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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.
Well, I -am- actually amazed at the progression of China's CPU, but I'm even more stunned that Slashdot checked to see if this was already posted...
Here's an October story from the People's Daily (and another from September) to see how they see it...
It's Dragon.
OK, there has to be a chinese site somewhere with details on these chips.
Anyone have a good realtime client side translator for web surfing?
Because they don't trust the rest of the worlds Spyware. :)
Later in the article...
I have the sneaking suspicion that there are other reasons besides the fact that the chip is homemade that makes people not want to buy it...
You would think a country with a billion+ people and vast resources would be able to develop a cpu more on par with current technology ..
All they would need is 1.2GHz to get into Apple territory.
Speed, performance, instruction set differences, and the stated goal of independence will lead them to avoid Microsoft at all costs.
Maybe this means 'Red Flag Linux', maybe not. But it's a start.
It's more that they need reasons OTHER than it being homemade in order to buy it... as in "Just because it's homemade, doesn't mean people are going to buy it."
Karma: Non-Heinous
It's the design the matters.
Having your own people use your own equipment is no good if someone you don't trust - and who do the Chinese military/security agencies trust - has designed it and you cannot know if the chip will blab on you.
The Singularity is closer than you think
Quant
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.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Ok, ok, it's just a lame joke about a lame processor. Move along.
The simple truth is that interstellar distances will not fit into the human imagination
- Douglas Adams
What kind of market would buy such an inferior product that I'm sure won't be that much cheaper than chips currently available from Intel and AMD?
I think you're greatly underestimating how much cheaper this part could be.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
What do people need a GHz+ CPU for?
Digital Video?
DTP?
Games?
Databases?
SW Development?
Yes and no. All these things happened before CPUs hit 2 GHz, and my 800 MHz iMac does fine in Final Cut Pro and Photoshop, hell it works great with Virtual PC 6 w/Windows 2000 and AutoCAD 2000.
200-300 MHz will do fine for the vast majority of users. People on dial-up in rural China need a little self-contaned box that hooks up to a TV and plays Video CDs, not a 3 GHz Intel chip that needs a 700 Watt Power Supply.
What could not have succeeded in a free economy, can be forced upon users and developers by an all-controling state.
In other words, if they really decide to do this, China of all nations is very well positioned. They'll probably port Linux to their hardware and have a western-free platform pretty soon.
Are you on drug(s)?!! Why not?
In the spirit of Feng Shui, these chips will always be situated across from the heat sink, have a picture of a fish somewhere on them, and will never do division operations on Tuesdays.
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.
Make sure everyone's vote counts: Verified Voting
"Yes, indeed. Better stay away from all that stuff, because choice is confusing, and confusing is bad. Makes people have to use their brains, and all that. "
You are forgetting this is COMMUNIST China. Yes for them, choice is bad, so is speech and freedom.
It's still not clear to me what this is supposed to be. Is it intended as a replacement for x86-like CPUs, as most people here seem to assume, or something novel, as the cryptic reference to RISC suggests?
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
Where can I find a tech brief on this CPU in English?
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
They're using Red Flag, or whatever the name of their distribution they've been promoting internally is. They don't need to worry about 'chip incompatibilities'.
They just need to write code for that processor, start their own branch of the linux kernal for that arch and off they go.
I think it's commendable not wanting to rely on a foreign country for your main source of technology. It's not like the US has ever used trade embargos in the past....
As a rock-in-roll Physicist once said, No matter where you go, there you are.
How do you know it's a new chipset? The article as far as I can tell is non-specific on the subject. It could very well be an x86 processor, or in the same family.
I think we'll start seeing all sorts of systems in the 10^2 to 10^3Mhz range over the next year or two. VIA in particular have some interesting products with their fanless C3 processors which operate at 500Mhz - plenty for most applications, and the Eden platform. People will be more interested in smaller systems which are quieter, cheaper, and which use less power. And when you can run things like Linux or Lindows you start seeing things like the Walmart PCs, which I figure is pretty much what they're after. Of course VIA aren't the only ones in this area, although I am more interested in supporting them (and Transmeta) than a certain other chip manufacturer with a virtual monopoly.
I'm amazed on how you can readily classify that chip as inferior... Seen the design of the chip? Guess not, maybe it is the Made in China writing that made you derive this conclusion.
