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New Loongson chip matches Intel's 14600K in IPC tests, overclocked to 3 GHz
- tyingq 3y agoMIPS64 unless Loongson changed direction recently.
- jrockway 3y agoI remember a lot of noise when Loongson added support for their CPUs to Go. Go already had MIPS64, so if they had to do porting work, it might not be just a MIPS clone. I haven't looked at either architecture in detail for a long time, though.
- stonogo 3y agoLoongArch is distinct from, but derived from, MIPS64. It's starting to look a little RISC-V-like these days.
- MaxBarraclough 3y agoThere's a short section section about this on Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loongson#LoongArch https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loongson#LoongArch
- Pet_Ant 3y agoWhy the custom arch? If building a CPU is a challenge, then supporting an entire toolchain and ecosystem for it is a whole other level of complexity that isn't necessary or helpful. Moving from being pure MIPS only makes sense if there is some patent issue that you are trying to avoid because you want to sell to foreign markets to raise volume of production. But then just go with RISC-V, I mean there are legions of ravenous fanboys out there _and_ it's already got support. So the only thing that makes sense is that you have legacy MIPS clients and machines where either you want a drop-in replacement, or compatibility with them... but also want to piggy back on RISC-V and will end up with a CPU with a split personality.
- throwbadubadu 3y agoWhy? "The release shows that domestic CPUs have reached a new height in self-sufficiency and performance. It also demonstrates that China is capable of producing first-class products based on a proprietary CPU structure," As this is also kind of one of the responses to the West trying to technology-boycot them (what can be considered now hugely failed and soon, if not already, backfiring..) could also be seen as a feature, and not a problem?! ;)
- dundarious 3y agoWe'll have to wait until China's ASML stockpile is "old" tech (in 5 years or so), before deciding if the tech embargo has worked. I don't support the embargo, by the way.
- fweimer 3y agoIt's possible that they looked at RISC-V and concluded that it was unlikely they could achieve their performance goals with that architecture. As far as I understand it, the new Loongson CPU and the Asus mainboard are available commercially today. I don't think there are any RISC-V CPUs with compare single-core performance.
- hgomersall 3y agoOr they've been at it for a number of years and predated risc v.
- pantalaimon 3y agoIf you want to add features to MIPS who would you even talk to? And afair LoongArch started before RISC-V was as popular as it is today.
- crest 3y agoThey started with MIPS III, moved to MIPS64 before incrementing on that to create their "own" ISA.
- leecb 3y agoWhat operating system would be run by PCs using this chip? Are there existing operating systems that support LoongArch?
- kbrackbill 3y agoLinux (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loongson#Operating_systems https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loongson#Operating_systems)
- matrix12 3y agoHmm no reference to the OpenBSD port. https://www.openbsd.org/loongson.html https://www.openbsd.org/loongson.html
- pantalaimon 3y agoThis is for the old MIPS based machines, the new ones have a custom ISA called LoongArch
- tcmart14 3y agoNetBSD may? If not, it probably wouldn't be a terrible lift to get it running there.
- pantalaimon 3y agoNetBSD development is pretty stagnant these days, I doubt they have much support for new machines
- Pet_Ant 3y agoIt is exciting to have more competition in the CPU space. While it is currently possible to build a non-x86-64 desktop class computer, all the current options are really expensive (looking at you Talos). It would be nice to have more architectures at this level eventually. Even if only to see what the real costs of the 8086-legacy support is to modern performance (if any).
- zamadatix 3y agoIt'll be interesting to see the Snapdragon X Elite next year. It won't take the performance crown but it should finally give reasonably priced ARM outside of the Apple ecosystem something in the high performance class. As for the real costs the upper bound seems to be no more than ~30% on average for the software layers to do it so probably less than that if the hardware is built from the ground up to run x86 code only. My guess is the real difference is <10%. Still appreciable, but not something that really drives the gaps.
- Pet_Ant 3y agoConsidering how most of the software we run is open source, I don't think legacy support is that important. I think lots of organizations would be happy to switch for 10% improvement in performance or power. Open source could really facilitate a golden age in CPU design where backwards compatibility really doesn't matter.
- charcircuit 3y agoNot all open source code is trivial to port to a new architecture.
- sangnoir 3y ago> Considering how most of the software we run is open source, I don't think legacy support is that important At the bottom of the open software pyramid are drivers, and they are often closed-source. Qualcomm is a major contributor to a lot of Android devices having short support periods. Even though Android is open source, Qualcomm's drivers are not, and Qualcomm would rather have consumers buy devices with the latest snapdragon than keep using an upgraded device from 5 years ago.
