Chinese telecom giants plan to purchase more domestically made CPUs

Several Chinese leading telecom operators have significantly increased the volume of Chinese-made CPUs in their centralized procurement lists, reflecting increased support for the domestic industry.

China Telecom said it plans to purchase 156,000 servers in total, of which the ''G series'' servers would total 105,300 units, accounting for 67.5 percent of the procurement, according to news outlet guancha.cn on Thursday. 

Market watchers said the ''G series'' refers to servers specifically equipped with domestic CPUs.

In comparison, four years ago, China Telecom listed domestic CPU servers for procurement for the first time, with domestic CPU servers accounting for only 19.9 percent, while Intel CPUs accounted for as high as 79.4 percent.

China Mobile is also stepping up its support for domestically made chips.

The document showed that China Mobile published 10 ''G-series'' projects out of 13 server procurement tenders.

In 2020, Chinese-made CPUs accounted for about 21 percent of the company's PC server procurement, with today's ratio closer to 43.5 percent,

China Unicom has also seen surging demand for Chinese-made chips since 2020, particularly in Chinese CPUs like Kunpeng 920, Hygon 7165, and Hygon 7185.

Chinese experts contributed the rise of domestically made chips to the diversified development of domestic CPUs, such as in the latest round of centralized procurement by China Telecom, there are not only X86 architectures from foreign manufacturers but also domestic CPU architectures such as ARM, C86, LoongArch, Yongfeng, and SW.

"Chinese-made CPU chips have seen big improvements in the performance and cost-effectiveness, which meet the need of telecom operators," Chen Jing, a vice president of the Technology and Strategy Research Institute, told the Global Times on Thursday.

However, Chinese experts said that centralized procurement does not mean that they are closing the door on foreign players. As long as the products of foreign chip giants such as Intel, AMD and Nvidia meet relevant requirements, they will also have the opportunity to win any bid, they said. 

When chairing a symposium on foreign investment work, Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng called for action to further attract and utilize foreign investment, according to Xinhua News Agency report on July 1. 

He urged the further relaxation of market access and turning the country's advantages of an ultra-large market into real advantages in attracting capital.

The vice premier said efforts should be made to continue building a market-oriented, law-based and international business environment, support domestic and foreign enterprises on an equal basis to participate in large-scale equipment upgrading, government procurement and bidding, and smooth channels for foreign enterprises to reflect and resolve their demands, while promptly responding to foreign enterprises' concerns, Xinhua said.