Slashdot Mirror
Chinese "Dragon" Chip On Sale
mrseigen writes "The processor that Chinese firms have been working on as a response to foreign equipment and software is now available for pre-order. The Inquirer did an article here, and the company website is here. The chip will supposedly ship with Midori Linux."
Define "real computing"...you'd be surprised how good these chips would be for embedded use.
Also how much horsepower do you really think you need to for basic email, web, word processing and accounts use? Remember: a lot of people used to run their entire businesses on IBM XTs!
-psy
Less money may flow in to the US IT industry or North American IT industry.
Adding a new player in to the chip industry means that MORE money as a whole will flow in to the global IT industry. And then there is support and the rest of the follow-ons to the chip fabrication, which will produce new opportunities for revenue for the IT industry, including North America and Europe, if people choose to use the architecture.
This is actually pretty significant...and kudos to the Chinese for making it happen.
:-)
About the only mainstream chip that I can think of off the top-of-my-head that's not U.S. bred is the ARM (which is British in origin). (I'm sure there are others, but you get my point).
And for all of you who say "this chip has lame performance", think back 5-10 years. If you had something like this 10 years ago, you'd pee your pants. This is like going from 0-100Kmh for the Chinese....many don't have any computing resources....chips like these will start to make things accessible for many (although not all).
Also remember back in 1986 when your relative who had a computer did all his accounts on an IBM XT? You don't need gobs of computing power to do basic business functions...and remember the majority of businesses *anywhere* are small businesses with less than 10 employees.
Technology is also quite often culturally imbred....ever looked at how many consumer electronics devices are HUGE in Japan, but don't take off in the U.S.? It's that embedded cultural technology difference....and maybe with China having some homegrown options, they can develop systems that better meet the needs of their population.
Anyhoo, just my two cents.
-psy
The only problem is that these "dragon chips" are about equivilent to your average pentium 2, they can't hold a candle to anything coming out of the united states.
For now, that is. China has massive potential, and some day in the not too distant future the US CPU industry could be eating their dust. This event is not to be shrugged off lightly. It should be viewed as a call to arms by US chip developers. If they instead fall asleep at the wheel, things could end up quite ugly for them.
I am talking about raw performance here, BTW. The Chinese could some day produce chips that are faster than chips designed by the US. But that's not necessarily what's required for the Chinese to win. If they produce a chip with a very compelling price/performance ratio, that could also have a dramatic effect. Imagine a CPU with, as a theoretical example, half the speed of a top of the line Intel CPU, but for one tenth the price. The war might well be lost simply on this basis.
Looks like there'll be an alternative when all Intel and AMD are producing are Palladium chipsets and you'd rather not be "trusted" by Big Corps...
I suffer from attention surplus disorder.
Hook.
Line.
Sinker.
I can't believe this was modded to 4, Informative.
Congrats to the AC!
Does Tibet have any oil?
People don't need much, we use office / openoffice because everyone else does. In China they can do their own thing with less bloated simple tools. Like a spruced up xedit. Such a system wont need more than a 10gb harddisk if even that.
Will be interesting to see what they pick as a browser and email client.
Ballpark guess at cost would be between $125 and $175 (w/o monitor). Depending on memory, drives, multimedia, etc.
Of those to whom much is given, much is required.
You are completely missing the point. The Chinese are not trying to make an Intell/AMD Killer. They are making a CPU with enough horsepower to run Linux and let people do office tasks - email, word processing, spreadsheets, etc... and other normal computing tasks. They are also making a CPU in-house, which means they don't need to worry about how Intel or AMD feels about them or even if the US government doesn't want them buying powerful chips.
This isan't about playing DOOM3 or Half-Life2. This is about China having an IT sector that is not subject to the whims of non-Chinese companies or governments.
Boobies never hurt anyone. - Sherry Glaser.
One other thing, 100 years ago, America was practically 3rd world in terms of labor conditions. There were labor riots, slave labor conditions, factories that burned down with the workers inside (fire escapes doors locked to prevent the workers from sneaking off), etc. etc. As economic prosperity increased, workers took it on themselves to see they got a share. We aren't talking about converting to communism (though certainly there were red groups), we're talking about fair labor standards, 40 hour work weeks, overtime laws etc. etc.
