Homegrown Chinese CPUs bring Core i7 Raptor Lake performance to domestic gaming PCs — Hygon C86-4G lands between a Core i7-13700 and Core i7-14700

Posted by tuldok89@reddit | hardware | View on Reddit | 25 comments

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nanonan@reddit

Their first gen was a licensed chip. They then modified it for their second gen, and created a fully developed custom core and SOC for their third gen. This chip is their fourth gen.

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ClickClick_Boom@reddit

So it use Zen designs? how does that count as "homegrown?"

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They started with Zen IP then developed it themselves, by their third gen they had a fully custom core and SOC. This article has a quick timeline: https://www.techpowerup.com/336529/hygon-prepares-128-core-512-threaded-x86-cpu-with-four-way-smt-and-avx-512-support

The C86-5G is the culmination of five years of steady development. The journey began with the C86-1G, an AMD-licensed design that served as a testbed for domestic engineers. It offered up to 32 cores, 64 threads, eight channels of DDR4-2666 memory, and 128 lanes of PCIe 3.0. Its goal was to absorb proven technology and build local know-how. Next came the C86-2G, which kept the same core count but introduced a revamped floating-point unit, 21 custom security instructions, and hardware-accelerated features for memory encryption, virtualization, and trusted computing. This model marked Hygon's first real step into independent research and development. With the C86-3G, Hygon rolled out a fully homegrown CPU core and system-on-chip framework. Memory support increased to DDR4-3200, I/O doubled to PCIe 4.0, and on-die networking included four 10 GbE and eight 1 GbE ports. The C86-4G raised the bar further by doubling compute density to 64 cores and 128 threads, boosting IPC by around 15 percent and adding 12-channel DDR5-4800 memory plus 128 lanes of PCIe 5.0. Socket options expanded to dual and quad configurations. Now, with the C86-5G, Hygon has shown it can compete head-to-head with global server CPU leaders, putting more faith in China's growing capabilities in high-performance computing.

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Wait_for_BM@reddit

It really depends if the technology transfer was a one time during around Zen1 or is it on going to include a few generations. Zen1 era design alone isn't going to be able to get to Core 13/14 level performance. It wasn't exactly the performance leader back then, but a value proposition of more cores for less. It was AMD's last ditch effort to remain relevant and stay out of bankruptcy. AMD no doubt have done some major tweaks and redesigns on their microarchitecture to be a better alternative.

If Hygon some how independently keep up with their upgrades which is not a non-trivial amount of work, I wouldn't dismiss their efforts. However, the "homegrown" part is a bit too much.

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dparks1234@reddit

Makes for a better news headline and fuels the USA vs China thing

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ClickClick_Boom@reddit

Seems to be a lot more misrepresentation of the facts on the China side and the media is complacent. 🤔

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BlueGoliath@reddit

This is a common occurrence if you pay attention.

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ClickClick_Boom@reddit

Yeah, I have been paying attention. Most people don't seem to notice and lap up the misrepresented facts.

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BlueGoliath@reddit

When the media regurgitates CCP propaganda and social media sites via user moderation nuke information and allow CCP sock puppets it's no wonder people don't know.

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nikolapc@reddit

How do you think AMD started with its cpu?

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BlueGoliath@reddit

Technically yes but making CPUs have become far more complicated.

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booi@reddit

If I made a burger with my own ingredients and kitchen but got the recipe from AMD I would still call it homegrown

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ClickClick_Boom@reddit

There's just several orders of magnitude difference in complexity between a burger recipe and a fucking CPU.

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Sosowski@reddit

Yeah weren’t the first AMD CPUs basically clones of intels too? It’s a good start if anything! Fab ain’t easy

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ithinkitslupis@reddit

They're fabless and haven't disclosed which fab is making these...might not be domestic and they don't want to say that with China's push for locally produced chips?

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EloquentPinguin@reddit

I don't think it is about not acknowledging that this is decent tech. But more that the headline calling it "homegrown" is a bit far fetched when we got some companies who design and fab in china.

Like yeah, impressive tech no doubt, but homegrown? We can talk about that.

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Agreeable-Weather-89@reddit

I think the point if 'homegrown' in this context is about independence from the 'West'.

Licensing a chip is vastly less independent than a bottom up design.

It'd be like an American company boasting about how their new product was made in the US but in reality it was merely 'ast step assembled in the US.

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EloquentPinguin@reddit

But if you get the recipe from AMD, tweak it a little and refine it then give it another person (idk who produces these but historically Hygon hasn't fabbed in china iirc) to build it and then sell this third person sends it back to you, and you gave it to me, how much of it is homegrown?

Yes you enabled it, but I think it is faaar less homegrown than Kirin produced by SMIC for example.

So on the homegrown scala it doesn't rank super high, even if the company is chinese.

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SadInterjection@reddit

But they know how to do it now.

Whats stop them running away with the fab knowledge and just make them under a different name more and more

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Numerous-Comb-9370@reddit

I mean Mediatek ultimately use ARM cores in their dimensity chips, licensing core designs isn’t that uncommon. I think Qualcomm was using ARM too until recently.

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FitCress7497@reddit

If they really are trying to link Vray benchmark result with gaming performance, then I'm surprised with how low quality tomshardware can go these days

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Zarmazarma@reddit

Some important points:

Speculation is that it's based one Zen 1- this is not the first time this company has made a processor based on Zen with Zen like performance. They basically sold a Chinese version of Zen 1 Epyc back in 2018, where the hardware was so similar to AMD's epyc, the Linux kernal developers listed it as the same device but with different vendor ids.

It has similar performance properties to Zen 1. With 16 cores it manages to land between the 13700 and 14700 in V-ray, but still falls well behind the 12700 in single core (about 33% less performance).

I haven't had any luck finding price/TDP figures, though I imagine the latter is similar to a 1950x threadripper, maybe a bit lower due to having lower clock speeds.

Imo it's an interesting piece of hardware, but the article is click baity. It's essentially a slightly tweaked Threadripper 1950x that is licensed and isn't made with Chinese silicon, so calling it home grown feels like a stretch... Considering they were also doing the same thing 8 years ago with Epyc, it doesn't really feel like the development the article makes it out to be.

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