Mysterious Huawei CPU test results appear online and you’re in for a shock. If true, the improvements mean Huawei isn’t far behind AMD Epyc or Intel Xeon
Benchmark results for Huawei’s HiSilicon Taishan V120 server CPU have unexpectedly surfaced online, showing performance to be surprisingly comparable to AMD’s Zen 3 cores from four years ago.
The results can be found on Geekbench here And heresuggest that Huawei’s chip technology may not be far behind leading CPU manufacturers AMD and Intel.
If Tom’s hardware According to reports, the Taishan V120 core, from Huawei’s HiSilicon subsidiary, was first spotted in Huawei’s Kirin 9000s smartphone chip. The new Geekbench 6 results, uploaded a few days ago, indicate that the Taishan V120 core is likely manufactured on the second-generation 7nm node, as is the case with the Kirin 9000s chips.
Single core benchmarking
However, the exact CPU model tested remains a mystery, with the only clue being “Huawei Cloud OpenStack Nova” on the benchmark pages. This suggests it could be a Kunpeng server CPU, possibly the Kunpeng 930, given its high single-core performance.
The Kunpeng 930 has been relatively elusive since its announcement in 2019. A 2021 report speculated on a launch on TSMC’s 5nm that year, while the Kunpeng 950 would follow in 2023 on TSMC’s 3nm node. However, these plans were likely abandoned due to Huawei’s production ban at TSMC.
The benchmarks were run on a single core, implying that the chip may have been tested on a virtual machine or similar configuration. Therefore, the multi-core score may not accurately reflect the overall performance of the chip.
In the single-core score benchmark, the Taishan V120 CPU scored 1,527, slightly behind AMD’s Epyc 7413 with 1,538 and Intel’s Xeon E-2136 with 1,553. It significantly outperformed the Epyc 9554, which scored 1,957, and the Xeon w9-3495X, which led the pack with a score of 2,087.
If Tom’s hardware points out that without data on multi-threaded performance, power consumption and efficiency, it is difficult to measure the competitiveness of Taishan V120 cores. Regardless of speed, high power consumption can deter potential users due to electricity costs.