Also interesting, is that even though America started out as a handful of colonies - think plantations, export of raw materials on the cheap, cheap manufacturing (3d world style) - it eventually built itself into a first world economy. And interestingly, England's economy has remained first world all along. Truth is, a strong economy in the US, or Australia, or any other of England's colonies has not destroyed it at all.
In other words, if living/working conditions improve in China - it won't drive us back into the 3d world. In fact, the greatest hope for peace really is a rising standard of living in China. The majority of wealthy nations have relatively open governments and significant amounts of freedom for their citizens. This type of stability is bought only through the existance of a significant middle class. Desperate and impoverished people are far less likely to be peacable. Relatively well off people usually refuse to tolerate highly oppressive governments. This chip will be good for China, and for everyone else in many direct and indirect ways.
What changed under Obama? Nothing Good
But,
Unless I somehow misunderstood who you meant, you are in fact, saying that America believes in free trade.HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
Wait a moment, that actually isn't funny. Certainly not to the countries that ROT due to American (and yes, European too, I'll freely admit) double-standards on the free trade thing. America does sort of believe in free trade, but only when it serves its own interests. Otherwise, America believes America First. Policy speaks louder than words here, I'm afraid.
The best solution is for everybody to agree quite clearly, that unfettered free trade is a fucking stupid idea, and that NOBODY should be forced to submit themselves to free trade agreements in the way that many 3rd world countries have been forced to before they were allowed vital foreign aid.
Be careful! New moon tonight.
The self righteous crowd got let out of its cage today. Lets address some concerns:
Humanitarianism:
The computer you're typing youre typing on was most likely made in a place you would describe as a horrible sweatshop if you would ever get to see it. Same goes for all sorts of computer related goods.
Lots of goods in general are clearly marked Made in China yet its this chip some people seem so focused on.
Also, please take into account the US and its own allies record on human rights before entering the morally ambigious grounds of "Bad country vs. Good country."
Propping up the industry
All countries do this. Corporate welfare, sweetheart deals, tariffs, etc. Look in your own backyard before you accuse the neighbors of being a nuscience.
"Its only a pentium II"
Lets see the PII burns very little energy, had almost 10 million transistors and 64 gigabytes of addressable memory. Not a bad chip to be compared to. I used to run Mandrake on a PII-350 and it would play Divx movies without a frame skip. We're not talking a 8086 chip here.
I'm not even going to go into how no one really needs a P4 at 2ghz to run Office and all the energy that wastes.
"Tibet!"
Whatever your thoughts on Tibet buying not not buying a Dragon chip will make no difference. Its like people refusing to drink French wine because of their position regarding Iraq. The French will not notice or care.
Also, Tibet was a theocratic slave state with no concept of civil rights either. Pot meet Kettle.
"China Bad, must punish."
Maybe not. By entering into normal trade relations we make their economy dependent on the world economy, i.e. it becomes a political check, do bad things, watch your economy collapse through sanctions. I'm no lassieze-faire globalisation nutcase, but this certainly beats isolationism by a wide margin. Business doesnt exist in a vacuum, there have been cultural exchanges for quite some time and I would rather see a positive bend on westernism than trans-atlantic namecalling and useless boycotts.
I'm an idealist too, but I know that I have bigger problems domestically and if I want to impose my view of the world onto other countries I'd rather be able to point to my backyard and say "this is how its done" as opposed to "you are bad, go away."
China is a totalitarian, aggresive, expansionist, military power.
WTF? CHINA is an aggresive (sic) expansionist military power? WTF? Are you on fucking crack? Or do you not understand what the word hypocrite means? The United States has military bases in Antarctica, Antigua and Barbuda, Austrailia, the Bahamas, Bahrain, Belgium, British Indian Ocean Territories, Canada, Columbia, Cuba, Denmark, Egypt, France (yes, France), Germany, Germany, Germany, Greece, Greenland, Honduras, Hong Kong, Iceland, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Kenya, Kwajalein Atoll, Luxembourg, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Oman, Peru, Portgual, Saint Helena, Singapore, South Korea, Spain, Turkey, United Arab Emirates, the United Kingdom and Venezuela. But yeah, China is an aggresive (sic) expansionist military power. What the fuck ever. Get your head out of your ass, fucktard.
