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China Releases 2nd generation MIPS Chip
eldawg writes writes with news of the launch of a second-generation Chinese 64-bit MIPS CPU. "The Godson-2 or 'Dragon' went into production last week. News reports indicate that, 'The CPU is 95% MIPS compatible using an unauthorized and unlicensed variation of the MIPS architecture, which is owned by the American company MIPS Technologies...The Godson-2 is pretty much a copy of the MIPS R10000 which makes it on par with 1995 technology.' The Chinese plan on using these chips in consumer electronics for the local market, but one can assume that they will eventually end up in exported electronic goods. I wonder if MIPS Technology will sit idly by when this happens?"
News reports indicate that, 'The CPU is 95% MIPS compatible using an unauthorized and unlicensed variation of
Unauthorized and unlicensed - duh, of course it is. That does NOT per se make it illegal and it certainly does not mean it is "stolen". Anyone can implement an instruction set (there are decades of precendent for this) - while our system may be really fucked up when it comes to thing like business method patents, on processor architecutre (and electronics in general) it is clear: it's the implementation that counts, NOT the idea.
the MIPS architecture, which is owned by the American company MIPS Technologies...
Do you mean "implementations of which have been successfully licensed by MIPS, but frankly it's a well documented and relatively simple RISC instruction set
that a single person with a few years VHDL experience can implement"? See OpenCores for an example.
The Godson-2 is pretty much a copy of the MIPS R10000 which makes it on par with 1995 technology.'
So WTF are the latest Opteron processors? On par with 1978 technology?
The Chinese plan on using these chips in consumer electronics for the local market, but
one can assume that they will eventually end up in exported electronic goods.
One can be assured that cheaper processors will find their way into everything. Nice try insinuating that the EVIL CHINESE are deliberately out to screw us by EMBRACING CAPITALISM!
I wonder if MIPS Technology will sit idly by when this happens?"
I wonder if MIPS has a choice. See AMD vs Intel ca. 1991
All they need to do is create a knock off copy of the Mac Mini and sell it for $99 USD. They can call it the Red Mini Star. :P
...will just buy out MIPS Technology, just like they are with everything else.
Just checking, can I license MIPS from MIPS and this thing from Soviet China and manufacture my own?
Also, what the hell are these going to be used for? Are these just for high end computing or do the Chinese seriously plan to start using consumer linux or some shit to run on these MIPSes?
The Godson-2 is pretty much a copy of the MIPS R10000 which makes it on par with 1995 technology.
Which is excellent for vintage music lovers like myself, because all the hardware I've used since 1996 and on has absolutely refused to play my Ace of Base MP3s.
If it's a copy of 1995 technology, and patents last 10 years, I wonder if they're violating anything important.
If MIPS cannot make its own chips live longer, then it's definitely a good thing that chinese copy it "illegally" and find a usage as embedded consumer processors. MIPS had its 15 minutes, now it's over, they should be grateful that at least their architecture is still used for some obscure stuff.
they are really too expensive as there are, and I wouldn't mind a good cheap doorstop. :P)
(or boat anchor for that matter
Wow this was great evil-Chinese propaganda.
I am going to kick in the balls the first person who makes an R/L joke and calls this a "LISC" processor.
yeah man just look at those xbox controllers
we have a technology that a US company claims to own. china takes that technology to use for domestic goods. most would expect that if china attempted to sell these goods inside the usa, china would be sued.
but a far more interesting question is what can the usa do to stop china from selling goods based on stolen technology in their own country?
is that even a wise policy? perhaps. if china can make goods based on patents owned by usa companies, then the usa companies loose the trade they otherwise would have had. the usa workers get hurt in the long run. if a usa company will fight tooth and nail protecting their ideas and innovations inside the usa, why should they turn their heads when the theft is outside the usa?
i bet the usa companies will lobby congress to take away "most favored nation" trade designation, or to raise imports, or to impose some economic punishment on china.
and what does this say about the chinese people? they seem to invest great pains in stealing technology rather than creating new ideas. there have been newspaper reports of the chinese taking american cars, reverse engineering them, and then building a chinese version with cheap plastic and parts for nickels on the dollar. and i believe china and tiwan are the two biggest manufacturors of knock-off goods, like pirated gucci bags, or playstation mod chips, or fake rolex watches. too bad we can't kick the RIAA out of the USA and send them to china.
what will china be in the next 50 years? a nation that produces knock-off's of low quality?
the anwser for china is to invest in R&D. it is what all advanced nations do. when i buy stock, it is something i look at. i am willing to invest in companies with otherwise so-so stat's if i see the company investing. it tells me the company is building something, working toward a goal, and not just here for the moment.
