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China Develops Their Own CPU: The "Dragon Chip"
vaxzilla writes "China's People's Daily
Online is reporting in
this article that the Computer Institution of the Chinese Academy of
Science have developed a new CPU, which they're calling the Dragon Chip.
The report isn't clear on the technical details of the chip, though it
does state, somewhat confusingly, that it, `is based on the RISC
structure, a totally another standard. Therefore, it will not fall into
the intellectual property right trap.' They're running Linux on the chip
and have built a server around it, Soaring Dragon. It looks like China is
starting to tell both Microsoft and Intel to take a hike. Interesting
times are ahead."
Yay China!
maybe because they don't like palladium either?
X(7): A program for managing terminal windows. See also screen(1).
I didn't realize chinese people actually made a lot of references towards dragons.. i thought it was like a western misconception or something.. either way, this sounds like an exciting chip.
Now they can run their firewall cheaper and more efficiently, without worrying about getting help from outside sources. They should have a really easy time oppressing their people from here on out.
Are the Chinese going to release their mods to the GPLd code when they distribute their version of Linux? Is there anything anybody over here can do about it if they don't? In particular, will the US government, usually real quick to condemn IP violations and theft when there's money involved, lean on the Chinese government to obey the GPL?
It would be interesting to figure out the CPU details from the code they release...
Infuriate left and right
Cyberpunk, here we come.
"Your superior intellect is no match for our puny weapons!"
If they look like big gobs of random, evolved circuits, we'd better go looking for fake spaceships in the Taklamakan desert.
What we call folk wisdom is often no more than a kind of expedient stupidity.-Edward Abbey
For the fire breathing Soaring Dragon!!1
Will they be called Double Dragons?
..........FULL STOP.
...or their internal codename, Soaring Middle Finger to the West.
Don't get carried away admiring the Chinese government and institutions for these "innovations" quite yet.
Free Tibet, then let's talk about basic human rights for the people of China.
Remember, this is an extremely oppressive government that will use technology to harm people. I hope they fail.
Article here:
This server is not slashdotted...yet.
If I had a sig, this is where it would be.
Hmmm....
If the hardware design habits of the Chinese are anything like their software programming efforts, then the Dragon will be reverse-engineered and rebranded Pentium.
They probably didn't even have to reverse engineer it, just give a spy an assignment codenamed "INTEL HACKED BY CHINESE"
...
The new chip is rumored to use the rarely seen iterative data fetch instruction (ANDTHN) to retrieve data from ram (really annoyed memory). In keeping with the RISC philosophy, this is the only instruction the cpu supports when interacting with other entities in the system.
;))
(if you haven't seen "dude, where's my car" this will make no sense. so go watch the movie
News for Geeks in Austin, TX
with the Dragonball chip
"I would say that 99 per cent of what my father has written about his own life is false." - L. Ron Hubbard Jr.
I think it's great. Let China create more of a playing field for companies interested in chip manufacturing.
Personally, I'd like to tell MS and Intel a few things my self. More power to them!
Built a sparc, maybe? If it's running Linux, you'd have to assume that they've cloned a chip linux runs on.
...it will be pretty ironic, considering RMS himself is a communist, and the people taking his software license and ripping it to shreds whilst he watches and can't do a damn thing about it -- are communists of the true kind.
Sweet sweet revenge.
The Pacific link between Peking and Seattle, which America and China use to communicate has experienced a
It is also reported that hacker wars between the two countires are on hold until the posting is phased out some time tomorrow.
it doesn't contain DRM features.
They say the chip won't conflict with IP because it's RISC. Obviously that makes no sense, as CISC instruction sets can't be copywriten either (obviously)
There are a few open source chip designs though, I think sun may have done that with one of their SPARC designs (or perhaps community sourced it). And there may be some free MIPS cores out there.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Is it just me, or does that article sound eerily 1984ish? The People's Daily....massive growth reprorts/expectations....Might be beacuse I just read the book, but still, the resemblance in the writing hit me like a wall...and this IS coming from the country that blocked Google....
I'll bet SPECint and SPECfp are through the roof!!!
China, as far as I know, doesn't have suitable factories to fab highly integrated chips of this kind. On the other hand, Taiwan does, and a lot of them at that. So many, in fact, that Taiwan is eager to find companies that want to outsource their production. For the Chinese companies it would make good sense in many aspects, because of the proximity, the culture and language they have in common with the Chinese from Taiwan.
However, this seems to be a project very dear to the Chinese govt., and I don't suppose they would want to outsource it to Taiwan with whom they could be at war any moment.
What other options would China have? Honk Kong? Russia? Perhaps Malaysia (they have some big fabs, too, although not as advanced as the Taiwanese).
Sigged!
"the Dragon Chip is proved to be very sound in performance, steady and reliable in operation and utterly sufficient to meet the working requirement of the server and website"
'utterly sufficient'? is that like 'majestically plain'?
"I would say that 99 per cent of what my father has written about his own life is false." - L. Ron Hubbard Jr.
Whoops I mean that's so red.
>considering RMS himself is a communist
He is?
I don't remeber him saying that...
If you could be told what you can see or read, then it follows that you could be told what to say or think - BoC
China to the US: "You can oppress your own people your way. We'll oppress our people our way, thankyou."
.. their dragon chip and renamed it the dr@g0n. I'm almost done with an emulator which will make the dr@g0n run like the x86.
When I'm done with that, I'm going to get xbox to run on the chip and then hack that to run linux and then add Wine to emulate an xbox.
Hold on.. there are guys with red coats at my doo...
Live web cams
What's going to happen to the chip from here though?
It would be interesting to see where it goes from here in the world.
Although it is unlikely that it will pull up the roots of Intel anywhere else in the world it is still going to prove interesting.
I hope they take the spirit of Linux and share their source (even if the comments are in chinese).
I read an interview with one of the Dragon Chip
project leader (Dr Hu) a few months ago in a magazine. It gives a lot more details if I can
still recall correctly.
The reporter interviewed him after their team booted into Linux successfully with their prototype chip (or I should say FPGA implementation). Follow the common practice, they have written a C simulator for the chip, followed by hardware logic verification with FPGAs. I think the latest news is refering to
the completion of the initial silicon design.
The team focuses on the hardware design. The proposed chip is compatible with the MIPS instruction, IIRC. For the floating point
arithmatic, it follows the IEEE 754 standard. That's why they can boot to Linux to verify their
design quite early on without too much tweaking.
The targeted performance is close to PII. Not too bad for an embedded microprocessor at this moment... But, maybe a bit old when they commerically release it. But, as long as they can find applications into consumer electronics, the chip may get a good life like our good old Z80, HC11... Nevertheless, it is a good achievement consider the fact that the bulk of the team has no previous MCU design experience.
According to the estimation of the Ministry of Information Industry the semi-conductor market in China's mainland will witness an annual growth rate of 35 percent before 2005 to reach a scale of 40 billion US dollars with the chips needed to amount to 17 billion pieces. By the year of 2010 China is going to turn out the second large semi-conductor market in the world.
Of course, the Ministry of Information Industr had a gun to their head when they made this statement.
They are also quoted as saying "Arr your crip berong us", which, when translated, means: "All your chip are belong us"
Live web cams
America, call your priest for last rites, your burial is soon!
China hasn't been communist for quite a long time; there's plenty of private industry (both local and foreign), and significant disparity in wealth between the rich and the poor. It's essentially a capitalist one-party state. It's still socialist in some ways, though mostly unofficially (a lot of the large private companies are indirectly controlled by people in high places in the government).
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
and the Processor Serial Number (PSN) issue.
I'll bet anything that the Dragon has this same kind of thing implemented, and a person's internet habits (at the bare minimum) will be sent back to some huge database controlled by the Chinese government -- who will monitor every move a person makes, most likely. Of course, this is just my speculation.
A huge invasion of privacy if you ask me, but then again, this is the Chinese government you're dealing with.
The quote you cite is saying that, from a national defense standpoint, the PRC must not depend on foreign technology (since if the political situation got bad, China would not be able to get any more computers, which would put them in a weak negotiating position, don't you think?) This is exactly the same rhetoric you get from the US government, and it has nothing to do with "secret transmitters", which you just made up.
There is another factor to consider in this story. China, like most other far-eastern countries, is known by the U.S. software industry as a "one disc" country due to alleged piracy of commercial software. If this is true, that would mean that, say, 99% of the Chinese got their copy of Windows for free.
If the Chinese get their Windows for free, but prefer to develop their own chip and run a free operating system on it, imagine what that means: That they'd rather undertake enormous expenses to achieve reliable computing than use Microsoft's garbage for free.
Now THAT is an intelligent choice.
Welcome to Chinese Computer. please try your Nice Chinese Computer With Keyboard the traditional and typical of Chinese glonous history. and cultual.
I wonder what why they had such a weird message?
--Chag
...as Number One, A-OK, chief!
The article doesn't make any mention of DRM-enabling technologies like Palladium embedded on the Dragon chip. So if you value freedom, support China, I guess.
I dread the day when Chinese citizens talk amongst themselves about the funny things Americans can't do with their computers.
He who refuses to do arithmetic is doomed to talk nonsense.
Since when has IP ever been an issue in The peoples Republic of China? They don't obey international laws. They have jet fighter pilots who like to fly too close and crash into USA spy planes. They have a thing for stealling software like we could only imagine in the USA. They have the comfort of not having to worry aout IP-cops in China. They distribute pirate copies of MS code like you could not belive. To read this article and see it talk about being worried about Intel's IP on processor technologies, and then be so naive to claim that since they are based on a RISC arch that they are immune. Ha! The fact is that even RISC's are entangled in IP. The only reason they can get away with certain architecture designes is because China doesn't have to obey forign IP rights. Another issue mentioned inthe article is the idea taht China has defence issues to worry about, and the reliance on forgine tech is bad for them. This I belive more than anything else. We, the USA, asked Sony to stop fabricating the Emotion chip in China fabs because it is actually capable of being used in guidance systems for rockets, and capable of being installed in parrallel to form supper computers. So China needs its own processor technologies, and they need to coem true with the notion that they dont' actualyl care about the USA laws, or existing tech in the field of proc fab.
It isn't a lie if you belive it.
