Tencent Cloud launches CentOS variant tuned for Chinese silicon

Tencent Cloud has launched a version of its homebrew cut of Linux distribution CentOS.

TencentOS Server V3, launched last week, is said to be compatible with CentOS7 and CentOS8, and happy running on CPUs built on the x86 and Arm architectures.

It's 2024, so Tencent Cloud has made sure the OS allows use of virtualized GPUs and has been tuned for AI workloads. More prosaically, it's also been tweaked to reduce CPU and memory utilization, and when running as a host OS is said to consume just two percent of a host's power. Tencent has also talked up its performance running databases.

The Chinese gaming, social media, e-commerce and cloud giant has eaten its own dog food and used the OS to run its WeChat social network, finding – surprise! – that costs fell by 43 percent.

Tencent revealed that the OS runs on Kunpeng, Hygon and Feiteng processors.

Kunpeng is Huawei's server-grade CPU family, based on the Arm architecture, and offers 64 Arm-v8 cores at 2.6GHz. Hygon produces x86 processors – a legacy of its past status as a joint venture with AMD. The flagship model 7000 offers 16 or 32 cores, up to two terabytes of DDR4 memory, and 128 PCIe channels.

Feiteng is a brand used by an outfit called Tianjin Phytium Technology that in the past built chips based on the SPARC architecture and a decade ago topped the Top 500 List of Earth's mightiest supercomputers. The biz has since also worked with the Arm architecture. Sorry, SPARC fans – China's not going to restore the tech to past glories.

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But China is clearly going to ensure that local software runs on local hardware, as it seeks to diminish reliance on tech sourced from offshore. That decision has paid off in the last few days, as the Middle Kingdom was largely untouched by the CrowdStrike mess.

At the time of writing, it appears the new OS hasn't made it into Tencent Cloud's offshore service, for which The Register has an account. Apologies, but we haven't checked if it's available inside the Great Firewall, as accessing resources inside China requires sending an image of an identity document that carries a user’s address – I won't do that for LinkedIn and am even less happy about sending such info into China.

Older versions of TencentOS are, however, available outside China. ®