As for closing the market... this comment can only come from a blindly ignorant redneck white trash in a trailer parked somewhere where there is little to no TV or radio signal. FYI, a prerequisite of joining the WTO is to have an open market. China has been a member of the WTO since 11 December 2001.
What kind of market would buy those chips? What about computers that are not meant for managing critical data? And from the article itself, mobile phones and televisions? Why the hell would your mobile phone need a 2GHz Pentium 4?
Get a clue!
Welley Corporation - SLM Scammers
Rather than build one from scratch why not simply buy an existing chip manufacturer and start from there?
1) Volume. Sure if they were only going to make 700,000 chips this would be stupid. But China has a population of over 1 billion and most of them don't have access to computers. If china wanted to give all of they're people access to a computer. They would do well to make there own chip. That way they just have to pay the fabrication costs (like 50 a chip).
2) China is a superpower, but they are still dependant on the west for CPU's. If they want to jump start the local CPU market somebody has to get the ball rolling.
I know I'm going to hell, I'm just trying to get good seats.
Bah. China's doing this because their government has developed a profound hatred/jealousy of first world countries, and are simply doing this in a quixotic attempt to show how "advanced" they are. They've done this sort of thing before; look up "Great Leap Forward" on google.com if you want to find out the results.
why not simply buy an existing chip manufacturer and start from there?
If you know how much legal trouble an european based company has to go through before it can take over a US based chip-company, imagine how much trouble it will be for a china-based company!
bash$
--china is completely versant in the concepts of "wealth re arranging and managing" -the current accepted western short term profitas modal- as opposed to "wealth creation"-which was the past standard in the eventually named "industrial world". They have thouroughly embraced vertical manufacturing as a means towards rapid wealth creation,are suceeding at it, and their balance of trade surplusses with other nations around the world reflect these principles. This move by them is logical and quite predictable, and I would expect them to gain expertise in this technology much faster than most people might assume. whether from a white room effort or reverse engineering, it won't matter as long as they do it. In 30 years they have gone from basically an almost total agricultural and antique-class manufacturing country to the premier world's mass manufacturing nation, and by even conservative analyst predictions will have the worlds largest "true" economy based on tangible wealth creation by around 2015.
In short, laugh now while you still can. Now I don't LIKE it, I think especially in the US we have made a complete blunder in our trade dealings with china, but I can't dismiss out of hand what they have accomplished in such a short time, nor can I dismiss what the pressure of having a billion and a half people and a need for jobs and energy and fresh water will do to a nation that is lead from the top down as hard as china's is. They intend to kick booty and take names, and in the near future, on the business battlefield and maybe on the real warfare battlefield.
Think about it, the most often heard comment of chinas amazing recent successes is "cheap labor". Nope, that ain't it,for example the african continent has cheap labor avaialable by the millions and millions, but manufacturing is going to china because they are actually able to *accomplish complex tasks in a very large way* using "cheap labor". There's a BIG difference.
I won't even go into how much you saved him in software licenses, you damn dirty pirate! I'm sending the BSA after you. TSK!
Interesting: a government-sponsored CPU chip.
Comes with built-in Clipper chip!
bash$
I'm not sure its true that China can raise more than Intel/AMD. A government is not necessarily able simply to plunder the economy it manages - that tends to kill the economy - so, the amount that they can apply to stuff that is not immediately beneficial (like research and development) is limited. Intel and AMD have a much bigger pot of money to draw from, even if they might not be able to draw as much of it.
"He who would learn astronomy, and other recondite arts, let him go elsewhere. " -- John Calvin, commenting on Genesis 1
they used to make "Poisk" ("Search") computers based on chips that were manfucatured in, I beleive, Kiev, Ukraine. The processor was a rip off of the Intel's 8086 chip. Then, I beleive, they managed to rip off 286. We had a bunch of these in our school. They were quite compatible. I've even heard reports of Windows 3.11 almost working on them. Many DOS programs worked just fine (I remember Computer Associates' SuperCalc working quite well). Almost all games failed to work though. I beleive we traced it down to the io port 0x60 not being the keyboard port (I don't know if that's a processor or AT architecture feature).
Unfortunately they never succeeded in making a Soviet verion of the 80386 processor. Now I've heard to stories which claim the reason of the failure. The first one says that in order to reproduce 80286 they just took really thin slices of the Intel's processors and reversed engineered them this way. In order to prevent this, Intel started to print layers of 80386 processor in waves, not on straight planes and it was much harder to slice that without ruining the processor.