Rosco: "If brains were gunpowder, Enos couldn't blow his nose."
From the article:
... A bit more complex then the Hennasy and Patterson (The Classic!) book on computer arch and cpu design, but not by much. Given what (admittedly little) the article said about China's CPU fabs, I wonder if the newest Xilinx or Altera FPGA's could implement the design and run it faster ..
"The move still shows that China is capable of designing complex microprocessors."
As is any junior level class in computer engineering
I always prefer to start the year off with a bang - or, to be more precise, a series of loud hums, a crackle or two, and
The chinese have probably bet that with the rate that technology is now progressing and the slowness that the WTO/courts operate it will take a couple of years to get any decision against them. By that time they will have already made their money. This will get really interesting in a while when software patents are infringed upon. I can't see any of the major players bitching about patents particularly when the chinese can shut them out of the market.
I support localized technology. Where is everyone's capitalist spirit of competition, anyway? I'm eager to see what more China has to offer to the future.
The parent post is right... many undergraduate level of computer architecture classes in colleges use MIPS as the basis of the first microprocessor that students develop. Mainly because it is a quite simple ISA.
...alternate architectures aren't dead yet. It's nice to know that some alternatives to the x86 juggernaut are still live and kicking. I wonder if China will make MIPS-based personal computers or workstations? If these new processors are powerful enough, I might import a MIPS-based PC for some nice assembly hacking.
It would nice to see a day where the x86 juggernaut is effectively challenged.
Marlon Brando is the godfather?
"The Register" has a better write up on this story (sorry guys). Apparently they've managed to get Windows CE, Linux, and VxWorks up and running on the CPU.
As for the patented instruction sets, apparently they aren't used in the chip. (Supposedly that's why it's 95% compatible).
Currently the chip clocks in at 400-500Mhz, but the next generation is going to be around the 1Ghz mark - by which point China is going to be spitting out all manner of sub $200 computers I imagine.
READY.
PRINT ""+-0
I've been working a project that uses the MIPS-I compatible Lexra 4180, and in my research I found they were basically sued out of business by MIPS for creating a clone. This link -- the Lexra story -- is a good summary. From that article: MIPS Technologies claimed that because an exception handler could be created to emulate the function of unaligned loads and stores in software with many other instructions Lexra's processors infringed the patent. It was claimed to basically be a patent infringement case because the instruction set used the patented unaligned load feature. (I just coded this into my mips disassembler -- it takes two instructions to process, but the benefit is that it looks like it would be much easier to implement in hardware)
HIV Crosses Species Barrier... into Muppets
It will not run a pirated copy of MS Windows, so at least one big american company is happy with it. If it performs as an R10000, I do not mind running linux on it though, at least not when it is matched with a good video card (2D only needed).
My wife's sketchblog Blob[p]: Gastrono-me
What are you talking about? /only uses the S controller...you know...the one that Microsoft originally designed for the Asian market... //best controller I have ever had the opportunity of using on a console
The Chinese are world leaders in re-engineering. Just ask the FSSR why they were always hesitent on selling technology to the Chinese.
Better yet...why stop at the Chinese? Why not kill everyone living on Earth right now? I mean...it will obviously take care of all our problems with other countries...
Get real, you couldn't kill a race by genetic makeup, because there is too much similarity to create a virus that would only target race. Besides, what would get accomplished if you tried such a thing?
Fucking racist...
Learned a long time ago to ignore any political opinions given by computer scientists because agree with them and they'll just say the opposite. So after the whining about companies banning replication of their video codecs and software, it's now bad for China to replicate MIPS compatability.
Nevertheless, compatability with the MIPS standard seems like the most trivial thing they could have copied. There are much harder problems to overcome in building a CPU than what spec to follow. The MIPS spec doesn't define how to mass produce very precise arrangements of semiconductor features for the least amount of money. It doesn't define how to dissipate heat and reduce power consumption.
Also, one day people are going to figure out that whatever China's government says, it's 10 years behind their current status. China's government says its economy is only growing at 5%. In reality it's growing at 10%. They say they won't finish the olympic stadium until 2008. It's finished now. They say 3 gorges won't become operational until 2010. It's operational now.