"I wonder why those dumb ass Chinese spend so much on defense. Must be plotting to take over the world or sumfin. I'm gonna get me another Coors Light and watch me some Fox News."
You fucking moron.
We don't, for example, worry so much about technology in the hands of the peaceful democratic country of South Korea.
The peaceful democratic country with 100 (count them, I would have listed them too if I wasn't so damn lazy) US military bases and 37,000 US soldiers. Gee, I wonder why we don't worry as much about technology there. It's a mystery. Please enlighten me Mr. Internet Genius Geek Boy.
The US is aggressiveley pursuing their own economical benefits. Organisations like WTO try (and in most cases succeed) to dictate how to do trade, and these "free market" rules greatly benefit US-corporations or more generally "global players". Other governments are cajoled by any means to accept rules set forth bye those global players, but those rules are not about fair trade, they are about unregulated trade. OTOH when it comes to IP the US propagate a very rigid system that only serves to maintain the status quo. One of the most ridiculous examples of this is patenting rice genes and selling rice seeds for breeds that before said patenting were free to everyone. The patent system is actually a very good example: Why should other countries accept US-IP-laws when they only serve to hamper their own economy and drain loads of money from those countries into the pockets of US-corporations. Japan did very well ignoring those IP-laws and getting their economy up, and the US of A ignored IP-laws too when it was convenient.
So why should a country like China play by a set of rules that have mostly negative effects on their economy, and why shouldn't a country be allowed to boost their own economy? People seem to have forgotten that the job of a government is to care for their people, not for the welfare of multinational corporations.
What i said here about the USA holds true for most "rich" capitalistic countries and is more the doing of huge corporations than of any specific country, but the US also leverage their economical power to put pressure on other countries by means of embargoes or cutting development aids. And last but not least President Bush messing with the Microsoft trial to get one of the largest US-corporations out of their legal troubles scot-free is another very fine example of protectionism.
"By the way if anyone here is in advertising or marketing... kill yourself." -- Bill Hicks
You raise some valid points, but you need to come off your high horse. Back in the time when the USA was, what you call, a backward country, the US was all so pleased to get Fermi, Einstein fleeing totalitarian regimes in Europe (to name just a few). They did not come to their theories and research in isolation, but were a product of their environment and education in those countries. But they started or helped a developing industry and research in the US.
Later, the US even incited top leading researchers to go to the States, well in many cases, they had little choice, but it was better than being deported by the USSR.
In short, this has happened before (and was done by those that had little to protect or complain about, but are now the first to be scorned), and is happening again. Nothing new here, move along.
In times of world Economy, I am still dazzled to see that ppl seem to find reasons to protect their little countries (in fact, the country they are in can do anything they want, but everyone else should be good, unfair competition anyone?). I am just glad to see another alternative processor and in the long term, it can only benefit us with lower prices and better performance.
Genius doesn't work on an assembly line basis. You can't simply say, "Today I will be brilliant."
... and Israel is demolishing Palestinian houses on Palestinian land so that they can build the Berlin Wall #2.
Israel, which is defended by the US at all cost.
it's in my head
I got the impression that the whole distro is loaded into RAMDisk from a flash.
This really caught my eye because just recently on the Knoppix boards, a script has come out to load a whole Knoppix distro directly into RAMDisk.
I bet this is how it works and I think it's an awesome way to go. I want to try and load Morphix into 300 Megs of RAM using the script over at Knoppix. You could try it too! They say it's freakin' fast once you load everything into RAM.
I think it's interesting that the other popular desktops, MS and Apple, really don't have any incentive to go this way since it could potentially stall high end hardware sales and that's not really in their business interests.
After all, why do you need a bunch of hard drives if your OS is in RAM and you have cheap optical media for storage. And why do you need fast CPUs if your OS is already snappy as hell on an older --or newer, but slower, cheaper and less power hungry-- machines.
I think this is huge news. I knew it was coming, but I thought it would be awhile. I think the immersion lithography deal made it pointless to put things off anymore. The tech transfer is complete and it had jack to do with Taiwan. The Taiwanese are far too greedy. This was home grown all the way. I have no doubt.