The second version says that poplar seeds were to blame: there is a lot of poplars in Kiev (that part is a fact) and when the time for poplar seeds comes, the air in the city is filled with it. They couldn't get it out of their manufacturing areas and had to shut it down.
I passed the Turing test.
The problem with chinese CPUs... ...is that after an hour after you wish ordered another one.
No sovereign nation can take such a risk.
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.
________________________________________ History Must Not Fall Into The Wrong Hands ___________________________________
Yes. In the Chinese culture the Dragon represents all mighty power and holiness. The ancient emperors were considered true dragons in human form. However, the Chinese dragon is different from the western world's definition. In western world, a dragon is a dinosaur-like creature with a pair of tiny wings. The Chinese dragon is created by combining all the considered best features found in the real animals. The dragon is the Chinese cultural symbol.
I would think...
"Eve of Destruction", it's not just for old hippies anymore...
...in the words of Public Enemy, "Can't Truss It."
Today 233 mHz. Tomorrow...well, 500 mHz or so. But chips are a strategic commodity, and they know they'll be toe-to-toe with the West as they emerge as a bona fide superpower rival. No need rely on the largesse of the US or Japan for microprocessors.
I wonder what they could build a bare-bones PC for, if CPUs were 25-cents or so?
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.
Many asian countries refuse to recognise copyright or IP rights in the same way the US did until about '54. Some even have regulations restricting flow of capital to foreign powers (a common way to avoid paying royalties to IP owners that don't keep an office and certain % of their company in the local country) which I think is perfectly responsible practice for nations not wanting to be taken advantage of too much by larger ones...
So I don't really see why they would be any more fazed by the DMCA than the WTO provisions already ignored (or creatively sidestepped) especially when the laws are not even in effect there.
I don't think the basics of x86 are covered by IP restrictions anyway so it's all beside the point really...
It's not that I'm Anti-American - I'm Pro-Freedom
The PRC could just reverse engineer an existing chip and make more of them. Of course there's that whole copyright issue, but hey, China could simply nationalize Intel's rights to the design. Intel could protest, but it's not like the US is going to do anything about it. I mean is the US is going to stand by while a country oppresses it citizens (Falun Gong, and the Great Firewall, one child policy), invades it's neighbors (Tibet and Hong Kong to some degree), damages our property and holds our citizens hostage (April 2001 surveillance plane), what makes anyone think that the US is going get mad at China over Intel. In any event, after we cowed down to them over the WTO and most favored nation trade status, China should feel embolden to do what ever they want, which is after all what they have always done.
The Chinese people are an intelligent, rational people. Their government on the other hand is not. Any leader that has a need to march giant pictures of him self down the street has no respect for his people, and a very small diao. Any government that is not derived of the people has not legitimacy, that includes the direction that our United Police States of America is going.
Sorry about the rant...
I think hatred is too storng a word, but jealousy is correct, and what's wrong with that? China is determined not to be dependant on the west, good for them.
"A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming, is not worth knowing" - Alan Perlis
If I had to design a new CPU, I'd think it be of worth to try and work with asynchronous logic. If the technology for asynchronous CPUs developed far enough, we'd be much better for it.
Of course, realistically in their position I'd never want to try. This is not for academia.
(Post script: IANAEE [electrical engineer]).
---Lailyx
"I've got an ace up my sleeve...I just have to rememeber which pocket I put it in"
Its really hard to type with those little sticks.
-- thinkyhead software and media
I'd like to start out by noting, as I write this, I'm on a 175mhz machine...an SGI O2 to be exact...
For a bit more info, I have a p3-1.3ghz, a dual p2 466, amongst a few others...why then do I use this machine? it's my preference, and I can.
I do everything I need to do in the day on this little 175mhz machine. Why? Because I can. It's non-x86, which for me is a HUGE benefit (such a horrid little architecture...), and is fast enough to run mozilla, X, and whatever apps I need (including Maya for 3d stuff)....
Before you go saying ya it's an SGI, it's not a PC, NEITHER IS THE DRAGON! It's not a standard mobo w/ 200mhz pentium in there, it's a different cpu, different architecture internally, and may be a lot faster than many of you are assuming...
why would you need bloatware like w2k advanced server to browse the web and process words? .. install linux .. or at least install the least bloated version of windows you can find .. if there is suh a thing.