So what do you think the current state of Chinese technology is now that their government says they're at 1995 levels?
This article here gives some insight into the sots of problems the Chinese may have if they try to enter the USA market.
I hope that by the time they choose to enter the market, they have enough money/power to sustain the legal battle.
The MIPS company people sound like asses.
http://www.thebricktestament.com/the_law/when_to_
Thanks for that link.
Unless there's a lot more that the guy is telling, this is a very clear case of IP laws directly impeding the industry.
btw, does anyone know what kind of air force china has?
They have MIGs that shoot napalm, and if two or more MIGs shoot their missiles on the same target, it will cause a firestorm. They are especially powerful if China has upgraded to black napalm. Also, if you are facing the nuke general, beware of nuke MIGs.
China also has the Helix helicopter. It is pretty slow, but can be upgraded with a gatling gun, bunker or a propaganda tower, AND napalm bombs. Those napalm bombs are very lethal to ground troops.
Why is this suddenly China against US ? Isn't it two seperate companies only? So since SCO is a Linux-enemy we could discuss all of USA as an enema of Linux?! This headline smacks of Fox'ing. Talking about animals seems American AMD, the friendly CPU firm is having "Chinese" sex:
o m/0,,51_104_543~80806,00.html
http://www.amd.com/us-en/Corporate/VirtualPressRo
AH
Wow, a 4-issue in order MIPS? That's adorable :)
If you've ever used an R10k Silicon Graphics workstation, you'll know that these MIPS chips are pretty beefy. The floating point performance in particular on modern MIPS chips is spectacular. (R14k chips are used in Tezro currently)
There's a REASON Silicon Graphics used MIPS chips in their systems until recently. (and they only switched to x86 stuff due to economic pressure, not performance...)
I have a dual processor R12k SGI Octane on my desk and it still beats my brand new P4 out on a LOT of tasks. And that's a seven year old machine....
Plus, these are 64-bit chips.
Sure, the R10k processor is "from 1995". But SGI's policy at the time THEY were using MIPS R10k chips in their $50k workstations was to factor of ten beat everything else on the market. Meaning, their systems were engineered to be at least ten times as powerful as the competition (and ten times the price to boot).
So... Knockoff R10k MIPS chips, built with modern advancements, smaller dies, and scaled to higher clock rates, will perform VERY WELL comparatively. In fact, for some tasks, (floating point) the chip should compete quite well with a P4 1.5 Ghz... and probably be a whole hell of a lot cheaper. And 64 bit I might add.
And since there are already designs for systems with massive numbers of MIPS R10K nodes (Origin 2000 for example) which are considered to be "junk" it's not hard to imagine knockoff supercomputers....
/.ers, better embrace 'em!
These will soon be the only CPUs on the market that don't have treacherous computing extensions
Good thing Linux runs well on old/slow hardware...
She should be executed. One day, we're all going to pay for trusting those communists. China should have been kept in isolation until their commie system collapsed and they were ready to embrace a more open system of government. Now, we're artificially propping up back asswards societies that think they're superior.
I can't believe the slap on the wrist this bitch was given.
ever heard of sickle cell?
If I can't smoke and swear I'm fucked.
Sounds like a pretty tough army. At least they haven't reverse engineered those underground warp tunnels... yet.
Visual IRC: Fast. Powerful. Free.
American patents don't apply in China, so by definition no patent has been violated - even if a case could be made in the states. American law doesn't stretch a single foot outside of American borders, at least when it comes to countries the U.S. can't conquer or cow into submission.
Max
My god carries a hammer. Your god died nailed to a tree. Any questions?
....stating that OSX has been secretly running on MIPS for the last 4 years as a backup backup plan
I have been a user for about 10 years. This ends Feb 2014. The site's been ruined. I'm off. Dice, FU
"China should have been kept in isolation "
That would not have worked. China was and is much smarter than the USSR in this case. The west was forced to comply and if not then China is big enough to live on their own.
has MIPS or anybody still got in stock? or could ramp up production? Nowhere near enough for Chinese demand that's for sure. Just imagine the hissing and roaring if the Chinese bought from a European supplier. Watch MIPS quietly pass a few of these oriental devices thru their labs to verify quality, then future buyers get referred to MIPS "Western Pacific Agents"
China is buying Treasury stock in very large amounts and "owning" your government
In soaking up dollops of US debt, China helps the Federal Reserve to keep American interest rates low, sustaining high levels of American consumer spending. Yet, members of Congress are not up in arms about this form of dependence.