The Chinese RMB, on the other hand, is worth a lot less. It's worth 1/8 of a dollar, and average people earn only about 1,000 RMB a month, if they even have a job. A halfway decent, probably barely usable computer costs well over 8,000 RMB, making it out of reach for most workers because they spend most of that money on food and housing anyway.
One reason for the high prices is because of the fact that much of the parts are imported, and only assembled in China under the brands Legend, iBuddie, etc... If this archetecture of chip gets popular in China, more of it will be produced within the nation, making it less expensive, then soon after will come cheaper motherboards, the cases are already made in China anyway... This would mean lower prices, making personal computers within the reach of a lot more Chinese. So, this chip, I say, is a Good Thing(TM), and a step in the right direction.
At least one government is pushing forward technology in their country instead of limiting the shit out of it (ala DMCA, DRM, etc).
Oops, I've said too much. Pretty soon they are gonna start rounding up supposed communists again.
The distinction is fading quite a bit. Modern x86 chips have RISC cores, but have additional hardware outside the core to translate the CISC instruction set to the core RISC instruction set. On a true RISC chip, the translation from higher-level constructs to lower-level opcodes happens in software at the compilation stage. The functional and performance difference between the two approaches isn't really that huge anymore, since this CISC->RISC translation doesn't slow things down a whole lot.
Now what does slow things down is the hardware having to deal with parallelizing code in the pipeline and avoiding all the variou ssorts of problems that can cause. Both RISC and CISC chips generally do this in hardware. The Itanium is the first to abandon that approach, and say "it's up to the compiler to make sure stuff doesn't mess up when we pipeline." Speeds things up a lot, but makes writing compilers damn near impossible, and writing hand-coded assembler completely impossible.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Speed is made up of roughly 2 components - clock speed and IPC (instructions per cycle).
Clock speed comes from 2 factors - technology and pipelining. Technology implies high level, extremely expensive fabs. Pipelining is a well that has run dry (today's processors do very little in a pipe stage, and it's simply not worth it to make them do less).
IPC you get from a complex core (you usually add more microarchitectural features to the processor to allow it to retire more instructions per cycle). Complexity however implies longer design and (even more important) longer testing. It's no wonder there are so few players left in the microprocessor area (the costs are huge).
A small retail price, obviously, comes from mass production. China is indeed a huge market, but more in terms of population size, not income. China's GNIPC (gross national income per capita) in 2000, as reported by worldbank, is ~ 750$ per annum.
Allow me to be skeptical :))
(as always
The Raven.
The Raven
C'mon! I'm dying to know!
Unlike the ugly, nasty, Western types, most Eastern Dragons are beautiful, friendly, and wise. They are the angels of the Orient. Instead of being hated, they are loved and worshipped. Temples and shrines have been built to honor them, for they control the rain, rivers, lakes, and seas. Many Chinese cities have pagodas where people used to burn incense and pray to dragons. The Black Dragon Pool Chapel, near Peking, was reserved for the Empress and her court
Special worship services took place there on the first and fifteenth of every month. Dragon shrines and altars can still be seen in many parts of the Far East. They are usually along seashores and riverbanks, because most Eastern Dragons live in water. The Isle of the Temple, in Japan's Inland Sea, has become a famous stopover for pilgrims who meditate and pray to dragons. Both male and female dragons have mated with humans. Their descendants became great rulers. The Japanese Emperor Hirohito traced his ancestry back 125 generations to Princess Fruitful Jewel, daughter of a Dragon King of the Sea. Emperors in many Asian countries claimed to have dragon ancestors. This made them so proud, that everything they used was decorated with dragons and described in terms of the dragon: dragon-throne, dragon-robe, dragon-bed, dragon-boat. Calling an emperor "dragon-face" was a supreme compliment. People believed that rulers could change themselves into dragons. For hundreds of years, Japanese emperors sat concealed behind bamboo curtains whenever visitors came. Anyone who dared to peek was condemned to death.
Everything connected with Eastern Dragons is blessed. The Year of the Dragon which takes place ever twelve years, is lucky. Present-day Oriental astrologersclaim that children born dunng Dragon Years enjoy health, wealth, and long life. (1964 and 1976 were Dragon Years.)
Dragons are so wise that they have been royal advisors. A thirteenth-century Cambodian king spent his nights in a golden tower, where he consulted with the real ruler of the land a nine-headed dragon. Eastern Dragons are vain, even though they are wise. They are insulted when a ruler doesn't follow their advice, or when people don't honor their importance. Then, by thrashing about, dragons either stop making rain and cause water shortages, or they breathe black clouds that bring storms and floods. Small dragons do minor mischief, such as making roofs leak, or causing rice to be sticky. People set off firecrackers and carry immense paper dragons in special parades. They also race dragon-shaped boats in water all to please and appease their dragons.
In the late 1800s the flag of China had a dragon in it.
Statues of Dragons
I think I speak for everyone when I say that I hope Microsoft lives in "interesting times." :-)
Just try streaming some Falun Gong media on one of these Dragon CPU's
There are over a dozen companies in the U.S. that develop their own CPU's all the time (in the form of Microcontrollers). For example, TI, Motorola, Microchip, MIPS and many others. It's not just Intel, AMD, and VIA that know how to make CPU's.
There is no way that this chip is completly original anyway. All the know-how on developing it probably came from the U.S. or Europe. All you would need is a few textbooks, datasheets, and a few good engineers for development. With enough time/money any company or government could develop their own CPU.
Dragon Ass - The slowest, 'value priced' chip
Dragon Drop - Mid-range chip for publishing
Dragon Racing - Fastest chip for workstations
Cake or Death? Cake Please!
And the total goatse.cx like reaming they have taken over the last few hundred years, you realize that Western Democracy is not exactly perfect either.
Still, it is a valid point that you make.
END COMMUNICATION
word has it that this dragon chip is actually an uncooled AMD processor which will quickly burst into flames, hence the "dragon" name.
If it weren't for the software being made available in source form, this level of adapability would not be possible. If they were forced to use Microsoft, they'd have to create some level of virtual machine in order to run NT or the like.
So let's ponder that open source not only makes the software more available, but also the hardware choice. The source was in front of them. They have all the labor they could want and I'm guessing they pay just as much for the programming expertise as they do for rice field workers (next to nothing). Now we can run anything we like and still get the Linux that the world is just beginning to become comfortable with.
Hardware independance. Software vendor independance. If I didn't know any better, I'd say those were a bunch of damned capitalist pigs taking advantage of the free labor of others to their own advantage. (Did they release the source code of their changes?)
Congratulations to the Chinese -- they aren't the enemy that the Soviets were and the women are hotter too.
Of course with the translation issue and all, the entire article was rather "interesting" (I was imagining a talking head with the English coming out, but with the lips mouthing the original Chinese). But anyway anyone else find this line very curious?
...". Man, talk about double talk.
The Dragon Chip is proved to be very sound in performance, steady and reliable in operation and utterly sufficient to meet the working requirement of the server and website.
"Sound", "steady and reliable", "utterly sufficient". Huh? Sounds like Sparc market speak for "yeah our performance sucks, but it runs lots of software and you don't need that much performance anyway. Oh and just in case you do, you can get the 512 processor version when we ship it next quarter, or maybe the quarter after that
Imagine a bayorroof cluster of these!
Buy a damn thesaurus and dictionary set - I hear Amazon has them cheap.
Let's praise China based off a socialist rag the Chinese government puts out. You're all a bunch of leftist sacks of shit. I hope you all die.
They'll have 3 gongs at the end.
chinee can't build CPU with chopsticks????
They probably just figured out how to copy a Pentium III circuit by circuit.
At least now their missles will be aimed at the US by a respectable home-grown chip instead of discarded Playstation circuits.
Some of the unique things that this CPU will feature are:
* Automatically reallocates all system devices to have equal priority, bringing your system to a slow crawl.
* Chip will spend all of its spare cycles figuring out how to stop you from using productive applications and networking with other computers.
* Keystroke logging functionality integrated with automatic emailing capabilities to the state police.
* If running linux with sendmail, makes sure that the service runs as an open-relay for spammers
"Quoting famous computer scientists out of context is the root of all evil (or at least most of it) in programming." - K
This is what i'm talking about. Go China.
Tell those MS and Intel bastards that the rest of the world still rules!
Yeah!
....the problem is that an hour later your application still wants more.
----- In Your Cubicle No One Can Hear You Scream...
Well the beauty of RISC is the PII target performance can easily be ramped up to a P4 3G by simple manufacturing upgrades. ...Just like any other chip produced in the past 10 years, or in fact any CISC chip produced within the past 20.
:).
Linewidth scaling makes *any* CPU design faster. CISC was abandoned because it was very hard to pipeline, not because of some magical barrier to linewidth stepping.
Even the pipelining limit is a soft one, because with enough translation stages you can map any CISC set on to a RISC core - which is exactly what every x86 since the Pentium Pro has done.
Sorry if I'm venting, but you were the lucky post that finally made the "uninformed comment" bucket overflow
If a "Dragon Chip" is in any way related to a "Cow Chip," I predict its performance to be shitty.
I believe that this is a very short-sighted and narrow-minded view of what's happenning here. This is not about being able to spy or citizens or having control of citizens' computers. This is about having economic freedom. It's about building an technologically based governmental system and economy built from the ground up in a way which is not regulated by Western governments and corporations. It is similar to the Linux movement and that's why they're getting Linux to run on it.
By building computer systems from the ground up on their own hardware, own chips, own Linux builds with their own applications, they are no longer on the leash represented by terms of service agreements with intel, microsoft, and any other company and have the freedom to do their business their way.
And I greatly admire this sentiment because it represents a 100% swing away from being controlled by anyone and anything.
And don't just think of this in the context of China! The scope of this is much bigger. For example, why do we use Linux? It's because we want to achieve freedom from the requirements, restrictions, fallacies, and roadblocks imposed by using solutions owned by big companies with who knows what code in them. We use Linux because we control it and it represents freedom from the restrictions of some other software maker. China has taken this one step further and has built their own architecture so they can do exactly what they want with no silly restrictions designed to channel money so some exective in a Western office tower. Wouldn't you like to do that?
I give TWO BIG THUMBS UP to China and their initiative in making a non-half-assed attempt to build their system their way. They have the long-term vision to realise that they need true economic freedom from the West to achieve modern-day economic greatness and I admire their initiative. I wish we were all so lucky.
