- AMD Zen 1 technology gave Hygon one step ahead, but the catch -up is difficult
- The fusion of Sugon and Hygon aims Intel and AMD, but the proof of performance remains elusive
- With the SMT4 potential, Hygon Eyes Elite Territory in the fastest CPU race
A major consolidation is underway in the Chinese semiconductor industry after two key players, Hygon and Sugon, announced their merger.
The agreement represents an effort to strengthen China’s capacities in high performance IT, potentially posing a serious challenge for American giants Intel, AMD and NVIDIA.
Although the merger appears great on paper, its world impact remains uncertain due to technical, political and market constraints.
A force integrated into supercalcuing
This implies the use of SMT4 (multithreading simultaneous with four threads per nucleus), only IBM technology deployed on a large scale, starting with its Power7 architecture in 2010.
The development roots of Hygon chips date back to a 2016 license agreement with AMD, which gave it access to the design of the Zen 1 processor and to X86-64 architecture.
Although the resulting chips, marked like Dhyana, have remained modest compared to the Epyc line of AMD, they saw the adoption in China, including the support of Linux and Tencent nuclei developers.
Sugon has also used DHYANA processors in various systems, including a supercomputer that has one day ranked 38th on the TOP500 list.
Although these chips are not tied with the fastest processors in the world, they reflect a long -standing collaboration and a continuous thrust for Chinese alternatives.
On the political level, Hygon and Sugon remain on the list of entities of American industry and security.
This designation restricts access to American technologies on national security problems and raises questions about the amount of the new innovative entity regardless of American intellectual property.
For the moment, the power and competitiveness of the new chip remain blurred.
However, the technical jump required to compete with the AMD threadripper or the Xeon of Intel, often quoted among the fastest processors in the world, is significant.
Via Therefore
