Hygon C86-5G: Ex-AMD partner apparently designs 128-core processor
A fast server processor with 128 x86 cores is said to come from China. The Hygon C86-5G allegedly comes with 512 threads.
Render image of a generic Hygon server processor.
(Image: Hygon)
A roadmap from the Chinese company Hygon is currently making waves. It shows a processor with 128 CPU cores, 512 threads thanks to quadruple simultaneous multithreading (SMT), AVX-512 support and 16 DDR5-5600 memory channels in an upcoming expansion stage. The generation is to be called C86-5G.
Hygon was originally founded as Chengdu Haiguang IC Design Corporation as part of a joint venture between AMD and THATIC. In 2018, AMD licensed complete Epyc processors – from the first Zen generation – to China. The Zen architecture operated under the name Dhyana at Hygon. Hygon obtained x86 technology with the help of the joint venture. The C86-5G will also use the x86 instruction set.
Possibly at Zen 3 level
Due to US trade restrictions, AMD and Hygon hardly or no longer formally work together. Hygon and known aliases have been on the US entity list since 2019. However, it is likely that the current processors are still based on the Zen architecture.
Hygon is said to improve the CPU architecture substantially for the second time. The 64-core predecessor is said to have already improved performance per clock cycle (instructions per cycle, IPC) by 15 percent compared to the first architecture generation. The 128-core is expected to add another 17 percent. This would put the processor at around Zen 3 level (Epyc 7003 and Ryzen 5000), although the clock frequencies are unknown. AMD has been selling Epyc 9005 processors (codenamed Turin) with 128 Zen 5 cores since 2024. The more compact Zen 5c models are available with up to 192 cores.
The C86-4G already provided 128 PCI Express 5.0 lanes. The successor C86-5G should have at least as many. It should also be able to connect expansion cards via Compute Express Link (CXL 2.0).
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SMIC is a possible chip contract manufacturer
The question is where Hygon could have such a processor manufactured. The Chinese chip contract manufacturer SMIC is an obvious choice with its 7-nanometer process. The global market leader TSMC is not allowed to supply Hygon due to US trade restrictions.
Hygon is keeping a low profile regarding its processors, especially for server models. There are no official announcements; the company does not list any server CPUs on its website. The roadmap was shared by the X account "@9550pro", which is considered reliable.
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