Podnebesna continues to develop its own branch of electronics development and production. Many companies from China are doing well, but now we will talk about Loongson, which develops processors based on its own LoongArch architecture. Now the server 3C6000 is presented, which lags behind the competition by only three years. Details – under the cat.

What kind of processor is there?

A few days ago we wrote

about the 3A6000 chip

, which has excellent prospects. Now let’s talk about the server variant, the model named 3C6000. It is based on LA664 cores and, according to some experts, the chip is able to compete with AMD processors based on the Zen 3 architecture. They are still in use now, but appeared around 2020.

The 3C6000 has up to 64 MB of cache and four four-bit channels of DDR4-3200 memory. A little later, the 32-core 3D6000 will be released, which will include two 3C6000 crystals on one substrate. Both chips are compatible with MIPS ISA, which is necessary for compatibility with software developed for previous generation chips. Unfortunately, the company has not yet disclosed the frequency of its server processor. As far as we can tell, the 3C6000 is designed with an experimental chip in mind that helps test the DragonChain technology. It is something like a bus that connects the processor cores.

According to experts, in the near future the technology will be used to increase the number of cores in server processors — first to 32, and then to 64. This CPU is intended for the server segment, and in the future within the same generation, Loongson plans to release a CPU with a larger number nuclei So far, Longsoon has already managed to provide support for 128-bit and 256-bit extended vector processing instructions (LSX and LASX), as early as 2023. The instructions were also in the chips of the previous generation, including the 3A5000, but they were artificially deactivated. Now, as far as we can tell, it’s all working.

It is likely that this processor is China’s move to import substitution technology based on American inventions. It will be recalled that the USA banned the export of its technologies to China for reasons of “national security”, so that this does not mean.

Note that the chip itself is based on the architecture that Loongson Technology developed practically from scratch in 2021. It is called Loongson Architecture or LoongArch. Loongson developers said that the new architecture’s command system includes about 2,000 unique instructions

The new processor was developed in order to replace AMD and Intel products in the Chinese domestic market. However, it is still unclear whether the new processors, including Loongson’s 6000 series with 16, 32 and 64 cores, can be used in the field of high performance computing (HPC). It is there that Intel Xeon and AMD Epyc stand out very strongly.

There is not enough information

Despite the fact that Loongson has been developing processors of the 6000 series for about two years, there is no detailed information about the new products yet. Nevertheless, the Chinese have already announced that the 3C6000 will compete with AMD Ryzen and Intel Core, as well as with the 3D6000 for productive workstations, which will be rivaled by AMD ThreadRipper.

It is worth noting that the Chinese work quite actively. So, from the time the first line of processors was introduced in the People’s Republic of China to modern chips, it took only a year and a half. Separately, it should be noted that Loongson has nothing to do with x86, ARM, MIPS, RISC-V and other architectures, it is the company’s own development.

Faster, even faster

Third-party experts believe that the company and its chips are developing faster than their US counterparts. The Loongson company is about 20 years old, in fact, it is a rebranding of BLX IC Design Corporation, founded in 2002. It appeared three decades later than AMD and Intel, but makes the city more visible successes. Shares in the company and part of the technologies belong to the Institute of Computer Technology of China, the Academy of Sciences of the Celestial Empire and the Jiangsu Zhongy Group of companies.

The manufacturer claims that the processor will be able to compete equally with AMD Ryzen 5000. In addition, the new chips from China will be able to compete with Core 11 generation Tiger Lake, which were released in September 2020. However, when the Chinese talk about “equal competition”, then

allude to

only single-threaded performance, so that’s something to keep in mind. The frequency of the chips is about 2.25 GHz, maybe even more, if China can achieve increased performance while maintaining energy efficiency.

It is worth noting that Loongson created the Godson-3 chip back in 2008. The project was a difficult task, about 300 engineers worked on it, and the development itself was funded (and is funded) by the Chinese government. Yes, several trillion US dollars were allocated for the development of the industry a few years ago. Since that time, chips have gradually become more complicated and improved.

What’s next?

As far as we can tell, China’s chip design and manufacturing industry is gaining momentum. There are, of course, complications that affect the overall progress, but these problems are usually not that big. If the company succeeds, it will capture the very large domestic market of China, which needs more and more chips.

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