Loongson releases next-generation CPU

https://www.ecns.cn/news/sci-tech/2023-11-29/detail-ihcvixpi0428703.shtml

by martinlaz • 3 years ago

113 60 3 years ago

INTPenis• 3 years ago

I remember the Loongson MIPS laptop made headlines many years ago. Richard Stallman even used one for a while.

It got a lot of attention among my hacker space fellows, but I don't remember why. Was it an open hw design or something?

saagarjha2• 3 years ago

I believe the BIOS was open or something like that. In general, though, it is hard to have a meaningful consistent position here because you can have most of the software be open and some random peripheral with closed firmware can DMA all over everything it wants :/

jlokier• 3 years ago

That issue can be dealt with using an IOMMU under host control. Those limit where the peripheral can DMA regardless of its firmware.

tedunangst• 3 years ago

Ten years ago it was kinda the only x86 alternative available in a laptop form factor, but was otherwise unremarkable except for being quite buggy.

rixed• 3 years ago

I used to have one as my only laptop for years and I miss it dearly. Built quality was above average, keyboard was great, mate screen (not as rare back then though), easy to open, lack of hardware shenanigans and usable/open source BIOS, no proprietary drivers required, came with Linux preinstalled. Reasonably fast.

It was a MIPS little endian, which is also very good. I can't remember if it was fanless or not.

sillywalk• 3 years ago

I don't know if this is statement accurate, but from the (archived) manufacturer's website:

"The world's first fully free software. All system source files(BIOS, kernel, drivers etc.) are free software, no close firmware needed." [0]

[0] https://web.archive.org/web/20160703160118/http://zkml.lemot...

Qem• 3 years ago

Any chance systems based on it will be sold outside China?

poizan422• 3 years ago

You can buy systems based on earlier Loongson CPU's from Ali Express right now if you want to. I can find dev boards, some small raspberry pi-like devices they call Loongson Pi as well as the tower-pc-like LS3A5000-7A2000 system.

They seem pretty expensive for how weak they are, so probably not much point in buying them besides to play around with the architecture.

BirAdam3• 3 years ago

The USA’s recent sanctions against the PRC has made Loongson forbidden if I remember correctly. Hopefully, this will change.

poizan422• 3 years ago

I was under the impression that the sanctions worked the other way around, i.e. Loongson can't buy a lot of things from American companies.

Entities on the Entity List are prohibited from purchasing or licensing American technologies, even indirectly. For example, Loongson can't have its CPUs manufactured by American equipment, ruling out most foundries with modern nodes.

According to https://www.techspot.com/news/97817-us-blacklists-china-loon...

cingraa• 3 years ago

The sanctions are here to stay. The USA wants to make China capitulate. There is an economic war against China. When you cannot win by merit, you invent excuses to slap sanctions.

RobotToaster3• 3 years ago

Other way around, until last month China officially banned most of the loongson chips from being exported. The ban was reportedly lifted due to interest from Russian companies in using the chips. https://www.tomshardware.com/news/loongon-cpus-bound-for-rus...

2OEH8eoCRo0• 3 years ago

Dupe: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38461939

BirAdam3• 3 years ago

I’d love to get my hands on one of these. They’re MIPS machines that are on-par with the Intel core i3 14100. Loongson is also involved with Deepin Linux, so they’re attempting to build out a Chinese-native technology stack. While I generally don’t care for things under control of the CCP due to surveillance concerns, I do love competition for bringing about new tech innovation. We’re now getting back to the 80s/90s as far as diversity with AMD64, MIPS, RISC-V, ARM, OpenPOWER, and then semi-custom variants of RISC-V and ARM. It’s fun.

cyp0633• 3 years ago

It's Loongarch, some sort of MIPS + RISC-V.

unwind• 3 years ago

Wikipedia [1] has some more details, but not too many on the main page itself.

Also from the top of that page I learned that "Loongson" means "Dragon Core" which to me as a westerner makes it sound very clearly Chinese (because dragons) but also a lot cooler (because ... dragons!). Nice.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loongson#LoongArch

throwaway4good4• 3 years ago

It is the golden age if you are a Chinese chip designer or operating systems engineer; getting to reinvent/rebuild the whole computing stack.