I have been a user for about 10 years. This ends Feb 2014. The site's been ruined. I'm off. Dice, FU
I find it fascinating how the submitter chose to highlight these chips were developed in China, rather than BLX IC, the /company/ that has designed these chips. I'm sure there's numerous other companies in China producing various general purpose processors as well. When Intel or ATI comes out with a new processor, there aren't many who talk about America or Canada designing a new chip.
Is it commonplace for people in the US to consider China as some monolithic, communist production machine where the entire state works for one 'company'?
Does it run NetBSD?
XML - A clever joke would be here if
very good read , on linuxdevices they add to that article
l
"although AMD has reportedly encouraged BLX and MIPS to "settle their differences," the article suggests."
http://www.linuxdevices.com/news/NS9828238951.htm
developer http://flamerobin.org
Mostly old Russian knockoffs and stuff. MiG-21,25,29,31, and choppers. But even their main infantry assault rifle is a copy of the AK-47... their military is large but not as advanced as some other nations...
India is a democracy. India is not anny richer and they have about the same amount of people, but they inherited a mostly working state system from the British.
The British empire was not any bether than the Hitler Germany, but India and others learned something positive from them.
and without doubt China will care. Oh no, wait a minute. HA HA HA HA HA! As if they'll give a ....
China only wants a very very cheap processor for their appliances. So they would not want to pay for the design or invest in a new one. Maybe one day everything (TVs, refrigerators, whatever...)will have one of these...
is the grand parent post from a video game where you play against/as China or real life?
sounds more like a game with the mention of underground warp tunnels, but i'm quite tired and just making sure.
Obviously he is talking about Command&Conquer:Generals.
I have to say, most of the comments here can be conluded into one option that non-Western people can never make any progress or advantage in technology, or it's stolen from western world. i wonder how eastern people looked at west in 300 years ago, e.g. Tang Dynasty. With the same logic, almost all the western people after that are thieves. With the same logic, western people's foolishness and selfishness are shown so clearly here. BTW, there is a very basic and universal principle in law, who claims, who gives the evidence. It should be MIPS to find evidence, not Chinese to prove they are legal.
you used "its" twice, "it's" once, and all three correctly. how did you manage that?
I don't get the reference to Hennesy and Patterson at all here, while they do indeed discuss the implementation of pipelined chips with the Mips as the running example they do it on a high level. Doing an efficient implementation of even only the parts discussed in the book requires doing the actual clever implementation work of large portions of logic not really touched upon. Even things that are discussed are in so general terms that the books worth as a practical guide to actually building a modern chip is fairly low (it is an introductionary book after all). In addition they don't even discuss the issues involved in a chip of this level, notable missing parts are OoO logic and the FPU and so on (again understandable since it is an introduction).
Don't compare the R10000 to the stuff that a CS class hobbles together (which also tends to be a very small portion of a complete chip), it is an insult to all of computer architecture if anything.
So, the R10000 was very much state of the art in 1995, and is still doing fairly well today (the R160000 is pretty much the same core, just shrunk and tuned). If China has made an equivalent it is proof enough that they can make a competitive chip.
Between the software patents in europe, the DMCA in the US and the state of the current patent system, It is getting harder to produce software in the patent minefield that is the western world.
9/11 should have shown us what happens when determined people who aren't bound by laws and corporate greed want to get things done. The tech industry no longer has a "just do it" kind of attitude, as it crawls along, waiting for a lawsuit to blindside them.
With even reverse engineering outlawed by the DMCA, consumers are locked into the first product to appear on the market, and making an alternative, even a better one is a futile exercise.
Face it, with fewer laws, tech advancement using reverse engineering, and those one man hackers like DVD jon, Russia and china are operating with a freedom that allows them to bring the best they have to the fore, without limitations. Without serious patent reform, the US will NOT be at the forefront of technology for much longer.
