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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."
It may not be a good idea to overclock these chips, as the dragons will most likely be hot enough as is...
Yeah but an hour after you install it, you want to order another one.
C - A language that combines the speed of assembly with the ease of use of assembly.
Why would they ship with a linux distro that hasn't been updated in two years?
Oh man! It's gonna say "Enter the Dragon" isn't it!!!
but only if the money is used to torture political dissidents
[/joke-notice-for-the-humorless]
"I would say that 99 per cent of what my father has written about his own life is false." - L. Ron Hubbard Jr.
And will be an enormous economic force in years to come.
/.ers are really happy about that.
If they reduce their reliance on foreign IP (or non-free foreign IP) as well as foreign hardware, this can only be good for China, and only be bad for us (Less money flow into the IT industry) unless they produce a higher quality product (thus improving the industry).
However, in the short term, you know, MS won't make as much money, neither will Intel, and I'm sure a lot of
The key to the enjoyment of pop music is to replace any instance of "love" with "C.H.U.D."
Try:
Akai: Red Kuroi: Black Aoi: Blue Shiroi: White Murasaki: Purple
...a Dragon chip in the Year of the Ram? Dragon chips are so 4698. (Year 2000 for Gregorian Calendar fanatics out there)
I'd rather buy a Ram chip - at least that way I know I'm being current.
144l. ph34r my 133t l3g4l 5k1lz!
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. This chip may work for webstation-type things, but it will be useless for any real computing.
Is turnaround still fairplay?
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
This nation has never before manufactured a computer processor of this power before, and even though processors from the US could easily beat it, its still a good bargain for the users and a good start for the country. Moreover, not everybody is a gamer, and sometimes, older processors do fine for everyday work tasks. For example, I have seen a lot of server boxes that still use Pentium II class processors and work fine. I still sometimes use my P II desktop, which uses SuSE Linux 7.3, and I think that its just about as fast as my Athlon 1700 when it comes to word processing and simple GUI tasks.
I spent a good deal of time in China a couple of years back. All I have to say is, the many people whom I met all over the country were honest and worked very hard, and I think that they deserve better living conditions than they currently have.
Their government is slowly but surely making progress towards a more reasonable form, and I hope that news technology developments like this are harbingers of improvement in their economy and the lives of the Chinese people in general.
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!
The TM can be for the logo, symbol, wording etc.
In this case I would assume that they could not claim rights to the word (as posted above it's the Japanese word for Green), but to the presentation/logo of the word/mark.
For example, if you check out one of Australia's largest banks, The Commonwealth Bank you will see that the 'mm' characters are glued together in the word. The word commonwealth can't be copyrighted, but the logo when the 'mm' is glued together like that can.
/* affect != effect */ void affect(int *thing,int effect) { *thing += effect; }
Consider the following.
In other words, we Americans should blame ourselves. Why? American companies, especially those in Silicon Valley, employ hordes of Chinese from Taiwan. When they are given lucrative opportunities in mainland China, they will seize those opportunities. Some of those opportunities involve giving sensitive American technology to Beijing. We did this to ourselves; we made it easy for the Taiwanese to give American technology to Beijing.
This hemorrhaging of technology will continue until we in the United States of America (USA) wake up. We should treat Taiwan as a province of China. When we slap punitive sanctions against China, we should also apply those sanctions against Taiwan. If we do not want to give sensitive technology to China, then we should not give sensitive technology to Taiwan. Period.
Several companies in Silicon Valley prohibit Chinese nationals from working on technologies deemed sensitive by the American government. Yet, those very same companies readily employ Taiwanese nationals to work on the same sensitive technologies. Folks, let's wake up before the fire-breathing dragon burns us Americans along with the Tibetans.
V-Dragon is an embedded chip, it has an integrated memory controller (supporting 1GB of SDRAM), USB controller, 10/100Mbps Ethernet and PCI controller. Since everything you need is integrated on the CPU, it makes motherboards very simple.
It won't be very fast, but it should be more than enoug for web-browsing and text-editing.
EETimes has an article on this. They note:
Culturecom Holdings Ltd., a publisher of Chinese language "fighting" comics that migrated into information technology in the 1990s, has begun selling its V-Dragon microprocessor for use in Chinese PCs.
That's almost like vivendi-universal going from a water utility to a multimedia giant! Is there some new business strategy for totally changing industries that I should be aware of?
They also note:
The V-Dragon CPU incorporates support for Chinese-language characters, according to the company.
Wow, I wonder what that means... optimized U16 support? Or is it marketing-speak?
EEtimes also notes that 300,000 chips have already been sold or have letters of intent to be sold.
HIV Crosses Species Barrier... into Muppets
Did anybody else here read the article?
Did this line send shivers down your spine?
While I applaud the effort to give cheap computing to the underpriviliged masses in China, this may be cause for concern
The fact that a government that still seems to be fairly interested in tramping on all forms of dissidence is involved enough with the OS and hardware so that it falls "in line with the Chinese government's IT policy", makes me a little nervous.
This isn't unusual, MS has always tailored their products so that they fit in with the IT policies of western nations. But from what I have read, China has a somewhat different IT policy to many Western nations.
An IT policy which drives everything underground, away from the policing ears.
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.
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.
I mean, if there's one country we can count on to resist pressure to place their population's property under a system enforcing centralized control, it's China!
But the real kicker with this CPU is the possibility for cheap dual and quad motherboards. If you can get 4 of these running under Linux or NetBSD the performance of one CPU don't mather that much. With a cost per CPU probably between $20-30* I would be all over tis offer.
From a customers wiewpoint competition in the Quad-motherboard is appreciated as these MB's today cost insane amounts of money.
All this depends on wheter they have added propper SMP support which is propably difficalt as they try to stay away of "IP" issues.
*Wild guess of course, but they just can't cost above $30 if they expect them to sell in China.
Melius mori in libertate quam vivere in servitute.
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."
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.