Looking at how many /.-ers claiming it(the design) was stolen from US, people should remember without the contributions of einstein and other great german thinkers where the heck would the US be? Let's also remember all the greek, romain thinkers who contributed to science before USA was created. Also, many of technologies taken for granted today came from Asia. Contrary to Egotistic idiots in the US, not everyone thinks we are the bastion of creativity or technology. Makes me ashamed to be a US citizen, with all ignorant jerks in the country. go ahead and flame me cause I'll just ignore it.
Interesting that there's a big advertisement for Visual Studio .net on the page as I read this article . . . . . .
I saw Dragon Balls on the menu the last time I went out for Chinese food. They said that it tastes like chicken.
Sigs are bad for your health.
It's almost certainly a stolen design, because capitalist efforts have proven to rely far more on creativity than communist efforts. Communism breeds laziness, theft, and sloth. Capitalism breeds competition, creativity, and advancement.
Will these chips be powering their rice cars?
So... if these chips suddenly go up brearthing fire and smoke, we'll have the perfect reason why, right?
And so we go, on with our lives
We know the truth, but prefer lies
Lies are simple, simple is bliss
Amen Brotha!
Comment removed based on user account deletion
A reference to an Old English work about a Sweedish hero fighting in Denmark on an American website's story about a Chinese processor.
You've geat mojo.
This guy gets modded to a 5 just because he flames the west (read: USA)? The fact is that "western" economies are far more conducive to creating new products than China. It has nothing to do with race; every race in the world is heavily represented in the United States. Ditch communism and *then* take righteous offense over slights like this.
Let's see $40 billion divided by 17 billion CPUs roughly equals $2.35. I think that AMD and Intel are going to be pretty scared and their stock is going to drop pretty fast when China starts exporting the Dragon CPU.
I don't know if anyone has noticed but Western countries are at the beginning of an economic war with China. I've seen it already happening with tools during the past 2 years. Automotive tools from China are being sold for 1/2 to 1/3 the cost of Western made tools. How can we compete with an economic giant where the average earnings are only $750/yr?
In the early 70s, if you purchased something "made in Japan", it was considered a joke and poor quality. We've seen how that has changed over the past 30 years. Made in Japan now indicates a quality product. I believe we are seeing the same growth cycle happening now with China except that it involves a country of 1 billion people.
I think that Western nations should start to get worried about the future of their industries....
came up with are gunpowder, clocks, noodles, nearly all of our domesticated livestock, nearly all of our decorative flowers and plants, civil government by competitive examination, cotton, silk, Lacquer, the compass, paper, printing, paper money, kites, riding horeses, the horse collar, the plow, the princple of the helicopter, the wheelbarrow, matches, medicine, . . . etc., etc., etc..
Just who is standing on who's shoulders? Why on earth do you think people bothered the risk of the "Silk Road?"
Not to mention the fact that in modern times Chinese researchers have walked off with genuine Nobel Prizes.
Don't mistake China with China's government of the mere last 50 years or so.
KFG
I wouldn't be doing too much celebrating just yet. IBM, HP/Compaq/DEC Alpha, Sun, and several others hold lots of RISC chip technology patents. HP just recently sold their patents for the Alpha chips to Intel to produce the rather crappy Itanium chips. To say that they aren't violating any of Intel's patents is entirely premature.
HDGary secures my bank
...with being associated with communism in the past. Great, now no "red-blooded, patriot capitalist" is going to take us seriously. :)
Why bother.
Just what we need, more low rent, poorly built
junk. As if there isn't enough of this crap in
the Wally World already.....
I won't be getting one.
surely to be a hit...
what the hell is this... a mirror of news.com and news.google.com now? this story is OLD! HELLO WAKE UP. STOP POSTING OLD STORIES!
Wasn't Jimmy Carter an Engineer of some type? Nuclear?
"Nuc-u-ler." It's pronounced "nuc-u-ler."
3.4 Gigaplant obeys all known architecture normalcy!
Newest and best for electronic number machines!
Joy increases self 34.5% over time!
Small potatoes make the steak look bigger.
I claim this First China Blows Post in the name of freedom!
My next rig has a commie CPU.
nuclear Pronunciation Key (nkl-r, ny-) adj. Biology. Of, relating to, or forming a nucleus: a nuclear membrane. Physics. Of or relating to atomic nuclei: a nuclear chain reaction. Using or derived from the energy of atomic nuclei: nuclear power. Of, using, or possessing atomic or hydrogen bombs: nuclear war; nuclear nations.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I think Herbert Hoover was an engineer as well. Sounds like engineers have a pretty great record as presidents. Perhaps it is because only the dumb engineers seek political office.
Degaussing scares the bad magnetism out of the monitor and fills it with good karma.
Can you imaging the US having an Engineer as a president?
Herbert Hoover was an Engineer, and that was back when being an Engineer actually meant something.
Somebody doesn't watch enough Simpsons.
outside of his job description, he was quite an intellectual. Can you imagine an intellectual as president today? Not just a Bush joke, either. A wave of anti-intellectualism has overtaken this country. It's really sad...
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
There's not much use in handcoding assembler anymore. Compilers have been good enough for the past ten years or so that it's hard to beat their optimizations by handcoding.
I used to write a lot of performance critical code and often examined the compiler's code--on many different platforms and many different compilers--to see if there was any tweaking I could do or any tricks it had missed and never found anything worth changing. Well, a minor thing here or there, that maybe contribute a percent or two improvement. But by far the largest gains were changes that required domain specific knowledge, which could be accomplished at the source code level.
If there is a lot of character-by-character string processing, for example, much more can be gained--on the order of 20% in some cases--by translating the chars in a string from 8 or 16 bits to the cpu's native integer type, since that's what the processor is optimized for.
(that China continually tries to block).
cpeterso
Comment removed based on user account deletion
The reality, as you point out, is that the people in China is mainly poor, and don't have the ability to own a computer.
True, but misleading. Factor in China's huge population, and even though most Chinese may fall into the above category, you're still left with a middle class population of a couple of hundred million. There are as many potential customers for these sorts of goods in China as there are, say, in the US or Europe.
(And that's why American companies are so eager to get into Chinese markets.)
-- Alastair
The U.S.A. is a service economy. Goods cost too much to produce here. Remember when you bought a product that said "Made in the USA?" That used to mean quality but now it means expensive crap. Nowadays, you always find "Made in Taiwan, Made in Mexico, Made in China, Made in India." Products made in the US will be overpriced and underpowered (like MACs).
Its not just him. Take a look at Clinton. Whether or not you like his ethics or policies, you have to admit that he was genuinely smart. But he downplayed it like anything. Since when did it become bad to be smart? I *want* my president to be smarter than me. I'm not smart enough to run the country, so his ideas better be over my head.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
In his book "Computer networks", Andy Tanenbaum describes this ingeneous method that the Chinese Govt. could use for DES cracking (by brute force, searching through all 2^56 keys): Every radio and TV set in China comes equipped with a chip that searches through a portion of the keyspace assigned to it; when one of them hits it beams up the answer. Now just imagine! If the dragon used spare cycles for cracking DES, and a billion Chinese used the chips, DES can probably be broken in hours :)
Having actually used the internet from China.....
The Great Chinese Firewall and the restrictions
on internet cafes are largely a joke. Coverage is
spotty, and it takes about 30 seconds to figure out how to circumvent it. Ironically, I found the
e-mail spam filters in the United States to be
a far more annoying problem than the Chinese Firewall.
Ironically, I found internet access *easier* to get in China than in the United States. It's dirt cheap. Most cities have a public access PPP dialup server which means that you don't need
to fumble around getting an ISP and dialup account.
From the perspective of free software, losing copyright isn't such a disaster. You couldn't compel people to cough up modified source code anymore (causing the GPL to behave more like BSD), but you'd simultaneously gain the right to freely distribute and/or plagiarize anything you wanted-- including proprietary source code that some disgruntled employee posted to usenet.
One of the fundamental reasons to use the GPL vs. straight public domain is to prevent someone from just making a few changes to your free code, then using copyright law to prevent you from using the new work. This is why the GPL was first invented. In a society without copyright, that's not such a concern.
I'm not saying that a world without copyright would be a perfect place, but I certainly don't think it would be a disaster for projects that currently use the GPL. They'd probably be better for it. While Microsoft might be able to plagiarize a little bit of free code, their business model would basically collapse. Linux, on the other hand, would get along at least as well as BSD does now.
The formal name of the dragon chip is Godson. It is not x86 compliant but MIPS III compliant. The specification is very rough, 0.18um CMOS, 8k data cache and 8k instruction cache, 32 bit integral WORD and 64 bit float WORD. According to the news report, it has some unique character such as buffer overflow protection. The stated performance is ambiguious. One artical said at 12.5Mhz, the integral performance is roughly about half of a 486/50, and the float performance is equal to a 486/50. In the news website, they said it is about a PII. But in the formal report issued by the Chinese Academy of Science and Technology, they claimed at 200Mhz, its performance is about a 180Mhz MIPS R5000 (maybe dual cpu)SGI O2. The highest frequency is 266Mhz. After one year preparation, it will be put into production. I suppose it can't be seen in the retail market and the biggest buyer is surely the Chinese government.
i cant rememeber the name since im really fucked up now, but there was a chinese heritage chip back in the day that was the shit becuase it was the first to hit 666MHZ
The Naval Academy is a real university, and it's better than most.
Jimmy Carter was trained as an engineer probably moreso and better than the average Slashdot reader who self-identifies as "engineer".
Sheesh. "I hoped this has helped a little." Yeah, right.
You're correct only insofar as it's true that the American public doesn't think much of anyone that smacks of intellectualism and rarely do contemporary candidates emphasize their academic credentials. Carter's status as a real engineer, in fact, worked against him as it was used to validate the view that he was a hopelessly naive scientist/engineer type out of his depth in big-time politics. And, honestly, there was probably truth to that at the time.
Invading Taiwan is unnecessary. All of the major
Taiwanese semiconductors are moving their plants
to be near Shanghai. There's also a massive
brain drain as Taiwanese companies are moving
all of their key personnel onto the Mainland.
