosystem. It has always been the absolute leader in the PC and server market. According to statistics, x86 will account for 97.7% of the domestic server market in 2021. For a long period of time in the future, x86 servers will continue to maintain their mainstream status, bringing broad development space for manufacturers such as Haiguang and Zhaoxin.
Although there are opportunities and difficulties in the process of development, the domestic chip "six gentlemen" have always been consistent with the outside world, working hard to create independent and controllable domestic chips and enhance the international competitiveness of China's chip industry. Now that the domestic CPU has taken the first step to break through, we might as well look forward to the future.