China Forges Ahead With 'Dragon' CPU

Dynamic Drive writes "There's an interesting article on Cnet regarding China's eager attempts to lessen her dependence on foreign technology when it comes to CPUs. The latest endeavor is a homegrown chip named 'Dragon', which apparently is roughly equivalent in speeds to those of Intel chips made between 1995-1997, or 200-260MHz. While I think such an audacious effort is most certainly commendable, I can't help but wonder what the potential things that could go wrong with designing a CPU are, such as software incompatibilities etc." This is the same processor mentioned in September, only now more than 10,000 of the chips have been made.

Comments

Re:why so slow?

[Mac Degger]

Come on...they have to start somewhere. I think it's pretty impressive that they got this far, considering that it took Intel some 30-40 years to reach those speeds.

266mhz, gotta start somewhere.

[nurb432]

Besides, if you run more efficent software, 266 is more then enough..

Please no jokes about "640k being enough for anyone". im serious.. most of the time we waste tons of cycles, beacuse we can. one doesnt *need* a ghz chip to get work done..

And if its truely homegrown, and not cloned, then they deserve a LOT of credit for getting this far this fast.

Re:WHy not just buy an existing processor

[rsborg]

Rather than build one from scratch why not simply buy an existing chip manufacturer and start from there?

Gee, why don't you put yourself in their place. They don't want something cheap; they want something that's completely free (as in "libre"). No IP issues, full control of the process, etc. A lot like why you might do "clean-room" implementations of various hardware... to avoid legal issues.

China needs this to survive

[Animats]

Makes sense. In five years, with Palladium and XP, Microsoft will have the power to turn off whole countries by remote control. They can almost do it now, via "Windows activation" and "Windows update".

No sovereign nation can take such a risk.

Re:China needs this to survive

[Malcontent]

it doesn't matter who you trust. The chinese govt does not trust MS.

Military Uses

[Mittermeyer]

Kids, microprocessors are not just happy little toys we like to geek with, they are military weapons.

No I don't mean hacking, I mean weapon guidance.

The first SAM interception of an enemy warplane from a USN ship was done with a 64K 1 MhZ fire control director. Ever since, more powerful computer power drives all of our 'smart' weapons. China knows this and is probably not interested in having a CPU ban cripple their firepower.

Building a native capability means that China can make militarized versions without worrying about whether we 'messed up' a production run or can exploit a flaw we built in.