I have a friend who works
with a Taiwanese semiconductor plant who thinks
that in five to ten years, all of Taiwan's fabs
are going to be in the Mainland where the cost of
labor and land is hugely cheaper.
And people are missing the PRC's *real* strategy
for taking over Taiwan. It figured out that
threats and weapons are ineffective, so it's
offerring investment credits, huge markets, and
business incentives to encourage Taiwanese
businesses to relocate to the Mainland. There was a PRC official who was quoted as saying that the
PRC's strategy now is not to invade the island but to buy it. That strategy appears to be working.
The Taiwanese government has not come up with any effective countermeasures. Trying to restrict trade with the PRC act
ually makes things worse, because it doesn't stop the outflow of capital and brains, and insures that none of the benefits flow back to Taiwan. Removing restrictions to trade, will mean that brains and money will flow back to Taiwan, but it will make Taiwan extremely dependent on Mainland capital and make the "buyout of Taiwan" much easier.
No one in Taiwan seems to know what to do, except take advantage of the PRC's incentives.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
... what with oppressing Tibet, keeping democracy out and enforcing a 1-child policy via compulsory abortions, I would have thought they'd have their hands tied. I suppose there are a few billion of them.
Seriously though, why don't they overthrow their government? Don't they know?
True, but somewhat incomplete. Having taken lots of trips to Taiwan, I've noticed that pro-China sentiment (especially among young people) has increased considerably in the last two years (particularly in the last year).
The numbers right now are about 70% status quo, 15% independence, and 10% unification, but there does seem to be a noticable shift from
status quo to be "more" unificationist.
One *really* big change in the last three years is that in the past, pro-unification Taiwanese were also strongly anti-communist and anti-PRC (remember that the pro-unification Taiwanese were mostly KMT who were expelled by the Communists). Within the last three years, the PRC has started getting the support of the pro-unification Taiwanese.
So the number of Taiwanese who are pro-PRC is about 10-15% which doesn't sound like much except that it was essentially zero five years ago, and it really changes the characteristics of Taiwanese
politics. Imagine how different the Cold War
would have been if 10-15% of the American public were openly and loudly pro-USSR.
Things I like from what I've seen:
:)
1. The usual "Okay, we'll get it right this time" mentality you can get from a new architecture.
2. The mention of stability in the press release. Nice to see that. Am I the only one who cares about the machine remaining up?
3. Likely low price, cool running (if it's on a small process and relatively low-performance).
4. Cool name. Why do so few processors have cool names? The K6-III had a brilliant codename ('Sharptooth' IIRC) and a thoroughly boring market name.
5. It may oppress me politically, but at least it probably won't give me a fuss about ripping MP3s.
However, I have to say to the marketers: Give me an interesting market niche. It's almost overkill for most embedded needs, and underkill for a "normal" desktop. Perhaps they can deliver a sub-$8000 Internet Fridge (don't laugh, LG makes one) Or given their server market play, a new supply for when all the old P1xx machines you would have turned into light-duty servers get sold off.
It's just like a fascist dictatorship, without the punctual rail service!
Buying Chinese chips to remain free is not that stranger than having to buy tickets into space on Russian rockets.
:v)
Vik
Although I congratulate the Chinese on this excellent decision, I cannot help but feel the dangers involved: If such world powers move to Unix, *and* also save themselves from crippling DRM technologies being cooked up here in the west, by the west's CPU manufacturers, they will end up with an easy technical hegemony. They will have fast, secure, free systems while the west wallows in the proto-fascist and muddy results of "war against {Piracy, Drugs, Terrorism, Anything-not-Christian,...}". Imagine the incredulence of a chinese teenager 10 years from now when (s)he hears that our CPU's refuse to run any software not mandated by the state, and that posessing CPU's not so protected will get one executed without a trial. Imagine that, when that same teenager can run and toy with Linux from a young age, and be creative and innovative with it.
Ring! Ring! A Bell should be ringing in our heads now! Or does it "toll" for us, instead?
Those communist bastards probably designed their chip so that it automatically blocks google...know what I'm sayin'?
Some points:
* I doubt it is an entirely new chip design - porting Linux to a new architecture is a lot of work, I expect it is based on an existing design - quite possibly disregarding patents/I.P.
* Microsoft will be very interested in this new CPU, because it presumably doesn't run Windows, (not necessarily, it could be a rip of of Transmeta's RISC-style technology, which is X86 compatible).
* The GPL doesn't say anything about having to make stuff available to everybody - it just says that you cannot restrict others' rights. There is also provision for geographical restrictions - if the newly GPLed code is patent infringing in the U.S.A. it cannot be exported to the U.S.A. the GPL allows such an exception
* China will most likely want to open the design up, they have nothing to loose by that
* If they are making a non X86 compatible CPU, it gives a clear indication of how interested they are in Microsoft's apparent 'ignoring of piracy in China policy'.
this may offer more insight in to the spawning of home-grown technologies: it shows the relation between Chinese culture and the adoption of Linuix in China:
I am, for one.
This is about having economic freedom.
I can confirm that; the Chinese have virtues of frugality that stretch back 5000 years. In addition, Chinese businnesspeople value material goods (ie: cash, gold bars) over intellectual property. This, combined with virtues of frugality push Chinese "free market" and government techs toward open-source or IP-free projects, such as Red Flag Linuix, and now the Dragon CPU.
This post was intended to inform those that, while politics play an important part in the open-source, "anti-IP" movement in China, ancient values of the Chinese culture are also a powerful influence on its success there.
I thought this was supposed to be the anti-WinTel, free-the-silicon-proletariat chip.
Guess the Chinese proletariat must be more lumpen than ours.
Time for a new distro: Lumpen Linux!
Imagine how much harder physics would be if electrons had feelings! -Feynman, maybe
The president is [more or less] elected by the "people" of America. Have you taken a look at the "average" American lately? You know, the one that can't get your McDonalds order right to save their lives. The one that deletes their \Windows folder and wonders why their computer doesn't work. The one that when you read your account number over the phone, after the first three digits they go "Hooollld on now, you're going too fast. Start over." *sigh* I think we are electing who we "feel comfortable with", and that isn't going to be Mr. Wizard.
I'm Rick James with mod points biatch!
Dear J. Maximus,
your comments about China breaking away from Intel and Microsoft domination are correct to a point.
This will certainly allow the Chinese to develope their own version of the internet! There own servers built with their own chips using their own transmission protocols and packet switching standards.
Right ON! thus the Chinese Government will eventually achieve their domination over the internet and internal information by creating and providing the own internal version of the internet to their own people!
This development prevents the contanmination and corruption of Western ideas and news from reaching the majority of the Chinese!
...there might be 1,5 billion Linux users in china running red flag linux on dragon chips.
OK, realistic figure would more like 2/3 of the whole population, just one billion users.
RMS is not a Communist; if he were, he would have written a "Manifesto", like Karl Marx did.
He's also not a luddite; if he were, he would have written a "Manifesto", like Theodore "Ted, The Unibomber" Kazinsky did.
Uh... Oh... Er... Wait...
-- Terry
Go China! Go China!
If only they weren't a dictature they'd be nice
To make an incredibly unpopular comment, I will point out that even at over 1,000,000 people (a gross overestimate by the news media, IMO), nation-wide, in China protesting their government at the time of Tieneman Square, that's a really tiny fraction of the population.
In fact, it's 1/10th of 1% of the population of China, at the time.
The moral equivalent in the U.S. would be if all the people camped out in and around Hayden Lake, Idaho (~250,000 people) demanded that the U.S. Government change to suit them.
Also, FWIW, the U.S. currently has about 6 times that many people in prison -- an an equal number of police officers.
Should we let our own dissidents dictate our form of government "because there's a lot of them"?
The people involved in both cases are tiny minorities of radical dissidents, and aren't representative of the will of the overwhelming majority of the general population.
Yeah,the numbers seem like large numbers, but it's really relative.
-- Terry
You all seem so eager to jump on the Chinese bandwagon. I hope you realize that this article is nothing more than the characteristic Communist propaganda that should all be familiar with. Are you stupid? Would you buy something from a country that oppresses its people and runs them over with tanks when they protest? That blocks its peoples' Internet access so that they will not see things the government does not want them to see? That forbids parents from having more than two children? How can you support this! At least in America and other countries we have the freedom to protest against our government. This is what makes our countries so much better than China. Let's not take so much for granted, people.
Anyway, I hope you realize the economic ramifications of this. You thought our economy was in bad shape now? If the PRC succeeds at putting out this chip at a lower price (which I think they will, since they do not pay their laborers hardly as much as we earn here) that is going to mean many American jobs down the drain. Why build a system using a $200 Athlon when you can buy $50 Dragon chip. We will impose tariffs to prevent that. That is our government looking out for our best interest.
I hope you realize the fallacy in your thought, those of you so quick to praise China and its Communist propaganda.
I hope you learn.
That is, even in China you certainly can make all the cracks about Mr.G. "Clever" Bush - no one's gonna hurt you for that!
------------------------ Optimists learn English; pessimists learn Chinese; realists learn Kalashnikov
No one would make that mistake... the Dragon chip apparently has an MMU.
The Motorolla "DragonBall" CPU (the CPU used in the "Palm Pilot" and similar toys) doesn't have an MMU. Without an MMU, it's useless for running a protected mode OS with virtual memory.
Yeah, there's a couple of kludgy ports to the thing (a kludgy Linux and a kludgy BSD 2.9, last I heard), but they are just as unstable as the PalmOS (or Windows 3.11, for that matter), because of lack of memory protection.
I don't understand why they don't put an MMU into the "Palm Pilot" or other devices. Maybe they *like* having the things crash because one idiot writes one bad program, and stomps on everything else so bad you have to hit the rest buttin with a paper-clip.
Maybe we all need to compare PalmOS to Windows 3.11 more often and more loudly, to shame them into putting in the extra square millimeter of doped silicon into the surface mount plastic case...
-- Terry
If it walks like a communist
And quacks like a communist
Then it's a communist
those sneaky chinese like to steal. they have their agents in the university and in industry pumping secrets back to the motherland. make no mistake, no matter how well they speak english or how well they blend in here, their loyalty is to china.
When Intel and Microsoft got entrenched in the windows/x86 architecture development of PC almost stopped. Sure we have faster CPU but its in reality ancient and built on very old specs. Microsofts heavy battle against everything crossplattform capable has tied us down on x86 hardware. There are million of ways to make CPU's but we use the oldest one even today.
