No matter your emotions on the trendy Chinese language state, you need to admit that it is affordable for the nation to need to obtain technological independence. Whether or not it is affordable to assume that the nation may truly obtain such a factor is debatable, nevertheless it’s trying increasingly more seemingly by the day.
The true fascinating information from the announcement was that its next-generation Godson 3A6000 processors primarily based on LA664 structure will match the instructions-per-clock (IPC) of AMD’s Zen 3 processors. That is additionally much like Intel’s Eleventh-generation Tiger Lake CPUs. Loongson has been dedicated to bettering its single-threaded efficiency for the final decade, and it appears these efforts have paid off.
Loongson itself ran SPEC 2006 on a Ryzen 5 5600G and a Core i7-1165G7 in addition to a simulation of its personal 3A6000 CPU. The outcomes bear out related IPC for the three chips, nevertheless it’s price noting that the Loongson chip just isn’t anticipated to clock increased than 3GHz, that means that the precise realized efficiency can be a lot decrease than its international counterparts. The ultimate efficiency deficit is basically right down to fabrication course of, in keeping with Loongson.
Heady fans would possibly sneer at this type of last-generation efficiency, nevertheless it’s vital to place this in context. Loongson is utilizing its personal instruction-set structure; these aren’t x86-64 suitable CPUs. The structure is home-grown from the bottom up, though EE Occasions China notes that the brand new chips characteristic the “introduction of abroad applied sciences,” at the very least if Google Translate is to be believed. No clue on what that may be.
Naturally, software program assist is a priority for any CPU utilizing an uncommon instruction set, however Loongson is understandably keen to notice that it has mainly every thing open-source working on its chips, and it additionally has a translation layer for x86 to LoongArch, although there is not any phrase about how briskly it’s. Loongson is anticipating to launch the 3A6000 and 3C6000 CPUs subsequent 12 months, with an MCM 32-core mannequin coming later within the 12 months.
Pictures courtesy of EET-China
