6 ms·

Hmm... Is China betting on RISC-V chips? China is too big to rely solely on a single chip architecture. I saw another attempt to develop a new chip architecture

by r2vcap 3y ago

Hmm... Is China betting on RISC-V chips? China is too big to rely solely on a single chip architecture. I saw another attempt to develop a new chip architecture in China, called Loongson64. In recent years, I've seen a lot of contributions to libraries/software, such as the Linux Kernel, Chromium, LLVM, V8, and ffmpeg, by Loongson, a Chinese chip company that produces an architecture called Loongson64. Apparently, China wants to develop its own chip architecture, chip design, and chip manufacturing capabilities, and RISC-V is one of the options, but there isn't a single path to achieving that.

John23832 3y ago
> China is too big to rely solely on a single chip architecture. This doesn’t really make sense. Prior to the current ARM revolution, the entire world was on x86. > I saw another attempt to develop a new chip architecture in China, called Loongson64 Without using a common chip arch, you go at it alone. That is a competitive disadvantage.
- FirmwareBurner 3y ago
  > Prior to the current ARM revolution, the entire world was on x86. Hmm, that's kinda false. Let's go back ~20 years. Workstation and datacenters were on Sparc or PowerPC. ARM was in every phone, MP3 player, digital camera or any other portable device. Gaming consoles and set top boxes and the like were on MIPS or the new Cell processor which was also PowerPC based. The world definitely was never fully on X86, and ARM was always among us.
  - John23832 3y ago
    >Hmm, that's kinda false. > The world definitely was never fully on X86, and ARM was always among us. The "entire world" there wasn't meant to be absolutely literal. The point I refuting was that because of China's size, they cannot focus on a single architecture. That makes no sense. China overwhelmingly utilizes x86 now. > Let's go back ~20 years. Workstation and datacenters were on Sparc or PowerPC. ARM was in every phone, MP3 player, digital camera or any other portable device. Gaming consoles and set top boxes and the like were on MIPS or the new Cell processor which was also PowerPC based. That's all great and good, and while I never discounted a heterogenous world, this is both Intel and AMD's marketshare: https://www.statista.com/statistics/735904/worldwide-x86-intel-amd-market-share/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/735904/worldwide-x86-int... The world is on x86.
    - redundantly 3y ago
      Not every processor is a full fledged PC or server. Don't forget about the various microcontrollers and other smaller processors across all other product categories, like components for cars, hvac systems, IoT devices and so much more.
      - simne 3y ago
        Microcontrollers are totally other beasts, and for current China semiconductors level, I think they could use just one simplest case, like 8048 and other cases something like simplified x86, like Intel Atom (ARM have simplified MICRO-architecture, and Risc-V also have). So, architecture could be one, but few MICRO-architectures, like IBM 7xx series was extremely wide (could talk about 360 series if you want), but mostly hardware differences hidden under software abstractions.
        brucehoult 3y ago
        You do realise that Chinese company SOPHGO is selling a 64 bit 2.0 GHz RISC-V chip with 64 OoO cores with dual 128 bit vector pipelines (per core) and 64 MB L3 cache? Chinese company Milk-V is selling these in workstations with 128 GB RAM. Customer deliveries started last month and I know several people whose machines have arrived.
        simne 3y ago
        Greetings from Ukraine, country at war now, and one of main foundation whale of USSR at not too far past. I'm not too old, but I born in USSR and seen from inside, how it steal western technologies and where it stuck. We now chosen democracy way, mostly because Russians are Nazi and think Ukrainians not nation of their level, but my youth spent in hot speech battles, on how we will deliver own totally independent semiconductor industry. Systems, you mentioned, are from my view, something in best case 2017 year desktop technology on steroids for West - not bad, but already outdated, and far from professional systems. Modern professional systems, should be something like latest IBM Power9 or Power10, somewhere near 3.5..4.0GHz cores, Terabytes RAM and hundreds megabytes of L3 cache. And also very important, I have not seen anything comparable to IBM or even to Microsoft in China. Fortunately I also don't seen much enough from Russia. So, what I release, this is really serious threat, they could kill many people, but it is not parity with West even within one industry. And yes, you could say, I'm too subjective, but I think, for West now is more important to save Ukraine as independent country (sure, same I consider about Taiwan and Israel, which are also under serious threat), to show how West values allies, not to win race by total domination for all cost.
blibble 3y ago
I thought Loongsoon was just rebranded MIPS?
- duskwuff 3y ago
  They've made enough modifications that it's no longer entirely compatible with MIPS. But it isn't far off, either. Ironically, MIPS Technologies sold off all their remaining rights to the MIPS architecture a few years ago and is now trying to pivot to RISC-V...
duskwuff 3y ago
> Hmm... Is China betting on RISC-V chips? In a word: YES. A ton of companies are already shipping RISC-V hardware, mostly in the microcontroller sector but rapidly moving to larger parts. (Off the top of my head: GigaDevice, Espressif, Allwinner, WCH, Bouffalo, Kendryte...) These devices are shipping in end-user products right now -- they have a lot more momentum than Loongson, who've been making their MIPS knockoffs since the mid-2000s with limited uptake.
- hakfoo 3y ago
  It seemed to me like Loongson was sort of a "compliance" product. There are no doubt plenty of "we want to own the ecosystem end-to-end" forces who have cheque-writing authority within China. They'll bankroll homebrew parts even if they aren't really competitive to achieve that goal. Or it could be more based on their willingness to play a longer game-- they can take 20 years to get to competitive if they have to.

by r2vcap 3y ago

John23832 3y ago

> China is too big to rely solely on a single chip architecture. This doesn’t really make sense. Prior to the current ARM revolution, the entire world was on x86. > I saw another attempt to develop a new chip architecture in China, called Loongson64 Without using a common chip arch, you go at it alone. That is a competitive disadvantage.