Fierce competition would have evolved computers long away from x86 if it wasnt for the tie in to x86 and windows. Sure the US has benefitet in short term by the monopoly but when competition stop innovation stops also. Now just about any country with cheap labour can take current development in stasis and run with it.
If you dont believe me take an old 386 DX and compare it to a brand new Intel Pentium, the similaritys are stunning.
HTTP/1.1 400
Sure, he started out as a German, but he had the wrong relatives for them, and they chased him out... to where? I can't *hear* you! Yes, that's right... America.
The first man to fly flew as the passenger on a kite; but since the new technology would have rendered the old technology of the Great Wall obsolescent, the Han Emperor had him put to death for it.
The first military use of gunpowder was Chinese, as well (in rockets); the general was honored for his victory... and *then* put to death for destabilizing the social order.
Your other point... "lettuce" consider those great "romain" thinkers...
As for ancient thinkers in general... sure, they gave us Ptolomey, so that we could enshrine the wrong answer and persecute Galileo, but what have they done for us lately?
Call us back when the Chinese sequence the human genome, or their MIPS III clone processor runs at 4.8 GHz, K PLZ? THX.
I'd like to know few things of these cpu's, how do they perform, is it totally compatible with other RISC cpu's, i mean is it 100% to the standards, whats it price, will it be available all around the world, where to get a mobo and other hardware for it, and a lot of specs about it, like heat dissipation, etc...
;) and put it endure things like overclocking and liquid cooling (-15C), and high temperatures among other things. ;)
And do we now have a new competitor on the market? i really would like to see more competition on the cpu markets and especially variety.
I'd like to get a system running it to my test bench
btw, the article has nicely a lot of typos related to word server typed as sever, i wonder why is it that way... engrish
Pulsed Media Seedboxes
...and who can imagine what is to come from the People Republic of China?
Can we say, "Next nuclear superpower?"
SIERRA TANGO FOXTROT UNIFORM
How long until RMS tells us we have to call it GNU/Dragon?
By reading this comment, you immediately waive any and all rights regarding it.
A Beowulf cluster using Dragon cpus.
Just sounds right somehow...
Wonder if they'd call it Grendel?
threadeds blog
How could you possibly have inferred from my statement that I was saying communism and democracy are mutually exclusive? The Democratic Republic of the Congo is neither communist (in name or in practice) nor is it a democracy (though it does have that in the name).
The substance of my comment was that claiming that China must be communist because its ruling party calls itself the "Communist Party" makes about as much sense as claiming that the Democratic Republic of the Congo must be democratic because it has the word "Democratic" in its name.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Just a very occasional visitor here.
//dsf/Phoenix, AZ
The motivation for China chip sounds like a bunch of holdover Maoist horseshit. Mao, Nehru, all those 3rd world bozos trying to reinvent the wheel, they end up with a bunch of wheels that don't work.
Nice to be visit your world.
However
and
Can you say chinese Palladium?
The People's Republic of China and Taiwan.
I'm not worried about any IP rights violations in the beginning, because Intel, AMD, Motorola, TI, or whoever is making similar chips could get Chinese imports blocked from our economy until they get that matter resolved.
Nor am I worried that the Chinese will develop a private version of Linux and not release it under GPL, because as many other posters have pointed out, a private tree would be hard for them to maintain, and would reduce their general compatibility.
What worries me about this is that China isn't exactly known for its pioneering efforts on behalf of minimizing the impact of the technology industry on the environment. I am worried that, in their efforts to introduce this into a world marketplace, they won't follow the minimum environmental requirements that the rest of the industry deals with. I think we should be prepared to ask any company that announces they're looking at using this chip whether they've ensured that those standards will be met, and that we are prepared to hold them accountable for the actions of their suppliers.
I'm all for more chips in the marketplace. I might even buy these if I get in the market and there is an English-language Linux distro (or, better yet, maybe OSX? Wouldn't that be Steve Jobs' best coup, porting that BSD-based OS to it? (Can I say coup when talking about Communist China without being shot?)). But the environmental standards must be followed.
Get off my launchpad!
Actually Technically you should have a degree in Engineering to call yourself an Engineer, otherwise your a Technician.
oh yeah..Clinton was just a friggin BRAINIAC... nice one... moron
Right then! If China is moving 'forward' how about they stop raping and killing people in Tibet for a start.. as well as their own people?
I mean, Chinese goverment designs a new CPU, which runs Linux right and American geeks (um,we are under threat too, NATO member here) party about it.
You don't think they will run games with it right?
Maybe with new CPU, they will catalog the goverment haters etc, more quickly. Or who knows? Add a REAL backdoor (you know,the conspiracy theorists) to it?
Like guys declare a war to USA, people sees those missiles coming, some geeks say "Look man, you know? It runs Linux", "wow cool"
I am trying to tell an irony here. Geez, just say "GPL", you get some sort of support... What kind of a fanaticism is this?
...so, if honourable East Asian nation of large population nuke loud, brash section of Americas (mostly part between Mexico and Canada), honourable East Asian nation continue to be able to get processor. Also, can nuke without fear of software or hardware backdoor giving tipoff to enemy or interfering with launch, guidance or business afterward.
Which begs the question: what effect would nuking Washington have on the USA's computing ability? Substantial improvement? IMHO, it would be better for the USA to strike first by disbanding microsoft and assigning many of their previous employees to Open Source projects.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
Since when did it become bad to be smart?
:)
Andrew Jackson. It's been 170 years now, you've missed the fight.
Although oddly enough, even though it's called the "Silk Road," what mostly came back from China was tea and laquerware, silk was too expensive, even for royalty, to make much of a trade route.
But the *real* reason for the road east was India and *pepper,* India gave the world most of its spices. The upper classes could live without silk, but it would be damned if it would live without pepper.
KFG
before the US lets go of the past, that's why we're rattling swords to bomb Iraq and won't rest until Afghanistan is a US 'protectorate.'
We're still kinda sore at Mexico too for putting up such a fight at defending 'our' land.
The past created the present, and will create the future, and there's plenty of blame to go around. If everyone wants to shake hands and make friends that'll be ok by me, but you'll have to convince 'them' to go along.
KFG
So, will the chip have DHRM (Digital Human Rights Management) ?
Thank you for re-affirming the worlds view of you.
A bunch of ignorant, arrogant, xenophobic morons.
Reading the majority of comments has made me realise why the world is the way it is.
Do me a favour, take your gun and kill yourself.
You'll be saving humanity.
Regards,
Anonymous Coward
Maggie Thatcher was a chemical engineer before she moved into politics.
Interesting times are ahead
"They say it's very boring there. Their biggest curse is 'May you live in interesting times,' apparently."
Interesting Times, Terry Patchett
-= If you fight Dragons long enough, you will become a Dragon =-
...for imports from China?
To benefit workers in industries in which American companies can't compete due to very expensive regulation (minimum wage; workplace environment standards; disability; collective bargaining; parental leave; health care; etc.), some dumbnut president is bound to suggest that we try to keep foreign goods out with tariffs or quotas.
Witness W.'s protective tariffs for steel.
The natural impulse for government will be to protect special interests (in this case, unionized voters) against the evils of the free market, instead of telling them what they don't want to hear: that they should find a new profession, since the one they're in can't make them the amount of money they are used to making without artificially inflating prices for the rest of the public.
I don't know about you, but I am simply not willing to pay more than I absolutely need to in order to get the goods and services I want, just to subsidize the ability of someone to continue working in a job that would be better sent overseas. If the quality of the Chinese-made goods is the same as or similar to the quality of the USA-made goods, and the price is lower, then I'm going to buy Chinese; done and done.
Free trade increases efficiency and, in the long run, will raise standards of living for all people. Pat Buchanan and the Jurassic-era conservatives are living with leftist union shills in a fantasy world of 50's America. Libertarians and the 80's-90's conservatives are the ones who truly understand what makes America great, and it isn't artificial trade barriers. =)
[ home ]
In Colorado, We have Allard who is a veternatian. But this man has voted 100% against anything dealing with the environment, until this year, when he is up for election. Just what I wanted; a state that looks like texas.
ie. without copyright law, the GPL would be unnecessary, therefore that stupid argument is totally null and void.
Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken - Tyler Durden
I don't think you realize what the Chinese are trying to do.
By developing their own CPU and operating system through official government sanction, it gives the government a way to effectively spy on Internet users because the government knows how everything works and will very likely use this knowledge to attempt such control. You are forgetting that mainland China is still in many ways an authoritarian state and the government is more than willing to spy on its own people to stamp out enemies of the state such as the Fulan Gong movement.
Does the book 1984 have any meaning to you? Mainland China is headed in that direction if government control of hardware and software technology has its way.
Let's not forget what happened to memory prices once the asian manufacturers started getting in on the act. In no way will a Chinese manufacturer be disinclined to export these devices once the performance is up to snuff. If they can produce computers that are affordable to a Chinese consumer, what will the US prices be like? Meanwhile, in WinTel land...
As far as they are concerned Intel represents the NSA.
is that everything that is "Made in USA" is being replaced by "Made in China", so most likely we will see the Texas Death Chamber's computers will be running Chinese chips soon. You know those chambers with as many execution as ALL of china. Yep, we do things right.
The funny part about this is that everybody speaks about China vs. USA, but it is the top 100 companies who have been switching to manufacturing in china. Soon it will be our engineers. Lastly, it will be our business ppl that we will ship to them for having destroyed America. This is called capitalism, folks.
Any more Texas-Style Accounting??
China hasn't been communist for quite a long time; there's plenty of private industry (both local and foreign), and significant disparity in wealth between the rich and the poor. It's essentially a capitalist one-party state. It's still socialist in some ways, though mostly unofficially (a lot of the large private companies are indirectly controlled by people in high places in the government).
The government owns the big companies; that is the definition of communism (ownership of the means of production by the "proletariat"). Since that hive mind thing has been a little slow in development, the proletariat are, er, represented by the government. But since they don't know what they really want and need, their true desires are implemented by an elite; the Party. They don't need an actual vote, you see.
None of that has changed. Call me when it does.
And Communist contries have always had significant disparities between rich and poor. The Party elite are the rich.