Buy a history book, the Great Leap forward was not about showig the west what they could do. It was an attempt to move their country out of a subsistence agricultural situation. The aim was technical improvement, not dick-waving. I'm not saying your point is wrong; I think it is a mixutre of trust, dependance on Western technology, we can too and other reasons. The "Great Leap Foward" does not aid your thesis though.
and cracks open one sleep encrusted eye.
What does it feel like when the whole world changes? Well, how do you feel right now?
The implications of this are simply staggering.
KFG
A search at uspto.gov shows that x86 is not a registered trademark in the U.S. (and I very much doubt that it is in China), and I don't recall Intel using it recently (if ever) in any official capacity. Given that, how exactly is either the name "x86" or "the x86 instruction set" the "intellectual property" of Intel?
To paraphrase from THL/Sexylosers, "Your shit's fucked fuckshit." Feng Shui is most certainly Chinese. How could you attribute a science to a people who can't even pronounce its name?
Am I the only one who heard Roxette to sing "I'm gonna get blitzed for some sex"?
This kind of reminds me of the Agat.
Back in the mid-80's the Soviets cloned the Apple ][, probably as proof of the worthiness of their technology. I'm sure the Chinese are doing a better job. The Agat still had Woz' name burned in the ROM.
Uhhhhh....The WTO does not define reality.
True... nor is it defined by my opinions or yours for that matter. Reality is how it is perceived by the person making the observation.
Anyway, what is so wrong by coercing the Chinese population to buy their own products? I mean like people drive Chevies, wear Levi's, and smoke Marlboros just to show how proud they are to be Americans and nobody's making any noise about that.
Welley Corporation - SLM Scammers
I cannot believe that some of the people on this weblog are so blinded with happiness by the idea of sticking it to the US that you are driven to mention the words "free" or "libre" with China in the same sentence! China is home to one of the most repressive regimes in the world! You GNU zealots with your communist agenda make me sick.
--sdem
I think you forgot to make the now obligitory Yakov Smirnoff reference; although, in your defense, "In Soviet Russia, "Poisk" ("Search") computers manufacture you " is just not that punchy.
~jeff
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.
An IP-free design is more difficult than you suggest. Developing your own circuitry, microcode, etc. does not guarantee you will not step on someone's patent. I would focus on your "control of the process". More likely as their military modernizes they don't want to be dependent on foreign parts, vulnerable to an embargo.
- China gives two shits about copyright law?
- Anything in China could be considered "free (as in "libre")"?
They don't exactly work within U.S. jurisdiction, you know.--sdem
Windows has support for several processor architectures too (I don't have the exact count to hand).
The retail WinNT 4 CD contained binaries for x86, MIPS, Alpha, and PowerPC. Poor sales of non-x86 led to Win2K (aka WinNT 5) being x86 only.
(n/t)
--sdem
From the SVCD faq
was decided that DVD - while undoubtedly a good technical specification as
such - is all too tightly controlled by DVD Consortium, a closed body of
foreign companies. The Chinese government did not quite like the idea that the
domestic home electronics industry would have to pay royalties to foreign
companies in order to manufacture next generation video disc products for
Chinese people. It was calculated that creating a royalty-free, full-fledged
video disc format on their own would be a major long-term win for the domestic
industry. Moreover, this was also considered an issue of national pride; an
opportunity to flex some technical muscle, and to send a clear signal to the
outside world that China has enough critical mass to be able to ignore foreign
entertainment standards it does not want to conform to. (Chinese politicians
and researchers are now keen to celebrate SVCD as the first international
high-tech standard that has been developed in China.) Finally, it was also
thought that a Chinese video disc standard would help in pressuring the DVD
Consortium to keep the licensing fees down, at least for the Chinese market.
"I can't help but wonder what the potential things that could go wrong with designing a CPU are, such as software incompatibilities etc."
The Chinese are not interested in running Western binaries or being vulnerable to common Wintel viruses, so if there is a lack of binary compatibility, that's actually a plus. The question is, can they get Red Flag Linux to compile on it, and unless it's a completely dain bramaged design, the answer will certainly be yes.
Given the aggressive intrusiveness of both Microsoft and the U.S. government, not being able to run Windows or Windows software is something the Chinese might actually be aiming for.
Proud member of the Weirdo-American community.