A brief description with picture of the chip:u /0312/258718.html/
u /0312/258719.html/
http://www.pconline.com.cn/pchardware/foreline/cp
A 13-page write-up documenting the tough work and challenges faced by one of the chip scientists (e.g. pipelines/branch-prediction/cache design, packaging, etc...):
http://www.pconline.com.cn/pchardware/foreline/cp
Interesting bits from those Chinese sites:
- (back in 2003) they're already running Linux on it, with applications such as MP3 audio/mpeg movie playing, Mozilla, OpenOffice, games...
- (back in 2003) Max clock 300MHz, 1-2W power consumption, 1% CPU load for playing MP3, 23% for mpeg movie, SPEC_CPU2000 score of 300
- will reach 1GHz by early 2006
- it will be used in low-cost PC with price RMB1,000
- the 3rd gen of the chip will incorporate multi-core design
China should have been kept in isolation until their commie system collapsed
The 'commie system' did collapse. China is no longer communist by any reasonable measure (if they ever were).
They're certainly totalitarian (so is communism in practice, but although communism-->totalitarian, the converse isn't necessarily true), and an indication that you can have capitalism without democracy.
In fact, the Americans assumed that by supporting China's move towards capitalism, power would become diffused and there would be more vested interest in not seeking conflict with the US. They did not believe that China would get this far without much greater decentralisation of power than has actually happened.
To some extent, I think they believed their own propoganda (capitalism --> democracy). I also think they wanted a slice of that *very* large market and figured they had a long enough spoon to sup with the Chinese government.
and they were ready to embrace a more open system of government
As I mentioned above, the Americans assumed that capitalism would lead to more open government. Now China is (for example) beginning to compete with the US for oil, many are having misgivings about this.
Incidentally, keep an eye on Zimbabwe; Mugabe is importing vast quantities of goods from China, and there is evidence that he is seeking to ally with them (I'm assuming that China are equally interested in Zimbabwe's resources). It's a very good explanation as to why he's tearing down street markets and basically destroying his country; leaves it open for Chinese goods to flood the market.
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
This almost certainly has nothing to do with the original story. She illegally exported (not stole - they were bought and paid for, probably legally, in the US) specialist microprocessors for low-temperature use. They were probably also really slow.
This story is about a general-purpose microprocessor which ought to be a lot faster (if less durable). Besides, reverse-engineering isn't neccesarily any faster than designing from scratch.
Why go to the bother of typing all that, then destroy your credibility by not bothering to use caps in all but two words?!
It's 4 MiGs :D
I have to say, most of the comments here can be concluded into one option that
non-Western people can never make any progress or advantage in technology, or it's stolen from western world.
i wonder how eastern people looked at west in 300 years ago, e.g. Tang Dynasty.
With the same logic, almost all the western people after that are thieves.
With the same logic, western people's foolishness and selfishness are shown so clearly here.
BTW, there is a very basic and universal principle in law, who claims, who gives the evidence. It should be MIPS to find evidence, not Chinese to prove they are clean.
Have a look at:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M-16_(rifle)/
It says that china is making licensed M16. I don't know why they make them if they're not using them though...
Unless there's a lot more that the guy is telling, this is a very clear case of IP laws directly impeding the industry.
Actually, it sounds more like a case of lawsuits impeding the industry (with a little help from IP laws). Apparently, MIPS Technology didn't actually win the lawsuit, they just dragged it on until Lexra ran out of money; it's an old trick...
We will see them in Walmart piled from ceiling to floor with little yellow smiley faces saying "we roll back price. you buy mips now. we own all your base."
Join the Slashcott! Feb 10 thru Feb 17!
What I want to know is if these will operate in Apostle Clusters... or if they are only intended to be used in postmodern Left Behind environments.
No wait, I see they are destined for use in robotics.
A true martial artist would just kill you, and wouldn't make any wasteful excitations like in cheesy American chop-sokky movies. :-)
Windows NT ran on MIPS ~10 years ago... for windows' definitions of 'ran'.
Because the AK47 is capable of taking more abuse? the only thing I HATE about firing the AK47 that the AR15/M16 doesn't do, is eject the cartidge case right onto my head. I've gotten AK47 cases in the eye before. Can't fricking explain it, but it happens. :-/ Maybe a defective receiver, I don't know, but it sucked firing that thing. I had better accuracy at 100y with the AK, though. And it sounds nastier. :-)
Your shift key is broken.
So when AMD copies Intel, that's okay. China partially copies MIPS, that's not okay.
