Chinese chip designer Loongson last week announced silicon it claims is the equal of western semiconductors from 2021.
Loongson has developed a proprietary instruction set architecture that blends MIPS and RISC-V. China’s government has ordered thousands of computers using Loongson silicon, and strongly suggests Chinese enterprises adopt its wares despite their performance being modest when compared to the most recent offerings from the likes of Intel, AMD, and Arm.
Last week’s launch closed the gap a little. Loongson touted a new server CPU called the 3C6000 series that it will sell in variants boasting 16, 32, 60, 64, and 128 cores – all capable of running two threads per core. The company’s announcement includes SPEC CPU 2017 benchmark results that it says prove the 3C6000 series can compete with Intel’s Xeon Silver 4314 and Xeon Gold 6338 – third-generation Xeon scalable CPUs launched in 2021 and employing the 10nm Sunny Cove microarchitecture.
Loongson also launched the 2K3000, a CPU for industrial equipment or mobile PCs.
Company chair Hu Weiwu used the launch to proclaim that Loongson now has three critical markets covered – servers, industrial kit, and PCs – and therefore covers a complete computing ecosystem. He pointed out that Linux runs on Loongson kit, and that China’s National Grand Theatre used that combo to rebuild its ticketing system.
Another customer Loongson mentioned is China Telecom, which has tested the 3C6000 series for use in its cloud, and emerged optimistic it will find a role in its future infrastructure.
While we’re on China Telecom, the mega-carrier operates a quantum technology group that two weeks ago reportedly delivered a quantum computing measurement and control system capable of controlling 128 qubits and of being clustered into eight-way rigs that allow quantum computers packing 1,024 qubits.
Chinese media claim the product may be the world’s most advanced, and that the Middle Kingdom may therefore have become the pre-eminent source of off-the-shelf quantum computers. ®