The result that came back was interesting - instead of a rating in MHZ and the serial number, I saw, "Help, I'm trapped in a Chinese CPU Factory"
In the future, when Palladium comes integrated in pretty much all Intel and AMD chips, and All your Base Are Belong to Microsoft, The "Dragon" chips might be our only hope of sustaining our freedom. Of course, this is a farfetched cry: Either Palladium or Dragon could go the way of the Dodo before Bill Gates consolidates his empire of Evil.
:)
Funny thing a communist country might help the "Free World" citizens keep their freedom.
I wish them (the Chinese engineers) good luck, just in case Palladium comes to fruition.
"While I think such an audacious effort is most certainly commendable,..." Oh for Pete's sake. Here we have a communist government that is the complete antithesis of all things open and free and the fact that they are making a crap processor (and probably making 10 year-old girls work fourteen hour days to produce them (China ) is commendable. Step away from your keyboard and think for a few minutes folks. Making homebrew processors is not ideological. Killing people for disagreeing with you is. What is commendable here? ER
One reason may be that they are trying create that thing that Americans used to call "know-how".
Scary example: Igor Kurchatov did not just splatter the results of bomb espionage on his design team. What is said to have often happened is that researcher would come into Kurchatov's office with his new brilliant idea on paper. Kurchatov would take some papers out of his safe then look at his researcher's paper and then send the young man back out to work on it some more. Russia would have never learned to engineer weapons to their requirements by blindly copying the Americans.
Less earth shattering example: In the mid-nineties Ford was designing the new body style for the Taurus/Sable. Japanese cars were on the market with new complex-reflector headlights. These are the transparent lights with the faceted mirrors around the bulb. Ford wanted that "jewelry-like" appearance for their new Taurus and tried to just copy the lights. It turned out that engineering such a light into an arbitrary body shape is not trivial. It took them awhile to "get it".
Processors have many industrial and military uses in addition to being the engine of a PC. It is understandable that China might want home-grown knowledge so they can precisely tailor parts to their requirements. This is in addition to not wanting to depend on foreign powers for what has become essential technology.
Are there people in China that actually pay for Windows?
... food.
Kidding! I'm kidding!!!
C'mon folks, I *LOVE* the Chinese
"And like that
One party choosing one leader=wrong. 2*(one party choosing one leader)=right.
Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
Now imagine that you have to go to some other country and buy their widgets (whatever a widget really is). That country says, sure, you can buy them now - but also has this odd notion that they can stop selling widgets to you whenever they decide they don't like you.
You think you may end up relying on widgets. One choice might be to start making them yourself.
That way you have your own supply of widgets, you don't have to rely on that other country and whatever their current ideas of goodness and niceness are.
You have also observed the widget manufacturing process and are pretty sure that your widgets may start off being a bit less good than those other guys widgets, but you're also pretty sure that as you develop internal markets for your widgets they'll get cheaper and better (a bit of industrial espionage - er, um - research will probably not hurt either).
You will, of course, have to develop your own wadgets to run on your widgets, but you think that that might not be a bad thing at all - reducing foreign expenditures and building an in country wadget industry.
Of course, you might also choose to just buy the other guys widgets. And the wadgets that go along with them. And remain dependent on those other guys.
And you could just buy someone else's widget plant. But widget plants are very expensive. Worse yet, if you buy someone else's plant you won't be growing the local expertise. And probably your widget plant will make the same widgets that those other guys make so everyone will still be buying the same old wadgets. You also notice that the fact that those other guys are using the same wadgets almost requires them all to use the same widgets and you suspect that you can do better.
Your choice.
Um... this is China we are talking about. They couldn't care less about legal issues regarding IP.
*ahem* There are non-DRM chips that aren't 1/10th the speed of current x86 processors
If they only buy from us and we never buy from them, we win.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
If Washington were to impose a boycott on China, or export restrictions on certain technology, they would not be able to buy new CPU's. This could harm a rapidly growing economy more than it would harm the military.
Its not really relevant that Washington would probably never do that, what is relevant is that they could. During the cold war, export of advanced technology to communist countries was tightly controlled for example. It has happened before.
It is just like the question why China felt the need to start their own space program when they could have their satelites put in orbit reliably and cheaply by the Russians. They didnt want to completely depend on that, nor did they want the Russians to always exactly know what the Chinese were putting in orbit and for what purpose.
There is probably also the ideological factor. Self sufficiency was always high on the list of ideological priorities for the ruling party. It has been one of the pillars of Maoist ideology no longer to depend on the former western colonial powers (yes, the USA too occupied parts of Chinese cities in the 19th century and used military power to advance business interests, just like the Europeans did). North Korea has taken this to extreme levels for example, it resembles a Theocracy more than a mere communist dictatorship. Ideological, rather than rational motivations are not always entirely logical. This is no different with our own western liberal ideology.
