- Huawei outlines Kunpeng roadmap with CPUs scaling to 256 cores by 2028
- Benchmarks present processor known as Kunpeng 960 delivering 4.8 million TPM
- SuperPoD constructed on Kunpeng 950 goals to exchange legacy mainframes in monetary sector
Huawei has outlined plans to increase its Kunpeng processor household with fashions that scale as much as 256 cores by 2028.
“Within the first quarter of 2026, we are going to unveil the Kunpeng 950 processor in two fashions: one with 96 cores and 192 threads, and one other with 192 cores and 384 threads,” Huawei’s rotating chairman Eric Xu said in his keynote speech at its latest Join 2025 occasion in Shanghai.
These processors will support the TaiShan 950 SuperPoD, which can include up to 16 nodes and 48TB of memory.
Kunpeng 960
Built on the Kunpeng 950, the SuperPoD will be “the world’s first general-purpose computing SuperPoD,” Xu added.
It is being presented as a replacement option for legacy mainframes and mid-range computers still used in the financial sector.
With GaussDB, Huawei’s distributed database system, the SuperPoD can provide a reported 2.9x performance boost without requiring modifications to existing setups.
Xu suggested this could make it a candidate to replace systems such as Oracle’s Exadata.
Looking further ahead, Xu confirmed Huawei is planning a 256-core processor.
“In the first quarter of 2028, we plan to introduce two models, including a high-density design with at least 256 cores and 512 threads,” he said.
This chip is intended for virtualization, containers, big data, and warehouse workloads.
A second model will focus on higher single-core performance, improving by more than 50% for AI and database use cases.
Performance benchmarks from MogDB, the open supply database primarily based on openGauss, recommend Kunpeng can scale successfully in giant deployments.
Utilizing Reminiscence Optimized Tables, a 256-core Kunpeng setup achieved 4.8 million transactions per minute with 768 connections, illustrating how workloads enhance as concurrency rises.
What’s fascinating is that though Xu didn’t title the processor throughout his keynote, within the benchmarks it’s known as the Kunpeng 960. That might make sense, as Huawei already makes use of the 960 designation throughout its Atlas and Ascend product strains.
Huawei mentioned it is going to proceed refining the Kunpeng microarchitecture and packaging know-how.
If delivered as deliberate, the 256-core processor would mark one of many largest general-purpose CPUs accessible.
Whereas the official 2028 goal appears cheap, I do surprise if the existence of these benchmarks means Huawei is additional forward of schedule than we’ve been led to consider and the chip would possibly arrive sooner.
We’ve reached out to Huawei to seek out out extra concerning the Kunpeng 960, however we’re not holding our breath.
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