Not even the brightest CS junior, or even the brightest (lone) CS grad student in any institution all over the world can design something with the complexity of the R10000, which was a fairly sophisticated design. The Chinese have access to very recent process technologies and can easily design and build a simpler processor that would beat your puny FPGA-implemented broken design in a heartbeat. Their goal is to build a base on which they can build a competitive CPU design infrastructure for their local industry.
I found your post mildly disturbing, with an air of superiority that seems to assume that CPU design is an American specialty of some sort. Many of us who work in CPU design and implementation got our graduate degrees from American universities, where an overwhelming majority of the graduate students in our group were foreign. Your CPU's are already being designed by non-Americans, so this might be a good time to get over it. Also, there is much more to talking about microprocessor design than taking a junior level Verilog class, perusing the Hennessy & Patterson book and maybe reading a few ISCA papers. I suggest you take a look at the R10000 paper published in IEEE Computer some years back.
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i'll bet it would not take much to to get IRIX to boot off of it. I can imagine how cool it would be
if there where small pda like devices running IRIX.
Try this: google "Patent Cooperation Treaty" and see that China is a signatory.
Don't you have an anti-Bush rally somewhere or something that you need to be at?
But were things any different when America had an undeveloped economy 100 years ago?
Well, let's see. There's this little thing called a Constitution...
--- I wish I could hear the soundtrack to my life. That way I'd know when to duck.
the only thing I HATE about firing the AK47 that the AR15/M16 doesn't do, is eject the cartidge case right onto my head.
Mine did that too - I think the only way around it is to fire tilted.
"We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"
We should ban any product using their chips...If china doesnt give a crap about our patents, then we shouldnt buy thier products. Its just that simple. Ill pay the extra 10 or 20 dollars more if things were made in the US. Id rather see us as self reliant and have things be more expensive than put our balls in chinas hands and live in cheapo land. But then again, who cares, if they want to continue to rip off our stuff let them.. Its only going to hurt them in the long run. There is NO substitute for hard work. The will get sucked into this cycle of copying and wont learn anything. Like when the russians copied our B29's they copied everything so verbatib they even copied a patch in the sheet metal!hah! China reminds me of that one grubby kid in engineering school who ALWAYS copies other peoples homework... Never even bothers to try it for himself. Claims he is learning, but just copies it verbatim, so much so he copies the name too. Its all good till the test rolls around, then he is screwed. Maybe he will be able to cheat on the exam too, but what happens on the job... eventually it will catch up with him.
They own other commercial enterprises in China. I'd like to know because I would like to avoid funding their activities. I feel a moral obligation to avoid buying bullets for their guns and treads for their tanks.
command & conquer generals. he also mentioned nuke general, which came from the expansion, Zero Hour. Great game.
The warp tunnels have nothing to do with the game.
By the way, its was 4 MiG's to make a firestorm.
On Friday, the Chinese government scrapped the link between the US dollar and the Yuan. The link is the reason Chinese people and products have been so cheap for the last decade or so.
With the link scrapped, the Yuan is going to increase in value, making Chinese people and Chinese products more expensive.
This is going to mean less, not more offshoring to China in the future. Other AsiaPac countries co-ordinated similar moves at the same time.
Deleted
So I have read here and else where that they intend on using a version of Linux and their own CPU's so that they do not have dependance on American tech.
Is being 95% compatable with MIPS enough to get a MIP's Linux kernel up and running or would they have to patch the bejesus out of it.
Or maybe that is the plan anyway....
Actually, a TRUE martial artist would have made you give up long before it became necessary to come to blows.
I laughed at the weak who considered themselves good because they lacked claws.
google "Patent Cooperation Treaty" and see that China is a signatory.
Unlike copyright treaties, patent treaties typically do two things: establish a priority date for applying for a patent in one country based on date of applying in another, and allow an inventor to specify multiple countries on a standardized patent application for an additional fee. Question here is whether SGI or MIPS paid that additional fee.
I suspect that you are about to get your wish. China is now sounding off on Taiwan and stating that if we use even a small nuke there, they will target the USA with nukes. Great. MAD all over.
So we fight a simple war with them. Right? We are currently fighting a 2 front war and are currently at a stalemate. In addition, we are running out of willing soldiers. All china has to do is invade Taiwan and we do not have any flex in our system to do anything. It would take no less than 6 months for us come up to speed. Well, any invasion of Taiwan will take less than 3 months (and probably less than 1 month).
