Hygon Dhyana：A Deep Dive into Zen

In 2016, through a series of joint ventures and created companies, AMD licensed the design of its first generation Zen x86 processors to be sold into China. The goal of this was two-fold: China wanted a ‘home grown’ solution for high-performance x86 compute, and AMD at the time needed a cash injection. The outcome of this web of businesses was the Hygon Dhyana range of processors, which ranged from commercial to server use. Due to the Zen 1 design on which it was based, it has been assumed that the performance was in line with Ryzen 1000 and Naples EPYC, and no-one in the west has publicly tested the hardware. Thanks to a collaboration with our friend Wendell Wilson over at YouTube channel Level1Techs[1], we now have the first full review of the Hygon CPUs.

Let’s Start From The Beginning

There are two/three primary manufacturers of x86 processors: Intel, AMD, and Via/Centaur. Both Intel and AMD have been competing in the high performance compute space for multi...