FirmwareBurner 3y ago
> Prior to the current ARM revolution, the entire world was on x86. Hmm, that's kinda false. Let's go back ~20 years. Workstation and datacenters were on Sparc or PowerPC. ARM was in every phone, MP3 player, digital camera or any other portable device. Gaming consoles and set top boxes and the like were on MIPS or the new Cell processor which was also PowerPC based. The world definitely was never fully on X86, and ARM was always among us.
- John23832 3y ago
  >Hmm, that's kinda false. > The world definitely was never fully on X86, and ARM was always among us. The "entire world" there wasn't meant to be absolutely literal. The point I refuting was that because of China's size, they cannot focus on a single architecture. That makes no sense. China overwhelmingly utilizes x86 now. > Let's go back ~20 years. Workstation and datacenters were on Sparc or PowerPC. ARM was in every phone, MP3 player, digital camera or any other portable device. Gaming consoles and set top boxes and the like were on MIPS or the new Cell processor which was also PowerPC based. That's all great and good, and while I never discounted a heterogenous world, this is both Intel and AMD's marketshare: https://www.statista.com/statistics/735904/worldwide-x86-intel-amd-market-share/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/735904/worldwide-x86-int... The world is on x86.
  - redundantly 3y ago
    Not every processor is a full fledged PC or server. Don't forget about the various microcontrollers and other smaller processors across all other product categories, like components for cars, hvac systems, IoT devices and so much more.
    - simne 3y ago
      Microcontrollers are totally other beasts, and for current China semiconductors level, I think they could use just one simplest case, like 8048 and other cases something like simplified x86, like Intel Atom (ARM have simplified MICRO-architecture, and Risc-V also have). So, architecture could be one, but few MICRO-architectures, like IBM 7xx series was extremely wide (could talk about 360 series if you want), but mostly hardware differences hidden under software abstractions.
      - brucehoult 3y ago
        You do realise that Chinese company SOPHGO is selling a 64 bit 2.0 GHz RISC-V chip with 64 OoO cores with dual 128 bit vector pipelines (per core) and 64 MB L3 cache? Chinese company Milk-V is selling these in workstations with 128 GB RAM. Customer deliveries started last month and I know several people whose machines have arrived.
        simne 3y ago
        Greetings from Ukraine, country at war now, and one of main foundation whale of USSR at not too far past. I'm not too old, but I born in USSR and seen from inside, how it steal western technologies and where it stuck. We now chosen democracy way, mostly because Russians are Nazi and think Ukrainians not nation of their level, but my youth spent in hot speech battles, on how we will deliver own totally independent semiconductor industry. Systems, you mentioned, are from my view, something in best case 2017 year desktop technology on steroids for West - not bad, but already outdated, and far from professional systems. Modern professional systems, should be something like latest IBM Power9 or Power10, somewhere near 3.5..4.0GHz cores, Terabytes RAM and hundreds megabytes of L3 cache. And also very important, I have not seen anything comparable to IBM or even to Microsoft in China. Fortunately I also don't seen much enough from Russia. So, what I release, this is really serious threat, they could kill many people, but it is not parity with West even within one industry. And yes, you could say, I'm too subjective, but I think, for West now is more important to save Ukraine as independent country (sure, same I consider about Taiwan and Israel, which are also under serious threat), to show how West values allies, not to win race by total domination for all cost.

blibble 3y ago

I thought Loongsoon was just rebranded MIPS?

duskwuff 3y ago
They've made enough modifications that it's no longer entirely compatible with MIPS. But it isn't far off, either. Ironically, MIPS Technologies sold off all their remaining rights to the MIPS architecture a few years ago and is now trying to pivot to RISC-V...

duskwuff 3y ago

> Hmm... Is China betting on RISC-V chips? In a word: YES. A ton of companies are already shipping RISC-V hardware, mostly in the microcontroller sector but rapidly moving to larger parts. (Off the top of my head: GigaDevice, Espressif, Allwinner, WCH, Bouffalo, Kendryte...) These devices are shipping in end-user products right now -- they have a lot more momentum than Loongson, who've been making their MIPS knockoffs since the mid-2000s with limited uptake.

hakfoo 3y ago
It seemed to me like Loongson was sort of a "compliance" product. There are no doubt plenty of "we want to own the ecosystem end-to-end" forces who have cheque-writing authority within China. They'll bankroll homebrew parts even if they aren't really competitive to achieve that goal. Or it could be more based on their willingness to play a longer game-- they can take 20 years to get to competitive if they have to.