You could make your own, non-pentium compatible architecture and then use Bochs to emulate the pentium and the pentium environment would go faster than the speeds claimed by Dragon.
If you want to see a product where labor is 90% of the cost, go look at a Big Mac.
Tech Public Policy stuff
Wrong, the Niva 1600 was (still is) a 4 wheel drive vehicle
As for child labor sweatshops, we can be reasonably confident that these chips are NOT going to be manufactured in them. Chip fabs are automated because there is no way manual processing can be done without the kind of human error which would trash entire fab runs at a time.
In any case, the "Communism" you're complaining about is in fact, the kind of pure early 1900s US-style capitalism (management with a callous disregard for working conditions and safety, attempts to organize workers met by government agents kicking down one's door, etc.) I would expect you to be praising.
This was what capitalism was like before child labor laws, OSHA, pure food and drug laws enforced by the FDA, and other things Libertarians consider immoral interference between the contract between businesses and individuals.
Try breaking with /. tradition and actually learn something about public policy issues before exposing your ignorance in public. Read up on the history of the American labor movement sometime.
This isn't to say the Chinese government deserves support, but find out what you're complaining about before you start howling COMMUNISM!
If you want to buy a red, white, and blue Palladium-disabled CPU from AMD or Intel on which Linux might not run, go for it.
Given the direction in which freedom and civil liberties in the US are going post 9/11, how much difference there's going to be by the time Palladium and a Dragon II CPU hit the market between the US and Chinese governments is decidedly open to question.
"People always get the local governments they deserve."
E.E. "Doc" Smith
As to which set of people this will be a grimmer comment about, ask me in 2004 or 2005.
Tech Public Policy stuff
It only takes 3 or 4 people to design a CPU. So, even with only the designers hes met, china would be able to design this chip. The reason there are so many designers out there, is because there are so many chips to be designed. Most of them don't work on the Pentium/Athlon
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Try living here as a 'suspected' al-quada suporter. Any nation where a person can be locked up without a trial, access to a lawyer, or even being charged is not Free. The US is not Free.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
China does have a growing problem with AIDS, but it's nowhere near the level of calamity as it is in the good ole USA.
And 75% of the population is not starving.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
>He said the chip would soon reside in personal computers, mobile phones and televisions, with a target production of 1 million units in 2003.
>The Chinese Academy of Sciences said about 10,000 chips had already been produced this year.
>Technology analysts have said the domestic CPU is supposed to reduce China's dependence on Intel and other chipmakers such as Advanced Micro Devices for both financial and security reasons.
>China wants to install its own chips in sensitive military devices to retain better control, they say.
That's why.
It seems that most of the Slashdot population are misinformed about the Godson-I chip...
.18um process. Not the old .25um.
:)
1. Although the chip's Chinese name can be translated directly to "Dragon chip", it has an English name "Godson-I"
2. The chip is manufactured in
3. The chip is targetted at the embedded market, it's not going to compete with the current GHz chips like Pentium 4 or Athlon XP. It's not guaranteed for the future Godson generations tho...
4. Therefore, the chip has an extremely low power consumption, ranging from 0.4W to 1W. (Compare: AXP and P4s -- 50W - 80W). Yes - you can theoretically run 100 or more Godsons simutaneously and they're just consuming the same power as ONE 3GHz P4.
5. It's an MIPS chip, not X86.
If you're able to read Chinese, check out the following URL, it gives you a much clearer idea about the chip
http://www.blxcpu.com/
and,
Merry X'mas
It would insure that China be f**krd up for the next 30 years...
How could you call Feng Shui a science?
The microcontrollers used in embedded systems run at less than 10MHz, for the most part. Fully three orders of magnitude slower than the state of the art. Are they inferior too? No - for the simple reason that they're fast enough for the purpose to which they are put.
(which apparently came with it's toolkit (since breakdowns were so common)
They didn't break down that often if they were looked after properly. That was the reason for the toolkit - you could fully service a Lada yourself, for about £20 every 12,000 miles. It was a conscious design feature - make the car really simple and easy to work on (they were based on mid-70s FIATs) and people will be able to service them and repair them without having to rely on garages.