I think that even China (probably with discussions by Bin Ladin) is well aware that they can now take what they claim and there will be damn little that we will do about it.
This is most excellent news. China is producing their own processors. What makes it even better is that they based it off an already proven processor design. I would honestly rather had them give Intel a slight by "pirating" one of their designs, but such is life.
China needs this to advance their entire society. Eventually, they need to work on their infrastructure (holy god, they need to work on their infrastructure). Power lines, roads, tunnels, power plants, water treatment plants, river barges and docks, portable bridges.
This is one step. This is a good step. But the absolute, next most important move to make, is working on the infrastructure.
Good quality laser printer are cheap.
I shot a Glock 21C that did that shit. God that's annoying. The FN Five seveN has a great ejection method, it fires the round forward when ejected, WAY out of your way.
Slashdot is proof that Sturgeon's Law applies to mankind.
That is Hundai.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
The CPU is 95% MIPS compatible using an unauthorized and unlicensed variation of the MIPS architecture,
The AMD chips are 100% Pentium compatible, using an unauthorized and unlicensed variation of the Pentium architecture, and we all benefit from that. As long as they don't violate specific patents or copy parts of the circuitry, it's also legal.
If MIPS Technologies actually claim intellectual property in the MIPS instruction set or general aspects of the MIPS architecture, then we have a real problem, but that problem is with MIPS Technologies. Instruction sets and straightforward high-level architectural choices should not be patentable.
Patent Law
Trademark Law
Copyright Law
Technology Contract law
Product Quality Law
I fully expect Chinese companies and the Chinese govt. (often the same thing) to steal trade secrets and IP from outsourced operations and then turn around and compete against us using our own technology. Anyone who thinks otherwise is naive. American companies that outsource their SW / HW development to China are writing their own epitaph.
[Insert pithy quote here]
Your economy is now pwned by the chinese/asians (to a certain exstent so is mine). Most manufactuering is nwo done in china, almost every product imagineable is now either "made in china" or "made in india". Electronics are now rarely made in the USA. My computer almost had 100% taiwanese parts. It's now just a little late to try and reverse this trend, and you can blame all the short sighted MBA's who thought they'd get a great bonus by financing their competition. At the moment the things the US does well is:
1- work hard
2- has good management
3- has good R&D
#1 is a trait shared by India and China. #2 is something that can be stolen with little or no effort. #3 can also be stolen and at some point improved upon as the japanese showed us was possible in the 80's. The US hegemony is almost over, lasting a scant decade and a half. Who do I blame, yeah I blame the stupid buisiness execs.
"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
"Chinese culture, as the father of all East Asian cultures, holds education dear and promotes getting as much of it as possible. Their college system is still sub-par when compared to the rest of the world, and when compared to S. Korea or Japan, but it is rapidly improving. Their top schools compete with the world's top schools. Their local schools have been providing valuable training in business management, among other skills, that have allowed the Chinese economy to boom as it has been booming."
Oh wow! Is theirs geared around the "cookie-cutter", "churn them out for the factory", "be a good citizen" model like ours is?
Ok, this is cool and all, but only really relevant if I can buy one. That would be cool.
... they should call it CORE.
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
That is the funniest thing I've read on Slashdot in weeks.
While he kind of trivializes the ability to design a chip such as this let consider the fact that they designed from documents published about the R1000. Seriously given todays modern tools, synopsis, mentor graphics, and cadence implementing an already designed microprocessor is not exactly an incredible achievement, it is a lot of grunt work but is not a massive achievement. We will see how well they laid out the actual chip and how well they have optimized their silicon for clock speed.
But I mean in all honesty in 2 months time as a student I designed, tested and optimized a 64 bit alpha integer design which feature out of order exaction, 2-way superscalar, speculative branches, load store forwarding et al. This was by myself basically, I had someone design the caches, and had someone connecting my modules. But otherwise it was like a one man show. Given a year and a competent team of 25 verilog coders, a few electrical engineers to hand optimize the layout and there you go processor.
See it does not take the greatest team to make an implementation of a working design and almost any group of decent engineers in any country can do this. What remains to be seen is how good their optimizations and improvements hold up to our established modern designs or even their inspiration.
Now call me when they develop their own ISA or at least a chip with some uniqueness a copy of an old MIPS will not cut it. Call me when they develop something that is a class leading CPU.