What is this, the eighties again? "They are too just like us! Well, except for that voting thing, and the government owning or controlling all the companies, and the gulag. Um, shut up, you McCarthyite!". Am I going to have to listen to all that tripe again with China?
Wouldn't it be ironic for Americans to have to use Chinese products to remain free?
No, but it would be a great service to mankind, to have a second front in technology manufacturing which doesn't represent the interests of the RIAA, MPAA, John Ashcroft, Microsoft, etc. Keep Intel and AMD honest, compete on true horsepower, rather than horsepower-code_to_restrict_rights. Of course, we have some awful law passed in this country where they could try to block it at the border. Maybe it's an opportunity to throw 'freetrade' on WTO terms right back in Washington DC's faces.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
This is all fine and good until some big fat corp takes that code, decides they own it or key modifications and blocks you out. China is just another big fat corp, except they get to make their own laws.
We shall see if China's lip service to information freedom is real. It's hard to imagine a country that openly practices censorship as commited to any kind of freedom. Chineese companies are infamous for patent infrigement, so all this railing against the "intelectual property trap" looks like a practical measure based on fear of trade reprisals. Looks and sounds like "Yankee inginuity" of a century ago, when the US ignored European patents. The US kept it up until it had enough "intelectual property" of its own.
The original question was if the US would lean on China for GPL violations. The answer, given the history above, is NO. Nor will they bother to enforce BSD. The US will only bother to limit imports if sufficient loss of royalty income is seen. Software that comes "for free" with a widget? Forget about it. That's going to include computers like the Dragon Whatnot.
DMCA, Hollings, Palladium. What might have sounded like paranoia is now common sense.
in a beowolf cluster
:-)
Unless some of the other (i.e. non Sino-govt-propoganda site) news sites are getting bogus information, you're going to need one hell of a cluster. These Intel-killers are supposed to run with the blistering power of a 486. Some other people have posted saying that "they don't mind if it's a bit slower, as long as it doesn't have Palladium." Well, here's their chance to put their money where their mouth is.
If the article I linked to is right, China plans to go from 486 to Pentium III level performance in one more year, and then to "the then internationally advanced level in 2005" in 2005.
That some hella good espionage, if they can pull that off. Moore's Law? Hell, the Chinese can set a new standard of their own, they'd be going so much faster.
On the up side, if they can ban (or throw heavy tariffs on) imported chips from Intel/AMD, I suspect Linux use will skyrocket. Why? Well, if you've ever tried using Windows XP on a 486, you might have some idea...
May we never see th
if you buy the new processor from china, you may be supporting international terrorism.
:-)
im sure one of the chip makers will be using that excuse soon enough.
This development prevents the contanmination and corruption of Western ideas and news from reaching the majority of the Chinese!
:( Is there nothing we can do to end this accursed diversity?
Oh my God, you mean there will be a culture we can't twist and reduce to just being a mirror of our own? But this is terrible
"TCPA / Palladium will also make it much harder for you to run unlicensed software. Pirate software can be detected and deleted remotely."
Now think about this in terms of national security for a second. If you have processor embeded tech that allows corporations to see things in your systems, how secure do you think your systems are going to be?
Moving to an OS and chip combination that allows you to keep your information secure is going to be a big priority.
7. What we cannot speak about we must pass over in silence.
"It looks like China is starting to tell both Microsoft and Intel to take a hike. Interesting times are ahead."
given that the whole of china bought exactly ONE copy of windows, i somehow doubt that microsoft will miss their patronage much
Discalaimer: I was a Nuclear Engineer in the Navy (have since left the Navy to pursue other career interests).
Unfortunately I think I may see what they are attempting to do. Although I do enjoy seeing Microsoft and Intel being pushed away, I do notice some things here. And that is that China is trying to isolate itself. China is closing up her internet, putting the entire country under a firewall so others can't get in and they can control all of their users. And here comes the start of making replacements for big international companies which they will now push away. Just a though however...
A requirement to even be considered for the Navy's Nuclear Power Program (as an officer as was Pres. Carter), you have to already have an ENGINEERING degree.
Most of clothes Americans wear are made in China. Because Americans love their freedoms only on limited basis - just to speak about it. When it comes to money - no one American remember the word freedom.
is the date of print on the cover page.
:)
That is a well-known fact even in China.
So dont take this news too seriously
Well, the ARM-backend of gcc certainly didn't fall in this category 3-4 years ago. It was trivialy easy to improve it's code by 50%-75%. And that's while the ARM is very straightforward to optimize for even automaticaly.
Ouch. We're bloody awful when we start running countries, aren't we?
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
I know several of your supposedly 'true engineers' who flunked out of sub nuke school. The people who work with the reactors almost all have eng degrees and have gone through at least 6 months of navy training that puts them at the top of their field. None of them have a problem getting a job when they get out.
Not to mention the training and drills that they go through in dealing with the pressures of saving a ship that is sinking or going through a melt down.
Compare this to the fact that a pretty good percentage of Electrical Engineers work at pretty mediocre jobs or, imagine this, aren't very good engineers.
In a pressure situation I'd put my money on Jimmy Carter any day over someone like Dean Kamen(the segway guy) who for all we know would just wet his pants in a tough situation.
oh, and the people i know who flunked out did so more because they couldn't deal with the pressure than because they couldn't pass technically.
You could install Linux on it.
No DRM on Motorola CPUs (yet), or IBM CPUs (yet).
No need to wait on vapor CPUs to satisfy your need for 'free' CPUs.
GPL Deconstructed
Intel was aware for quite a while that China will likely use all their new US-financed chip factories to compete with them. So they are trying proactively to hire every Chinese with any CPU design knowledge. With hiring them away Intel can delay their obsolescense by at least a year or two, which is all the CEOs need to cash out. They are very smart indeed! Go INTEL!
"steady and reliable in operation and utterly sufficient to meet the working requirement of the server and website."
:)
Yup, "utterly sufficient" is what we should all stive for.
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Comment removed based on user account deletion
China is stealing the talent the same way America have been stealing talent from all over the world: With Money. 90% of the Chinese students who studied in the states stay in the states working for some American companies with H1-B visa.
The econemy of the states going down and the tech sectors unemployees American are blaming H1-B holders taking their jobs. In the mean time, China is becoming the new promising land of getting rich quick, a lot of them return home and bring along with them the know-how and technologies.
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon?
What's with the dragon metaphor?
so whom did china copy this time? intel/amd/someone else? the server runs linux... cool!!! is there 'corporate code' in there that 'backs up' your most intimate secrets behind the Great Firewall of China?
I dont know what china's intentions are but if they are trying compete in America it seems like they should try to build a software following as opposed to hardware. Maybe by building this cpu they can create a larger software base, shrug. If you like at the top 10 richest guys in America, you have to wonder maybe a lot of these countries should be in software, even japan. Their economy is struggling lately.
---- Berlin Brown http://www.newspiritcompany.
The Russians developed a RISC based chip about 5 years ago. Its similiar in performance and in specs to the chip found in Sun Blade 100 workstations, so its a bit outdated. The Russians were never able to make much out of it except for putting it into their Soyuz Capsules. The Chinese about two years ago asked the Russians if they could "borrow" the design. I dont know exactly what came of it, but I'll bet a 100$ that this chinese chip is really Russian! Does anyone have anymore info?
http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=5613
I think Google really appreciate China's blocking of the site. Before China's blocking of Google, Google is only known with in the geek and nerd circle. When China blocked Google, it became famous to general public over night. My dad was asking what Google is after he read it on the news and the news was everywhere.
I think the fame comes with blocked by China government will do a lot of good to Google's pending IPO.
"The semi-conductor market in China's mainland will see an annual growth rate of 35 percent and a requirement of 17 billion chips before 2005. By the year of 2010, China is going to be the second large semi-conductor market of the world.", he said after ordering heavily armed police in riot gear to begin herding people into state owned electronic stores.
I read the People's Daily from time to time. I read it for laughs. Its downright funny how obviously doctored some of their news is. Check out the Falun Gong section under 'Editorials'. You'll see articles saying things like "Falun Gong practitioner says she witness no abuses at re education camp. 'Police there are very professional and kind', she said".
Therefore, I am taking this article with salt.
Quite recently I've noted that even if Microsoft/Disney succeeds in outlawing Open Source, there are plenty of nations other than the US which have adopted Open Source, and I would like to see Microsoft try to force China into using windows.
Go ahead, thats 1 billion people and a nuclear power.
ObMeTos go to people who wrote that "China is no longer economically communist" and were concerned that China will not honor the GPL.
Of course this system will be prone to a lot of crashes, everyone knows how bad Chinese drivers are!
The article claims that Dr Sun, the big cheese at Taiwanese manufacturer VIA, is the only person able to challenge Intel. Okay, VIA is a successful outfit. And, if you count in their motherboard and other products, maybe they are bigger competition to Intel than AMD? But AMD shouldn't really be ignored.
In her autobiographical book "Red China Blues" Canadian journalist Jan Wong has a brief chapter where she described interviewing Mao Zedong's grandson. He was, IIRC, the only descendant to bear Mao's name. And he was a big loser. Dim-witted. Incredibly spoiled. Someone with no accomplishments of his own. What did he want to do with his life? Well, he thought he would like to go to University in America, where he would study "Mao Zedong thought".
Mao Zedong thought! I would be amazed if there was a single University in the States where you could major in "Mao Zedong thought".
What is my point? One has to wonder whether China is a parochial, insular nation, where many interpret the rest of the world through the distorting lense of widely held prejudices. This article suggests this, as does Wong's anecdote.
If you are interested in China, I am going to recommend Wong's book. Wong is a extremely gifted writer. She is funny too.
Okay, I have read the article twice now, and I still can't feel sure that I know whether or not this chip is an intel clone.
I don't see this as meaningful, because lots of PR types here in the west have wanted to associate their CISC products with the buzz surrounding RISC and claimed that while their chips were CISC, they had "RISC-like elements".
Interesting how this article takes cracks at the oppressive western notion of intellectual property... I thought China offically agreed to respect intellectual property?
A country or community (eg China) that takes a stand and confronts the North american grip over hardware and software standards, is good, as it promotes diversity and gives the example showing we don't all have to follow the same leader, as would sheep. Yet the problem stands also in the restriction that China might create in the country unnableling new technologies and protocols to emmerge. They just might end up doing the same thing as the US in their own country.