They weren't any worse than the cars of 15 years before, but if you treated them like a "modern" car and didn't service them, they would break. Even then, they were almost always really cheap to fix, or just scrap them and buy another.
Oh, and the FSO Polonez (Polish version of them) fitted with the Lancia-derived 1600 twin cam engine was good for 110hp and beat the absolute shit out of most hot-hatches.
"the potential things that could go wrong with designing a CPU are, such as software incompatibilities"
In the free market that would be a valid concern. China is not a free market.
If you have a processor that is incompatible with everyone else you do have to develop your own software to go with it. True. But you also prevent the dependence upon western software. In a place like China they can force that issue.
That helps them keep the west out. In a communist society (yes folks they are communist and yes, that does run counter to the way we live) they view that as a good thing.
When these processors are used in thier defensive and offensive military systems, and THEY WILL BE USED THAT WAY, it will be that much harder for us to counter them. There will be a new niche in the west for geeks who understand the Dragon so that we understand their exact capabilities and combat them.
So software incompatibilities could work for them rather than against.
. Quit playing Monopoly with Bill. Switch to one of many non-Microsoft products today.
I've had a couple of Ladas and FSOs (Polish ones), all of which had Solex or Weber carbs (38/38DC Weber on the FSO 1600 twin-cam, fast as fsck...)
Perhaps that's just UK-spec models though?
ME TOO!
Oh yes... I want to play with this too. Can we order a batch from China? I'm not sure what kind of hardware you'd need to go around them, but I'm pretty sure it would be possible to cruft up some PCI glue logic - even using something like one of the SuperIO chips for the IO stuff.
If anything is going to protect us from Microsoft's hardware DRM mess, it will be chips like these. When Microsoft has strongarmed American companies into producing CPUs that only run signed code, we will have cheap Asian knockoffs to turn to.
Capitalism ROCKS.
Chip design, like compiler design, is one of those things that has a reputation for being much more difficult that it really is, primarily because even among technophiles there's little understanding of what's involved.
Realize that undergraduate students routinely design and simulate RISC CPUs as part of a semester course. Sure, we're not talking state of the art here, but the principles are the same. Get a group of professionals together, and designing a more modern CPU is doable.
Also note that much of the complexity in chips like the x86 comes from:
* having to support 300+ instructions, a large chunk of which are rarely used
* along the same lines, complex oddities like MMX
* support for 16-bit mode
* trying to make a 22+ year old CISC processor with 8 registers be really fast
* more bits of historical wackery, like an 80-bit FPU
and so on. Starting clean, especially if you aren't trying to push the envelope right away, makes things much more approachable.
Feng Shui are two Mandarin Chinese words. Feng ("fung") means wind and Shui ("shway") means water.
The twin-cam engines were soft as shit though, that was the only problem. Chocolate camshafts and all that. Newer Nivas (post-catalyst) and presumably other Ladas have single-point injection, probably Bosch. A mate of mine stuck twin 40mm Webers on his FSO twin-cam, which helped it breath a bit better.
Changes in China, although hapenning at a much slower rate than what western world got used to, are happening, and that's what is important.
Economic change, yes. Political change, sadly, is very limited indeed.
SpamNet - a spam blocker that really works
I'd buy the first explanation -- yeah, cottonwood (poplar) seeds can make the streets look like a mattress factory exploded, but ordinary house-type windowscreens are sufficient to keep them out, because the fluff is fairly good-sized and tends to stick to itself. -- I grew up in an area loaded with cottonwoods. Best quality shade of any tree, and do well in nearly any climate (they like the desert here just fine!) BTW only the female trees produce fluff. You can propagate male trees by sticking branches in the ground (they root easily) and voila, no fluff.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
So, when all US PC's are crippled with Palladium DRM technology,
us Linux users will be using Chinese CPU's?
Scarey scenario!
www.sjbaker.org
I was wondering when they might start showing up as embedded processors in microwaves and TV, or on cheap motherboards at the computer swap meets..
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
True, tho I've noticed my male cottonwood trees, with no female trees around (in fact none that I know of in this entire valley -- they've all been propagated by planting sticks), make hardly any pollen. You wouldn't think trees would care, but maybe there's some stimulant chemical released by the female trees when they bloom. Dunno, haven't looked into it that far.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
Grappling with the pickle jar, Mr. Burns finds himself too weak to open it. Smithers volunteers, but has just as much luck.
