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."

Comments

A serious curiousity question

[A nonymous Coward]

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...

Re:A serious curiousity question

[ProfessorPuke]

It's quite likely that most Chinese-government changes to GPL code will make it out, somehow. Firstly, they might want to appear to obey the WIPO regulations they've agreed to. (Not likely to be a big factor in their behavior, though).

Even if they don't feel bound to the license, they still might desire code release- either to take some worldwide market-share from Microsoft (and hurt a leading symbol of US capitalism), or more likely, to benefit from improvements made by generous hackers in Japan, Europe, and America.

And then, if the government STILL doesn't want to release the code, it might filter out anyhow. Its a big country, and even the most draconian restrictions would have trouble intercepting 2 megabytes of nondescript patches. Sure, they might restrict source code access to a small group of closely monitored developers, but then they'd lose much of benefits of Open Source development. (Like the ability to require each of 1 million native computer science students to create a useful kernel improvement to graduate...)

Re:A serious curiousity question

[cpeterso]

This is how the BSD licensed projects try to subtly encourage people to share their code changes. People or companies that use BSD code without sharing have a lot more maintenance to do themselves. So instead of using paranoid legal force like the GPL, the BSD projects politely encourage code sharing.