RealStickman_• 3 years ago

Finally, the chance to build CCP/IP

TrueDuality• 3 years ago

That sounds like it would be an absolute blast.

RobotToaster3• 3 years ago

The performance they quote also seems to be in x86 compatibility mode, I wonder if you can bypass that and compile for the native architecture.

monocasa4• 3 years ago

MIPS asm, but not MIPS machine code. Different bit encoding.

DeathArrow• 3 years ago

Why do they use 12nm process node as opposed to SMIC 5nm or 7nm? Too expensive?

bilekas• 3 years ago

I think it's down to the technological challenges that involves and they are just not there yet.

throwaway4good4• 3 years ago

So far it appears that Huawei is the only Chinese firm producing chips on 7nm; while western commenters have stated that it is a SMIC process - I don't actually think they know for sure as none of these companies have made it official - in other words the process may be proprietary to Huawei.

However 7nm is in volume production at a level so high that can do non-critical projects such as the Mate 60 phone rather than just the stuff where all imports to China are sanctioned (high-end AI chips, chips for spacefaring, and military).

Likely other sanctioned Chinese chip designers will use the process as it appears that Chinese authorities want internal competition rather than just have one single dominant company (Huawei).

Signor65• 3 years ago

As far as I know, it's because China does not have access to the latest fab equipment from ASML and have to use an older technology to manufacture their chips.

dragonelite2• 3 years ago

Huawei probably has first dibs on capacity given their contribution to SMIC 7~5nm process.

manuelabeledo2• 3 years ago

SMIC 7nm doesn’t scale just yet.

monocasa4• 3 years ago

It scaled well enough for the Kirin 9000s.

But that's probably why Loongson isn't on it, capacity is probably being spent on Huawei's next chip.

drtgh• 3 years ago

Does someone know what reference size to take for those SMC nanometers?

It may sound irrational to ask this kind of question, but marketing killed the meaning of "nm" a long time ago. As reference, through electron microscope the sizes of Intel 14nm seems equivalent to AMD.TSMC 7nm [1]

[1] https://www.techpowerup.com/272489/intel-14-nm-node-compared...

monocasa4• 3 years ago

They're aligned to TSMC terminology.

mrweasel• 3 years ago

If they can keep up with the AMD and Intel CPUs they list, then that's actually pretty impressive and actually useful. There is a lot of people still daily driving 5 - 10 old processors just fine, it's absolutely plenty for a office desktop or even light development work.

I would like to see actual benchmarks though.

The_Colonel2• 3 years ago

actually useful

Except it's a custom ISA (fork of MIPS). It could be fine for Chromebook-like use cases (basically web browser machine), but not really for anything more serious ...

gbin• 3 years ago

I guess you mean on the desktop? If this thing runs linux, it is as serious as everything that can run Linux.

erremerre2• 3 years ago

I use a core i7-920 from first generation that I recently changed with a Xeon compatible socket and another i7-3770 from third generation as daily drivers. And I do some gaming with non-intensive games. The computer works perfectly with no major drawbacks.

The third generation is noisy because it is in a small format case and with very deficient ventilation that I can't solve.

LargoLasskhyfv3• 3 years ago

Did you try to at least remove the dust/dirt which tends to clog those parts over these timespans? With forced air from a pressured can to blow it out, or the other way around with a vacuum cleaner? (But arrest the fan, or unplug it while doing so, if possible! Otherwise it can spin like crazy and working as a generator, even frying the controller!) Furthermore the cooling paste/glue/mat between the die, or the lid of the CPU and the underside of the cooler tends to degrade/dry out, also because of time. Exchanging that requires disassembly, removing the old stuff carefully with isopropanol, reapplying some thermal paste, nothing special, just Arctic MX4 is good enough, and then reattaching the cooler.

Would work wonders, I guess.

Loongson releases next-generation CPU

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