It's quite harmfull to give the example, yet then restrict any new ideas. That is the problem. Although only a strong counterpart can threaten such huge enterprises as Microsoft and Intel multinationals. China should fight Microsoft but not other new emerging technologies and companies.
Like human genome: promote diversity not elitism.
The govt is in charge of doing essential but not profitable things like roads, disaster relief, law enforcement, military etc. If the govt feels that access to technology is just as important as access to roads by all means it should provide the infrastucture. By developing and widely distributing subsidized chips and operating systems it enables private enterprise to function smoothly just like providing a nationwide highway system promotes commerce.
Technology changes too fast. My observation from the times I had temp/intern gov jobs is that the government is a bumbling, lumbaring beaurocracy that does not like change. They spend all day in Saftey Meetings and the like.
Private endevours have the risk of bankrupcty and the profit motive to pressure them to not be too political. The gov simply asks for more tax money if they get lame and need a bailout.
Most of the services governments provide don't change very often (even if they should). Who was the last to get rid of punched cards and COBOL?
France once created a gov-managed phone system that had internet-like capabilities. It did provide rather consistent service and did "function", but most are now tossing it for commercial PC's.
Who wants to be stuck in 2003 forever and ever?
I could be surprised, but my observations of how gov works (or doesn't) was not very inspiring. Maybe the OSS model will help China's endevour, but I doubt it.
I am not betting on it, dispite those below who are calling me "idiot".
Table-ized A.I.
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Nope it's got nothing to do with IP rights, Palladium, etc. Nor does it have anything to do with economics, hardware pricing, etc. This has everything to do with processors being required for every piece of hardware used by the modern military. (Ok, maybe not today's rifle, but look at the M-16's proposed replacement.) If you're China, you can't really threaten the US with anything other than a strategic nuclear exchange unless you can make/design/whatever your own processors. This is one of the fundamental pieces required for the Chinese to get into a real arms race with the U.S. and that's exactly why they're doing it. (Point to ponder, what would the arms races preceeding WWII have mattered if Hitler had to import all his ball-bearings from Great Britain?)
Here and here are pictures of the CPU. It claims the performance has reached MIPS R5K which was introduced back to 1997 and was the core of SGI's O2. The highest clock speed is 266 MHz. It's basically a low power CPU targetd at both embedded and general purpose market in China.
MIPS is chosen because its widely available and I think most of the CPU designers are introduced to CPU design by David Patterson's "Computer Architecture: A Quantitative Approach." They also have to pay license fee to MIPS for the instruction set.
I'm working at ICT, CAS and working with the core team designing the Dragon CPU. It's MIPS32 ISA based and can only run at 2xx MHz as we tested several months before, nothing state-of-the-art in the design , only a acadamical experiment, and yes, we run a slightly patched mips version of linux on it, and it's just as same as any other MIPS-based cpu in the market...
> Oops, I've said too much. Pretty soon they are gonna start rounding up supposed communists again.
Oh please. I can guess you've never lived in a true opressive dictatoriship in the third world. It's one thing to complain about horrible laws like (DMCA), but it's quite another to start stating insipid comments about "how they're going to get me for my opinions". Please. Specially, when in the same post you mention a country like CHINA, where you can't even enjoy basic freedoms like the freedom of the press or the freedom to worship whatever God you want to.
Get some perspective.
- sigs are for wimps.
yeah know wonder they keep getting repaired every two fucking years and full of potholes. nd then you get a few lucky construction companies that grease the palms of politicians to get the job.
just one more sign that america's time as the main world power is nearing it's end...we had a good run at it, being only about half bastardish...
We were probably nicer than England, when she was hot stuff...
Globalazation now! this is the time to JOIN the rest of the world, hell, if ya can't beat em...
so........ youre pretty much saying that the chinese leaders get to choose what people can read.
spin however you want. but that is the bottom line pal
...In a related story, Chinese authorities also announced their own email system, called "Open-relay spam the rest of the world til it pukes."
Film at eleven.
Goood info in parent, OK, mr BS filter?
Is that enough?
See...
"And not only does China have (and will continue to have) a vast dirt-poor labor pool"
A bit of an assumption there. True one-billion people is a lot of people. However as China becomes more of an economic superpower, and more amiable to there citizens having wealth. This will change.
We have witnessed such things in history were a country has started near the bottom of the economic ladder and gradually risen, bringing the majority of there citizens up with it.
If Africa could get some kind of unity? They too could be a economic powerhouse.
last I looked an attorney general cant pass law.
congress can though. as far as youre crusade agains ignorance, maybe you should start with yourself.
I am the dragon. For me you tremble!
"I believe that sometimes it could be better when a minority group of dissidents are able to dictate a form of government (for instance, to replace tyranny which has been instituted and sustained by a brainwashed majority)."
Aren't all majorities with which you don't personally agree the result of brainwashing?
"Democracy isn't necessarily the ultimate good. Imagine three wolves and a sheep deciding what's for dinner...."
This analogy works for the first night, if everyone wears their "I am a wolf" or their "I am a sheep" T-shirts, respectively. After the first night, the analogy breaks down.
-- Terry
"Since when did it become bad to be smart?"
You do remember high school, don't you?
Perhaps what the authors of this article were referring to when they mentioned the "intellectual property right trap" was Palladium itself, one mechanism that would drastically change the Chinese approach to installations of computer software in the future.
In that case, they are correct in that there is at this time no known Palladium equivalent planned for RISC processors. That may change in the future, of course, but in the meantime it can probably be assumed that code compiled for an Alpha won't need Palladium support to run...
Of course, I suppose that one of us will have to learn Chinese and read the original article to be sure =)
An embedded system is not a general purpose computer, on which people can run third party applications.
Your argument is valid for an embedded system, in which you control all software running on the platform, and in which your business model doesn't permit for future expansion into markets where there are application specific software requirements that don't result from consulting or OEM work by the original vendor.
For everything else, though, there's a need for protection domains, to act as a barrier between code you (the product vendor) wrote, and code written by someone else, and hosted on your device.
The Palm Pilot and similar devices don't have that.
You can argue that the Palm people didn't expect to have third party applicaitons which weren't vetted by their own Q.C. department, but if that's even ture, it would be because they overestimated their own ability to provide a "whole product", without third party involvement.
The Palm Pilot and related devices are popular today because the PalmOS platform, which may not have been intended to be any more open than your average game console, is in fact now much more open than, say, a firewall product.
Considering your firewall product, you've placed yourself in the position of having to support all third party applications that require an application layer proxy, by yourself.
This lets you manage the stability of the hardware platform you are using, since it lacks protection, but your cost is that every time Real comes out with a new product, or any time anyone else who doesn't know how to design a protocol comes out with a product that needs to transit your firewall to function, the options are only either the application isn't supported, or your company takes on the grunt work of creating the application layer proxy to support it.
IMO, that's not a sustainable business model. As an example: do you already support streaming media for Microsoft Media and Real Player? What about streaming Ogg Vorbis? How about FTP, which requires a stateful proxy?
For every mainstream protocol you can answer "yes" to, there are dozens of emerging protocols, with no clear winners, and even more protocols that are mainstream, but with little deployment in that model (how do you handle NAT-fanout of H.323 connections, for example?).
This is not to jump down your throat on this; I was a senior software engineer for a company that built a similar product (the Whistle InterJet), that did not permit third party access to the platform. I know from cold, personal experience that preventing platform access by third parties is not a long term success strategy.
-- Terry
What's with American's blaming all espionage in which the Chinese received a benefit to potential Taiwanese Spies aligned with Motherland. I just love the gross generalization people make when treating different ethnicities. (Did I just contradict myself, fine, I have multitudes.)
So how many Engineers from Taiwan do you know? And have you conducted a formal poll among them to determine that none of them consider such actions as stealing?
Cue me in on what you mean by fancy weapons and huge investments in Taiwanese industry? As far as I can recall, China has sueecessfully blocked US consent to sell weapon systems to Taiwan repeatedly. Moreover, the American government's foreign policy has nothing to do whatsoever with foreign investments. We are a capitalist country; our industries invest in places where they see they can make the most profits. Be it Nike sweatshops in SE asia or the upcoming chip fab plant of Intel in China, the companies make their own decisions.
Bringing this back to the point of Chinese development of Dragon Chip. Personally, I don't really think the Chinese will willingly open-source their code, but cue me in if I am wrong, I do believe they have some sort of licensing law. There's already a few linux distros made in that area, and they all follow the GPL, but whether that's out of courtesy or law abiding, I don't know. Not to be a broken record, but techinically the Chinese Government is another country, and they can make their own laws about this thing. With the source code freely available, it ain't exactly stealing. Plus the fact that much US policy in IP rights and such are driven by coorporate lobbying...
So... yo, everybody chip in! We are gonna lobby the congress into having China obey GPL. -mischievous grin-.
W
--
don't check my site. Apache is sick.
Engineers also speak PDE, only in a different dialect.
I'd still rather live here then a country that thinks nothing of relocating my entire town, along with hundreds of thousands of other people from homes their famlies have had for over 1,000 years for a public works project that will be usless in 30 years.
China is a much older country with a much higher population and their laws reflect this. I don't know the details surronding any "town moving" stories but thats not exactly "horrific" anyway.
I'd rather live here then in a country that basically forces people to have abortions.
Again this isn't "horrific". China has a huge 6+ billion (guess) population it's reasonable for the government to limit "1 baby per family". If someone chooses to break that policy they must get an abortion. Abortions are legal here... despite personal religious beliefs it's just stopping abunch of cells from turning into a baby. It's not murder and it's not cruel.
I'd rather live here then in a country that kills you for a minor drug violation.
They are just serious about stopping crime and/or drug distribution/use. Do you honestly think the U.S. REALLY tries? We could stop drug use just as easily. Think of how many jobs their are that are involved in stopping drug use. Their are drug dealers in the U.S. because they know if they are caught they will be released in a day. If you were shot for dealing/using drugs NO ONE would do it. The truth is truely illegalizing (and cracking down) on drug dealing would result in a blow to our own economy and would all but obliterate the economy of countries who rely on drug manufactoring for survival.
