Slashdot Mirror
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."
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.
More importantly the Chinese who don't share will find themselves increasingly maintaining patched versions of software that are incompatible with the main branch (and therefore much more expensive to maintain).
Heck, I made some modifications to a GPLed project at one point, and I thought it was too much of a hassle to share. Next thing I knew the software package in question had changed enough that my patches no longer applied cleanly, one of the libraries that my software relied on adopted a new API. To make matters even worse the old version of the library was very tricky to compile by hand.
In short, the next thing I knew it was almost impossible to upgrade the boxes that this software was installed on. If I had shared my work might very well have become part of the mainstream distribution. New installations would have been as easy as installing the RPMs off of the CD.
The Chinese might have enough people working on Linux that they don't need to collaborate with the rest of the world, but my guess is that they would be far better off collaborating with the rest of us than trying to do everything themselves.
Because, you know the Chinese or any of those other Asian countries have no originality. Only Westerners are creative.
Humorless sig goes here.
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
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.
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
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
Not too bad for an embedded processor? I guess the chip makers do spend so much money on marketing, conditioning people to believe that we need ridiculously fast processes to do useful computing, I shouldn't be surprised by this attitude. For 90% of useful computer work-- including things like web browsing, word processing, spreadsheets, programming, e-mail--a processor equivalent to a PII is overkill. In the mid-1990s, the Western world's technology sector was doing just fine with 486s and Pentiums in their desktops. So I'd say that if China's initial attempt at a processor is close to a PII in performance, that's something very noteworthy. They may be starting on the road to their own technological revolution quite a few years behind everyone else, but they're starting it on a lot better footing than we did.
And if China, as I'd imagine they're intending to do, shuts out the likes of Microsoft and Intel from their consumer PC market, that's both a huge blow to those companies and an amazing boon to the Chinese. China has a vast and untapped market, if China chooses to keep that market for itself, their own technology companies will end up very well off--maybe even rivaling in size the Intels and Microsofts of the West.
[]
My VAX 6420 will crush all of your PCs--literally.
I think you read that wrong. Notice the phrase "the line was built on the foreign technology and completed with materials from a foreign country".
So you see by buying chips from intel they are helping the US economy. By building their own chips they are helping their own economy.
The same goes for windows. Everytime a chinese (or any other nationality for that matter) buys a copy of windows money flows out of their country and into the US where we can use it to build bombs so we can bomb the shit out of them when the tehir turn comes around.
The chinese are apparently wise to this scheme. They want to develop their own chips and use linux on it thereby keeping the money inside china helping the chinese companies and people as opposed to sending their money to the US.
It makes perfect sense I am surprised that other countries don't get it. I suspect the reason for that is the influence companies like MS and Intel have in democracies where they can buy politicians to act against the interests of their own countrymen. In a dictatorial communist regime that tactic is not very effective.
I have always wondered why very lucrative industries like operating systems and micro chips are not being actively pursued by other countries. It's not like they are not smart enough considering the some of the best and brightest engineers in this country are chinese, hindu, arab or whatever. Every dollar spent on windows or intel is one less dollar in their country and one more dollar in ours.
"And to think that my neighbors call me crazy! At least my data isn't being uploaded to a secret government satellite!"
I remember during the gulf war of Bush Sr. reading that the US had modified the chips of printers and computers going to Iraq to carry viruses and trojans. Why don't you do a search on google about it. The chinese are not stupid enough to presume that the computers going to china will have the exact same pentiums that you have.
I have no doubt half the computers in iraq, iran saudi arabia, china etc have rigged chips nor do I have any doubt half the software sent to those countries have trojans. It's an easy way to spy.
War is necrophilia.