Chinese chip designer Loongson last week teased products that it claimed will deliver the same performance that Intel and AMD achieved around five years ago.
Loongson develops its own instruction set architecture called LoongArch that draws on RISC-V and MIPS and is thought to rely more on the latter. The processors aren’t leading edge, but that hasn’t stopped the likes of Lenovo porting software to LoongArch – probably thanks to China’s government strongly encouraging use of locally created product.
The chip shop last week staged its very own “Industrial Ecosystem Conference” to discuss its roadmap and show off systems built by partners. At that event, chairman Hu Weiwu addressed an audience that included senior government officials and mentioned a forthcoming 3B6600 desktop processor that “can reach the performance of the x86 processor under the 7nm process.”
Intel delivered 7nm processes on the desktop with its 12th-gen Core processors (aka Alder Lake) in 2022. AMD got there three years earlier with 3000-series Ryzen silicon using Xen 2 cores baked on TSMC’s 7FF process.
Loongson is therefore teasing a chip capable of handling many everyday desktop chores, but not satisfying those who need a high-performance desktop part.
Its own account of the conference mentions 37 partners that collectively showcased “dozens of Loongson architecture industrial computers, servers, and industrial controller products and solutions.” Loongson is keen for us all to know its processors can do a job in mines, factories, and for infrastructure like energy and water production.
Another news nugget the biz hopes you appreciate is that its products contribute to the evolving autonomy of China’s digital economy.
Which, for now, appears capable of delivering PCs based on an exotic processor architecture that’s three to five years behind Intel and AMD (and Arm, for that matter, which showed off 7nm chiplets in 2019).
Loongson doesn’t disclose which foundry it uses to create its products, but in theory would struggle to find one that can do much better than 7nm – given restrictions on imports of advanced semiconductor tech to the Middle Kingdom. ®