Smithers: It's no use, sir. Shall I send out for some Chinese?
Burns: No, those people are all gristle. I want this jar opened!
.
- First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then ???, then profit.
Both the above. That America has made up its own standards, instead of following global standards; has cellphones that lag the rest of the world by at least a generation and a half; and yet America continues to piss around with idiotic ideas like "Windows for Cellphones."
It's a theatre of the absurd.
--
Don't like it? Respond with words, not karma.
--no cheap labor doesn't make it right, IMO. I am COMPLETELY aganst all this western money and expertise going to china. We were sold a bill of goods that china would "embrace democracy" and "buy our stuff" if we encouraged US and europaen manufacturing to move there. The result has been, well yes, china built up a huge manufacturing base in a short time, and all they buy from us is advanced technology in order to do it even better. They buy advanced machine tooling, the tools used to make more tools to make-everything. And with this chip start, their own complete domestic computers. Lot of giuys been laughing it's "only" a 200, well all I can say is give them a year or two, see how fast they advance. You can do a LOT with not top of the line but still functional computers of these sizes. And with a population of a billion and a half, and with a further market (with cash to spend) in the exploding islamic/oil world of another billion, in a short time they won't need to sell gadgets to the west. they won't need us anymore. We buy walmart trinkets from them, that's it. Next year you are going to see larger home appliances like washing machines coming from them. thgis is a one step at a time deal for them but they are stepping FAST now. They are building their own advanced aircraft, building rockets, and everything possible electronic. I think it's been the biggest economic and political blunder that the US could have made, and there has been zero "quid pro quo", they haven't done one thing about becoming "more free", all they've done is add to their totalitarian population command and control infrastructure, and are building the worlds largest military. At some point they will surpass the US and europe, then they will decide they own the oil. Their demographics and world proven supplies dictate that they need all the oil, and I am convinced they mean to get it. It's coming, and short term profits mentality, combined with western societal indifference, is going to bite us and hard. They turn out engineers by the millions, we turn out team sports players and video game players, generally speaking. They pump out technicians, we create rap stars and people who know how to detail their rides. We are destroying our economy as they are building their's. Something's gonna pop. I am quite doomy and cynical over this situation.
As for the China subject, you're absolutelly right about the decades of brutality and totalitarianism. However, I honestly believe that they are opening and relaxing the right way. You know, they saw what happened in USSR, Romania, Yugoslavia...That experience shows us that 'controlled' transition is perhaps the only way to make transition properly - opressed people are often thirsty of revenge, so freedom quickly becomes anarchy because they just don't know what the real freedom is and how to enjoy it. Can you imagine the scale of anarchy after letting 1.5 B people completelly lose? I really think they are wise not to repeat other's mistakes.
Slashdot crowd? Always interesting subject. Seems that there is more and more people here whose brains are being brainwashed (Quake/UT?), so that they don't have anything meaningful to say and argue their stands. They post just because posting to /. is kind of cool thing to do. Heh, perhaps /. should impose age limit on posting? Nah, that would be totalitarian brutality, I guess.
That would be an AT arch thing. no x86 IO port or interrupt is "special". (IRQs go through a programmable interrupt controller (PIC), so some of the IRQ stuff is AT specific, too. Some IRQs are special.)
Most old DOS games eschew the OS and use the BIOS, or even program the hardware directly, for less overhead. Unless things really sucked, it was probably easier to use higher-level functions in programs that didn't need the speed, making compatibility easier with non-games.
As for failing to make a 386, maybe the process size (~size of a transistor) had shrunk too much for them to still make out what was going on. Maybe just the increasing complexity of the wiring and everything, as well as the silicon, was too much to reverse engineer? They would have been able to get hardware manuals that describe how to program it, so they would have known exactly what it was supposed to be doing, which would make reverse engineering much easier than if they hadn't known anything about the CPU. I've never heard of this wavy stuff, and I'm skeptical, but I guess something like it could be true. I doubt Intel modified their process just to make it harder for the Soviets to copy, but if AMD and others had started to try to copy, they might have done something to ward off the capitalists
#define X(x,y) x##y
Peter Cordes ; e-mail: X(peter@cordes ,
You'll be eating and enjoying roast duck before you know it
They do use the mips ISA too.
I own the yellow star project and the strange thing is that I got an email from a guy in a military university in china intrested in some details. He must have looked quite deeply into the design to ask them
Mouse powered Chips, Open source Processors and Lego