Huawei announced what it claims is the industry’s highest-performance ARM-based server CPU and a new line of servers designed to provide higher computing power for data centres while reducing energy consumption more than 30 per cent.

The company said the Kunpeng 920 chipset, with 64 cores running at a frequency of 2.6GHz, was designed by Huawei based on an ARMv8 architecture licence and manufactured using the latest 7nm process.

William Xu, chief strategy marketing officer at Huawei (pictured), said during a press event the new CPU and servers will be primarily used in big data, distributed storage and ARM-native applications.

The Kunpeng 920’s performance is 25 per cent higher than industry benchmark. In terms of energy efficiency, for every 10,000 ARM-servers deployed more than 10 million kWh of electricity can be saved every year.

Huawei’s TaiShan series of servers powered by the new CPU comprises three models: one with a focus on storage; another on high-density; and a third balancing the two requirements.

Open collaboration
Xu said Huawei is working with industry players to advance the ARM industry “to foster an open, collaborative and win-win ecosystem, taking computing performance to new heights”.

Allen Wu, CEO of ARM China, said: “Computing is increasingly defining and changing our world. To drive innovation forward and make it affordable, deployable and accessible to every consumer, we need cooperation, innovation and more importantly a global ecosystem. ARM’s work with Huawei proves that such an open ecosystem accelerates innovation and brings better services and devices to consumers all over the world.”

Wu said ARM is committed to increasing its investment in technology development in the data centre space.

Huawei’s server business shipped 990,000 units in 2018, representing 12-times growth since 2012.

Ai Wei, a Huawei fellow working on chipsets and hardware, said it is confident in the future of its server business and expects the percentage of overseas sales will continue to rise.

He insisted its chipset subsidiary HiSilicon won’t ever be a standalone company.