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.
I would like to see actual benchmarks though.
The third generation is noisy because it is in a small format case and with very deficient ventilation that I can't solve.
Would work wonders, I guess.
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 ...
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?
It was a MIPS little endian, which is also very good. I can't remember if it was fanless or not.
"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.lemot...
They seem pretty expensive for how weak they are, so probably not much point in buying them besides to play around with the architecture.
> 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-loon...
It may sound irrational to ask this kind of question, but marketing killed the meaning of "nm" a long time ago. As reference, through electron microscope the sizes of Intel 14nm seems equivalent to AMD.TSMC 7nm [1]
[1] https://www.techpowerup.com/272489/intel-14-nm-node-compared...
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).
But that's probably why Loongson isn't on it, capacity is probably being spent on Huawei's next chip.
But the machine is still noisy. I also got a nvidia 1050ti small format into it, and it completely breaks the small flow path that exist. The flowpath is provided with the cpu fan and a plastic piece to redirect the flow.
Lately is having some very nasty blue screen of death. That when I look online they say might be produced by the RAM failing. But running mem86+, one stick at a time and both stick together, always pass with 0% error. So I am getting out of ideas.
There are two types of games: finite games and infinite games.
Finite games have fixed rules, a winner and loser, etc.
Infinite games don't have fixed rules, conventions are just conventions to be tested/broken, and the goal is not to win but to stay in the game for as long as possible.
Most games in the real world are infinite games. "Winning by merit" is a finite game not an infinite one.
But more directly, worrying about one part having a backdoor is a lot better than worrying about twenty parts having a backdoor.
LoongBT, faster x86 and ARM binary translation, 213 instructions
For a meager 1.6 million phones sold to date.
Again, 7nm is a fantastic milestone for a forge that does not have access to newer ASML equipment, but context matters.
True a good video about it from Asianometry
"China's 7nm Semiconductor Breakthrough"
Also Huawei has a quite capable AI offerings:
https://loongson.github.io/LoongArch-Documentation/LoongArch...
They're unrelated things. A Chinese dragon is more like a unicorn than a western dragon.
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.
Now of course they are all sanctioned and Huawei is sitting pretty with years invested in a sanctions proofed supply line.
I'd be surprised to see anyone seriously thinking that way outside of the western bubble.
I personally can't even recall what exactly they were accused of. Probably something typical along the lines of "tech theft" or clandestine? I do remember all this happening during Trump presidency, who was already attacking other Chinese companies (e.g. forcing Tik Tok to sell shares). And that there was some heavy competition for 5G stuff at the time.
My impression (and definitely not mine alone) was that it was all about clearing the market.