- andy99 3y agoDoes anyone know what kind of compiler support exists or is planned for these? Edit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loongson#Compiler_support https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loongson#Compiler_support
- evanjrowley 3y agoFor these next-gen CPUs? No idea. For Longsoon in general, it was apparently enough support for RMS to use one as far back as 2010: https://usesthis.com/interviews/richard.stallman/ https://usesthis.com/interviews/richard.stallman/
- doublepg23 3y agoI managed to score one and it gives me a new appreciation for the word "slow".
- dochtman 3y agoA bunch of effort has been invested in the Loongson target for Rust recently: https://doc.rust-lang.org/nightly/rustc/platform-support/loongarch-linux.html https://doc.rust-lang.org/nightly/rustc/platform-support/loo...
- kardianos 3y agoThe Golang loong64 linux build is all "green": https://build.golang.org/ https://build.golang.org/
- fweimer 3y agoThese seem to have slightly more technical detail: https://www.tomshardware.com/news/loongson-launches-3a6000-cpu-matches-14600k-ipc https://www.tomshardware.com/news/loongson-launches-3a6000-c... https://wccftech.com/china-loongson-3a6000-cpu-reaches-core-i5-14600k-performance-clock-to-clock-test-overclocked-to-3-ghz/ https://wccftech.com/china-loongson-3a6000-cpu-reaches-core-...
- dang 3y agoOk, let's use the first one. Changed from https://www.ecns.cn/news/sci-tech/2023-11-29/detail-ihcvixpi0428703.shtml https://www.ecns.cn/news/sci-tech/2023-11-29/detail-ihcvixpi... above. Thanks!
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 3y agoWhich foundry produces Loongson CPUs?
- scq 3y agoSMIC (which has been sued multiple times by TSMC for stealing their IP and trade secrets)
- huytersd 3y agoOh wow so this chip is completely vertically integrated and manufactured in China. That’s big.
- audunw 3y agoSMIC uses western manufacturing equipment. Though there’s efforts on that front too.
- pantalaimon 3y agoSMEE currently tries to get 28nm steppers on the market
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 3y ago> Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation (SMIC) is a partially state-owned publicly listed Chinese pure-play semiconductor foundry company. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semiconductor_Manufacturing_International_Corporation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semiconductor_Manufacturing_In... Zoinks!
- drtgh 3y agoNot strange. Chinese government control all the industries through party delegates that injects in the companies that become relevant, and plans strategically their movements as the state needs, so TSMC has little chance with the sues? Other different thing is that thankfully for us, most of those political delegates kills part of the initiative of those companies due corruption.
- tambourine_man 3y agoMy guess is that the people laughing about how hot and slow these chips are now won't be doing so in 5 to 10 years.
- cyanydeez 3y agobecause there'll be a more relevant processor to laugh at?
- olyjohn 3y agoThis is like the Hyundai (automobile) of CPUs. When Hyundai started competing in the US, it's cars were slow, cheap and kinda crappy. They got some foothold by being cheap above all... But now, their cars are formidable competition to some of the best out there, and are leading the way in a lot of areas. Intel better not get overconfident again, these guys could catch up before they know it.
- Strom 3y agoHyundai didn't have the problem of requiring people to build roads differently. Loongson however will have that problem, as software is either targeting x86 or ARM.
- blooalien 3y ago> "Loongson however will have that problem, as software is either targeting x86 or ARM." This is one (of many) advantages of open source software. If you have access to the source, you can build it on a ridiculously wide range of hardware. I've been downright shocked over the years at some of the strange things people have run actually useful (and entertaining) open source software on. Doom runs pretty much everywhere just for one example. ;)
- cyanydeez 3y agogreat for china & open source but it's still not the majority. also, the unix dependcy graph is formidable and needs to be supported to just bootstrap.
- baz00 3y agoThe subtitle says more than the header: "Still basically an Intel Core i3-10100 competitor"
- TillE 3y agoSure, but Apple's phone chips started out with performance comparable to low-end laptop CPUs. Looking at the TDP, these seem more promising than other Chinese silicon designs which have been terrible flops.
- baz00 3y agoApple have a lot less problems to contend with than China do.
- to11mtm 3y ago> Sure, but Apple's phone chips started out with performance comparable to low-end laptop CPUs. Hummingbird was a bit of a quantum leap for ARM in my opinion. That said, I think Apple was able to do better with what they had thanks to their level of control over things (most notably, the way iOS suspends apps) makes it far easier to have a smooth user experience with a little less muscle. I haven't looked at the TDP on this, one would probably want to normalize the measurements.
- flopsamjetsam 3y agoIs there much info about the LoongBT x86 and ARM emulation instructions? I can see there's stuff in qemu/hw/loongarch and target/loongarch, but would love a more general overview.
- mromanuk 3y agoWhich FAB are they using?