And people like you who love to bash me as an 'egotistic idiot'... I have nothing against Chinese people. I just don't like the Chinese government, and to that extent, I'm happy for all of the people of Chinese descent who have made it over here.
Honestly a lot of negativity towards the Chinese tend to just be exaggerated 'stories'. I'm not saying they are perfect, I'm sure their were atrocities but hey, the U.S. isn't perfect either. I think for a formerly Communist country they are coming along. If memory serves they will be holding the upcoming Olympics so it's not that bad. Bottom line... don't believe everything you read. Especially on the internet. Also their are far worse places than China to live... personally I think the Middle East & Russia are the worst places to live. (and not because of terrorism)
As for China trying to become IT independant... hats off to them. They aren't the only country to want to do that. I remember a post about Germany wanting to switch from Windows because of alleged spyware. It's naive to think that the U.S. doesn't use IT to spy on other countries.
I'll make you a deal. You pray to God for help and I'll stop the moment he shows up.
Yeah, but I went to a geek highschool, everyone else was as smart or smarter. So yeah, I have some faith left in our society. But middle school bit...
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
Like him or not, it takes a certain level of intelligence to get into the institutions he did (Georgetown, Yale, Oxford) without a big powerful family to sway the admissions board.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
GNU/Linux is not a private entity, it is a public one, anyways. The only difference between non-profit entities like the GNU project and a regular government is that a government has land boundaries
They are very different. For one, there is much less of a hierarchy in the decision-making process. Second, if you want to add a certain feature, you don't have to fill out a million forms and have a million meetings, you JUST DO IT. If others like it, it stays, otherwise it fades. In gov agencies, such would be called "insubordination".
Table-ized A.I.
*shudder* that's a scary thought -- a bunch of ConRail train drivers at the controls of a nuclear reactor.
The reality has already been said by others -- Sub drivers go through more physics and engineering training than most of us "computer engineers" go through at school.
No joke - when a friend visited some distant relatives of his wife and identified himself as an engineer, they asked him which train company he worked for.
According to this article: http://it.sohu.com/83/39/it_article17053983.shtml 266MHz FSB 1.17GHz clock speed 32bit integer 64bit floating point 200MIPS 0.5W power consumption Comparable to a MIPS 5000 based SGI O2. The most interesting feature is the hardware buffer overflow protection. IMHO, it feels like a supercharged StrongARM or MIPS type architecture.
> American companies can't compete due to very expensive regulation...
/year to "help the mentally disabled". My roomate is retarded -- he gets $15/week to pay for a reading tutor. Where does the rest of that $18K go? Workfare. Pointless Workfare. The US story is the same as this, no matter where you look.
Your list needs to include taxation. They #1 problem in the US is imbedded taxes -- to support massive workfare programs.
Quick fact. Buck County, PA gets nearly $18,000 US
> Free trade increases efficiency and, in the long run, will raise standards of living for all people.
Flat out wrong. Efficiency is defined as doing more, for less. Translation: People of existing means will be able to do more -- without you.
> it isn't artificial trade barriers.
You are right, mostly because they nolonger work. A barrier blocking entry to the US does not block entry into Europe, Asia, or the remaining Americas. All places Intel and Microsoft would be left in competition. The US market is not the prize any longer.
Sorry, my post wasn't clear.
They get a $50 million grant each year to "support" about 2,800 disabled people. Roughtly $18K/head.
I'll believe this when someone actually gets their hands on these things and tests them out. It's very easy for a big government to print out a lot of media about a new OS and processer, but actually developing and manufacturing revolutionary hardware and software such as this is quite another matter! I have no doubt that the mainland Chinese government has developed and manufactured 'something.' Whether that 'something' is actually revolutionary or pretty much a rip-off (something I consider highly likely given China's history with things like this) is a matter for speculation at this point. Still, it would be cool if it were truly something new and different. I doubt, however, that such things will ever be sold in the United States (or even most of Europe for that matter) given the large vested interests that certainly wouldn't care for competition.
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools The way to dusty death. --Will
I think you'll find the living standard for steel workers in China to be a tad lower than their counterparts in the USA.
Corporations move their operations to other countries because it's cheaper. Why is it so? Because the workers are paid less.
Free trade will, in the long run, lower standards of living for all people.
Some have pointed out that Carter was quite intellectual. I think he's a good example of how being smart isn't enough to guarantee great leadership.
It's my understanding that the traditional Chinese dragon is not associated with fire but rather with water. It's only in the west that dragons breathe fire. Even better... then we won't even have to worry about fans, because they will all have watercooling built in! ;)
And so we go, on with our lives
We know the truth, but prefer lies
Lies are simple, simple is bliss
I understand the same Chinese company is developing a mobile-sized chip for PDAs and imbedded apps called the Shrimp Chip.
This is my post. There are many others like it. If you don't like what you read here, go try one of the others.
Yeah, that average american is like the slashdotter who argues about copyright protection with the GPL while stealing music and movies on kazaa and morpheus.
Conformity is the jailer of freedom and enemy of growth. -JFK
I also recall reading that Germany ignored English copyrights (much to the outrage of English publishing interests) during the rapid development of German industrial strength in the late 1800s/pre WWI period.
I'd love to play with this. Where can the be had over here?
Do you have any idea how fucking complicated a nuclear reactor is. And how fucking important it is that nothing major goes wrong. You need a guy with an engineering degree to run one. It is pretty conceited to say somehow he is any less of an engineer than say the guy who designed your power steering pump in your car.
I have a life. I really do. I've just chosen to ignore it.
depends. If you operate a railroad locomotive, you are an Engineer. It's been this way for >100 yrs.
There is/are union(s) for Operating Engineers. Don't know what they do, but somehow I think it is probably a technical "blue collar"-type job.
While having a degree in engineering might seem to make you qualified to be an engineer, as far as most states go, to be a Professional Engineer, you have to pass the exams, not necessarily posess an engineering degree. Having worked with a PE who was a Geography grad...
And we won't even touch Software Engineer...
What better mythological creature to construct a CPU after than the all-knowing Dragon, the nature spirit, the Yin and Yang? Does anyone else see luscious computer-case designs with dragons and the Yin-Yang design? Nuff' said, I'll take one ;-)
Try not. Do. Or do not. There is no try.
Bootnote®®
It looks like China is starting to tell both Microsoft and Intel to take a hike. Interesting times are ahead
There have been numerous alternatives to the x86 architecture outside of China, but most of them have flopped:
* National Semiconductor's 32-bit processors.
* Intel's i860 and i960.
* Motorola's 88000 (not the 68000!).
* The DEC Alpha.
* Stack-based processors from Harris.
* Sun's UltraSparc.
* PowerPC (popular, but is not displacing the x86).
Yah, let the Chinese avoid all those silly things like decent standards of living, not dumping waste everywhere, etc. By buying from a system that supports low standards you are just being a hypocrite who inflicts the problems on someone else. You'd never accept those abuses in your neighborhood but have no problem supporting it in someone else's.
"Free trade increases efficiency and, in the long run, will raise standards of living for all people." That is a cliché, prove it is always the case. The late 1800s in the US were barely regulated and there were no protections of any significance for workers. The only standards of living that got raised significantly were those of the owners of major corporations. Even those who didn't work of those businesses directly had their waste and shoddy products inflicted on them. More soldiers died from food poisoning and disease during the Spanish-American war than from combat. Teddy Roosevelt was so disgusted by the quality of food sold to the public and the army and the patent medicine trade that he pushed the Pure Food and Drug act into effect. You would've opposed it as being a burden on "free trade".
Opposing artificial protections for businesses (corporate welfare) is one thing but to oppose laws designed to protect society in general is another. The market is there to serve the public, not the other way around. However if you believe in some union conspiracy theory (in an age when unions have lost power) then you truly are out of touch.
It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning
It would "help a little" if you'd learn how to spell, and then find a subject about which you know enough to write.
be-fan, it's not bad to be smart. It's GREAT to be smart. It's bad to THINK that you're smarter than the US Constitution, get elected President, and then go about the business of circumventing the wisdom and the will of our Founding Fathers. Ol' "Slick Willie" might have been smart, but he damn sure wasn't any Jefferson or Washington or Adams, because he applied his intellect toward one purpose only: achieving what he believed best for Bill Clinton, and the rest of the country be damned. Oh, and one other thought: If he was so smart, how the hell did he wind up married to that witch? Hell, he probably should have held out for Monica, stains and all.
This statement is utterly ridiculous. Without US companies moving their jobs overseas, several things will happen: (a) fewer people overseas will have jobs, meaning they will have a lower standard of living; (b) steel workers in the US will continue to keep jobs with artificially high wages instead of moving to fields in which America competes more effectively; (c) the price of steel will remain high, increasing the price of goods and services that use steel anywhere along the line.
[ home ]
> Flat out wrong. Efficiency is defined as doing
> more, for less. Translation: People of existing
> means will be able to do more -- without you.
I believe you are the one who is flat-out wrong. Free trade increases efficiency by moving production of a good or service to the arena in which it costs least. Output/price is the definition of efficiency.
[ home ]
Okay, here is an article indicating how powerful the Dragon is. Six million transistors, which the article says makes it as powerful as a 486. That may be an underestimate. The original Pentium was about 3.1 million transistors according to sandpile.
6 million transistors is something like a tenth of the a P4, a sixth of the K7, two-sevenths of a VIA cyrix III.
Yup, Chartered Status in the UK - Need Masters to do this now!
Wow, another spiffy announcment from the Happy News. After living there for 18 months, you realize that not only is there no real content, but that it's random propoganda for foreigners.
Speed of a 486? Not bad. The local people at the joint venture I worked at were buying brand new top of the line Pentium 90's with 14" monitors. It didn't matter anyways, all the computers deployed in the offices were just $2000 pillows for everyone busy sleeping all day.
Communism and democracy are not mutually exclusive, Communism/Socialism requires democracy, in all Communist nations that I know of voting was required by law.
Democracy seems to work very well in small New England towns and tribal circles, but it doesn't scale well; remember Hittler, and Stalin were democraticaly elected at a cost of 31 Million lives.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
Seriously, the way I did this was by using a special /sbin/loader binary
with debugging hooks that I made ("dd" is your friend: binary editors
are for wimps).
-- Linus Torvalds, in an article on a dnserver
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