Hygon Launches 1000 Series CPU for Industrial Edge Market

Li Cheng, assistant to the president of Hygon Information and deputy general manager of its innovation product department, said edge CPUs cannot simply copy server designs. Industrial equipment may be installed on production lines, in control cabinets or in outdoor terminals, with different constraints on board space, power and cooling. These devices also need to connect displays, networks, sensors and other input and output equipment. Some must run continuously for years, and once a product is designed and validated, changing the processor or peripheral components can require hardware and software re-adaptation. Computing performance matters, but it is only one factor in industrial selection. Adding cores can raise power and cost, while adding on-chip functions consumes die area. Processor vendors must balance compute, interfaces, power and long-term supply. The edge processor market has already developed a mature approach built around low power, integrated graphics, rich peripheral interfaces and long supply commitments.

On the 1000 series, Hygon chose a newer technical route. Li said the chip keeps a 4-core, 8-thread configuration while some international peers have removed 8-thread options, allowing higher throughput in some multitasking and multithreaded workloads. The integrated GPU supports 3D graphics, 4K60 display and mainstream video codecs. The CPU and GPU can also provide basic AI compute for edge image and video processing. Li said some industrial processors still use PCIe 3.0 or even PCIe 2.0, while Hygon selected PCIe 4.0 and added compatibility with both DDR4 and DDR5 memory to leave room for peripheral expansion and later upgrades. For security, the 1000 series moves server-chip security designs to the edge, with an independent hardware security module supporting trusted computing, true random numbers and the SM2, SM3 and SM4 algorithms. Li described the overall design as a late-mover advantage. The chip supports wide-temperature operation from -40 to 105 degrees Celsius.

The product direction reflects Hygon's expansion from cloud to edge and terminal devices. Hygon Information president Sha Chaoqun said in a speech that the company previously focused mainly on server CPUs and DCUs for the artificial intelligence market. As AI enters factories, energy stations and rail transit, computing tasks are extending toward the edge. Hygon formed an innovation product line more than two years ago to develop terminal, workstation and edge intelligent chips.

On packaging, Li said the 1000 series required redeveloping, importing and integrating more than 30 IPs, covering PCIe, DDR, USB and other modules, and went through more than 70 rounds of design iteration. From project launch to tapeout, die area was optimized by 15.7 percent. The final package measures 25 by 25 millimeters, 42.6 percent smaller in area than Hygon's previous smallest processor. Even with the smaller package, Hygon needed to retain GPIO, USB, PCIe and network interfaces for industrial devices, making pin count a design constraint. Hygon used pin multiplexing so the same pins can carry different functions depending on configuration, reducing the need for separate pins. Li acknowledged that pin multiplexing increases design difficulty for both Hygon and its customers. Hygon developed a visual configuration tool to help customers set pin functions.

Memory support and supply also shaped the design. Huang Wei, assistant to the president and general manager of the innovation product department, said in a post-event response to Leiphone that Hygon initially planned to support only DDR4. Because the product has a long supply cycle and future equipment may require higher performance, the company added DDR5 during development. Huang said memory is one of the external supply chain segments most affected by fluctuations. Supporting both DDR4 and DDR5 is Hygon's technical response to changes in memory supply and pricing, preserving DDR4 for existing memory plans while adding DDR5 as another option for later device development. Li said Hygon has promised a ten-year supply commitment for the 1000 series and later products and added design redundancy for long-term stable operation. A ten-year supply commitment is already offered by some industrial-control edge processor vendors, so Hygon, as a new entrant, still has to deliver on that promise through long-term supply chain management and customer product delivery.

Chip development is only part of the work in embedded markets. Equipment makers must design boards, adapt software and complete system debugging and validation around the processor. Even with the same CPU, industrial PCs, edge gateways and industrial controllers may have different requirements for interfaces, peripherals and software environments. The industry has used modular designs and early customer engagement to address this. SMARC and other standardized compute modules separate the common computing platform from application-specific carrier board designs. Li said that while the 1000 series was still in tapeout, Hygon provided technical documents to partner customers so equipment makers could start board design in parallel. After the dies returned, Hygon released samples so customer boards and the Hygon platform could light up simultaneously, a customer engagement method Hygon used for the first time. Hygon also developed a SMARC core board and Mini-ITX reference boards, provided reference solutions for power optimization and high-density routing, and plans AVL testing to give partners peripheral component selection references. Hygon said the fragmented edge software ecosystem and the lack of a one-stop development environment are challenges in this market. The company formed an embedded software team to develop an edge-oriented development environment, SDK and related tools, and to provide software libraries for motion control and industrial control applications. Hygon said it now supports 110 partners, with projects covering 66 application scenarios. Partner Fuhua Huichuang said it has developed products based on the 1000 series for edge control, network security, power and factory automation. Xinbu Technology started six related research and development projects. Li described the current stage as pre-promotion and synchronous design, with the next step being customer sales. Hygon has launched 133 cooperation projects around the 1000 series, some of which have completed board design and lit up. Those development milestones still require system validation and customer adoption before sustained shipments and revenue. For Hygon, the 1000 series fills out a dedicated product line for industrial control and other edge scenarios, but the company will next need to compete with existing industrial control suppliers in product supply, software adaptation and system development support.