8 ms·

Loongson releases next-generation CPU

113 points by martinlaz 3y ago

INTPenis 3y 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?
- saagarjha 3y 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 3y ago
    That issue can be dealt with using an IOMMU under host control. Those limit where the peripheral can DMA regardless of its firmware.
    - isopede 3y ago
      Isn't this just an instance of "trusting trust?" How do you know the IOMMU hasn't been backdoored? "Open" firmware doesn't mean open RTL. Where is the line drawn?
      - Dylan16807 3y ago
        Whether you want open firmware in the first place is a significantly different question from how you isolate hardware with closed firmware. But more directly, worrying about one part having a backdoor is a lot better than worrying about twenty parts having a backdoor.
    - saagarjha 3y ago
      Just an example, DARTs and IOMMUs help close down that line of attack but there are still many proprietary and inscrutable blobs/peripherals/monitors that alter the behavior of modern computers which are almost impossible to avoid in general.
- tedunangst 3y 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 3y 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 3y 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.lemote.com/en/products/Notebook/2010/0310/112.html https://web.archive.org/web/20160703160118/http://zkml.lemot...
Qem 3y ago
Any chance systems based on it will be sold outside China?
- poizan42 3y 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.
- BirAdam 3y ago
  The USA’s recent sanctions against the PRC has made Loongson forbidden if I remember correctly. Hopefully, this will change.
  - poizan42 3y 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-loongson-cpus-reach-maturity.html https://www.techspot.com/news/97817-us-blacklists-china-loon...
  - cingraa 3y 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.
    - RobotToaster 3y ago
      The sanctions also seem to have done a great job accelerating Chinese mainland semiconductor technology. Before the sanctions most mainland companies were happy having their chips fabbed by TSMC
2OEH8eoCRo0 3y ago
Dupe: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38461939 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38461939
BirAdam 3y 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 3y ago
  It's Loongarch, some sort of MIPS + RISC-V.
  - unwind 3y 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 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loongson#LoongArch
    - russli1993 3y ago
      The loongarch spec https://loongson.github.io/LoongArch-Documentation/LoongArch-Vol1-EN.html https://loongson.github.io/LoongArch-Documentation/LoongArch...
    - Jeff_Brown 3y ago
      Associating China with dragons seems like such a lucky PR win to me. How many countries are, outside of that country, associated with any mascot at all, let alone such a badass one? Also it seems appropriate that the Western concept of a dragon is much less friendly than the Chinese one -- at least, judging from the dances.
      - 3y ago
DeathArrow 3y ago
Why do they use 12nm process node as opposed to SMIC 5nm or 7nm? Too expensive?
- bilekas 3y ago
  I think it's down to the technological challenges that involves and they are just not there yet.
  - throwaway4good 3y 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).
    - BSDobelix 3y ago
      >So far it appears that Huawei is the only Chinese firm producing chips on 7nm True a good video about it from Asianometry "China's 7nm Semiconductor Breakthrough" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-KrdcTsScKk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-KrdcTsScKk
      - throwaway4good 3y ago
        Some of this is simply because until the latest sanctions, other Chinese chip designers could fab at TSMC at 7nm. Also Huawei has a quite capable AI offerings: https://e.huawei.com/en/products/computing/ascend https://e.huawei.com/en/products/computing/ascend
mrweasel 3y 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_Colonel 3y 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 3y ago
    I guess you mean on the desktop? If this thing runs linux, it is as serious as everything that can run Linux.
    - Rediscover 3y ago
      OpenBSD has a history of supporting the Loongson arch. https://www.openbsd.org/loongson.html https://www.openbsd.org/loongson.html
    - The_Colonel 3y ago
      Only some Chinese distros support it. For a lot of serious things, you will need to have binary support - commercial software, docker etc.
      - LargoLasskhyfv 3y ago
        That's why they have: LoongBT, faster x86 and ARM binary translation, 213 instructions
- erremerre 3y 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.

113 points by martinlaz 3y 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?

saagarjha 3y 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 3y ago
  That issue can be dealt with using an IOMMU under host control. Those limit where the peripheral can DMA regardless of its firmware.
  - isopede 3y ago
    Isn't this just an instance of "trusting trust?" How do you know the IOMMU hasn't been backdoored? "Open" firmware doesn't mean open RTL. Where is the line drawn?
    - Dylan16807 3y ago
      Whether you want open firmware in the first place is a significantly different question from how you isolate hardware with closed firmware. But more directly, worrying about one part having a backdoor is a lot better than worrying about twenty parts having a backdoor.
  - saagarjha 3y ago
    Just an example, DARTs and IOMMUs help close down that line of attack but there are still many proprietary and inscrutable blobs/peripherals/monitors that alter the behavior of modern computers which are almost impossible to avoid in general.
tedunangst 3y 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 3y 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 3y 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.lemote.com/en/products/Notebook/2010/0310/112.html https://web.archive.org/web/20160703160118/http://zkml.lemot...

Qem 3y ago

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

poizan42 3y 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.
BirAdam 3y ago
The USA’s recent sanctions against the PRC has made Loongson forbidden if I remember correctly. Hopefully, this will change.
- poizan42 3y 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-loongson-cpus-reach-maturity.html https://www.techspot.com/news/97817-us-blacklists-china-loon...
- cingraa 3y 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.
  - RobotToaster 3y ago
    The sanctions also seem to have done a great job accelerating Chinese mainland semiconductor technology. Before the sanctions most mainland companies were happy having their chips fabbed by TSMC

2OEH8eoCRo0 3y ago

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

BirAdam 3y 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 3y ago
It's Loongarch, some sort of MIPS + RISC-V.
- unwind 3y 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 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loongson#LoongArch
  - russli1993 3y ago
    The loongarch spec https://loongson.github.io/LoongArch-Documentation/LoongArch-Vol1-EN.html https://loongson.github.io/LoongArch-Documentation/LoongArch...
  - Jeff_Brown 3y ago
    Associating China with dragons seems like such a lucky PR win to me. How many countries are, outside of that country, associated with any mascot at all, let alone such a badass one? Also it seems appropriate that the Western concept of a dragon is much less friendly than the Chinese one -- at least, judging from the dances.
    - 3y ago

DeathArrow 3y ago

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

bilekas 3y ago
I think it's down to the technological challenges that involves and they are just not there yet.
- throwaway4good 3y 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).
  - BSDobelix 3y ago
    >So far it appears that Huawei is the only Chinese firm producing chips on 7nm True a good video about it from Asianometry "China's 7nm Semiconductor Breakthrough" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-KrdcTsScKk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-KrdcTsScKk
    - throwaway4good 3y ago
      Some of this is simply because until the latest sanctions, other Chinese chip designers could fab at TSMC at 7nm. Also Huawei has a quite capable AI offerings: https://e.huawei.com/en/products/computing/ascend https://e.huawei.com/en/products/computing/ascend

mrweasel 3y 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_Colonel 3y 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 3y ago
  I guess you mean on the desktop? If this thing runs linux, it is as serious as everything that can run Linux.
  - Rediscover 3y ago
    OpenBSD has a history of supporting the Loongson arch. https://www.openbsd.org/loongson.html https://www.openbsd.org/loongson.html
  - The_Colonel 3y ago
    Only some Chinese distros support it. For a lot of serious things, you will need to have binary support - commercial software, docker etc.
    - LargoLasskhyfv 3y ago
      That's why they have: LoongBT, faster x86 and ARM binary translation, 213 instructions
erremerre 3y 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.