- Huawei outlines Kunpeng roadmap with CPUs scaling to 256 cores by 2028
- Benchmarks show processor referred to as Kunpeng 960 delivering 4.8 million TPM
- SuperPoD built on Kunpeng 950 aims to replace legacy mainframes in financial sector
Huawei has outlined plans to expand its Kunpeng processor family with models that scale up to 256 cores by 2028.
“In the first quarter of 2026, we will unveil the Kunpeng 950 processor in two models: one with 96 cores and 192 threads, and another with 192 cores and 384 threads,” Huawei’s rotating chairman Eric Xu said in his keynote speech at its recent Connect 2025 event 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 source database based on openGauss, suggest Kunpeng can scale effectively in large deployments.
Using Memory Optimized Tables, a 256-core Kunpeng setup achieved 4.8 million transactions per minute with 768 connections, illustrating how workloads improve as concurrency rises.
What’s interesting is that although Xu didn’t name the processor during his keynote, in the benchmarks it’s referred to as the Kunpeng 960. That would make sense, as Huawei already uses the 960 designation across its Atlas and Ascend product lines.
Huawei said it will continue refining the Kunpeng microarchitecture and packaging technology.
If delivered as planned, the 256-core processor would mark one of the largest general-purpose CPUs available.
While the official 2028 target seems reasonable, I do wonder if the existence of those benchmarks means Huawei is further ahead of schedule than we’ve been led to believe and the chip might arrive sooner.
We’ve reached out to Huawei to find out more about the Kunpeng 960, but we’re not holding our breath.
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