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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...
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!
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
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
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.
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.
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; }
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
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 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."