Oh and by the way FPGA.....I don't think so these are not large enough or fast enough for a modern design like the R1000. Simply put even old fab technology is better than an FPGA
to assume that CPU design is an American specialty of some sort.
True, and if one even bothers to look at the different CPU architectures and their history one it's rather plain. Take one of the most widely used architectures like ARM, it's pure British. The strongARM was a cooporation with the old Alpha team so it's partly American. And it's that Indian guy, whats his name? Who is considered the main architect of the SPARC line(Or was it the MIPS? I always mix those up). And in the little simpler segment we have the Atmel AVR family, which was developed in Norway.
Until best and cheapest CPUs are made by China, instead of AMD/Intel. Just like Hondas/Toyotas replaced Buicks.
With the current wisdom of MBA blueshirts, the United States will have to feed itself with Disney cartoons and T-bond paper, since the very basic manufacturing skills are being lost.
Fired from the Shoulder or from the Hip. AFAICT the AK47 was designed primarily for Hip firing where the AR15 was designed for both shoulder and hip firing.
Food not Bombs is a nice platitude but it breaks down when you notice that the Bombees are usually well fed
We just cost too much, 100k here is 5k in china. But let me say this even though there are very bright chinese and indian people many of them are americans now and both of those countries are so screwed up I have a problem with the outsourcing going their.
Simply put the people are treated like shit, the environment is treated like shit, IP is not valued, and the infrastructure sucks. The truth is that Europeans and Americans are more efficient and only the low cost of labor makes up the difference. I mean seriously these countries make Mexico look like a caring government.
Shoulder.
I too, had a problem with a Glock doing this. Not sure what model, but it was a .45.
Oh, *SPIN*! I thought you were talking about SPIM!
I would not expect any CS grad student to be able to design event the simplest CPU. Last time I checked CS students did not learn VHDL, logic design, electronic networks, transistor design, etc. Maybe you meant EE or CpE. And you "work" in CPU design?
Many of my peers had semester design projects to create a simple CPU. I have no doubt that given 5 years of uninterrupted work, a single, intelligent engineer could design and implement a relatively complex CPU on par with a R10000 in an FPGA.
You have to remember that architecture and overall design was not the limiting factor in 1995. It was die size and transistor speed. The logic not only had to meet the architecture requirements but do so with speed and space constraints.
I guess PCTalk must believe it's less than a 95% copy of the original, so it didn't bother linking to the story. The original story was developed by Microprocessor Report. Sorry, but we're a paid subscription newsletter, so we can only publish an abstract in the public domain. You can the original abstract at: http://www.in-stat.com/tr/index.asp and follow the link to "China's Emerging Microprocessors"
Don't sweat it, it's only 1's and 0's.
I sympathize with flames more every day. This comment is so much simpler and more elegant that what I probably would've written, and it gets the point across much better. There's no reasoning with the self-absorbed eurotrash on this website, so why even bother? When it comes to assholes like them, it's better to take the tough love approach, except without the love.
How did AMD pay Intel for x86, BTW?
In mixed and capitalist systems the power is not so concentrated. Hence less corruption. Que the greeneys that still don't understand how much smaller GE is then government, also that you can stop dealing with a corrupt company much easier then you can stop dealing with corrupt governemt. The former requires you to be pissed enough to find alternatives the latter requires you to take to the hills with your weapons (you do support the second ammendment don't you?).
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Having one gene for sickle cell is actually an adaptation against malaria. If you targeted sickle cell, you might kill all those people who have one such gene, but not those who have none.
Also, what genetic weakness could you exploit against the Chinese that would not affect the Japanese, Koreans, Vietnamese, etc.
The warp tunnels have nothing to do with the game.
Sure they do.. the GLA (terrorist faction) has warp tunnels.
Visual IRC: Fast. Powerful. Free.
You wouldn't have the lawsuits if the current laws didn't encourage it.
But, yeah, the problem always comes back to the people. If we didn't drink the kool-aide, Microsoft wouldn't have as big a monopoly, and if we didn't pay them money, they would eventually be unable to continue using the courts to stall, and the worst example of bad IP behavior would go away.
Fewer bad examples to follow wouldn't result in Utopia, but it would result in fewer bad examples followed.
I wasn't comparing it to a CS class, I was comparing it to a Computer Engineering class. I've seen CS majors try to design hardware, and it wasn't pretty most of the time. In Comptuer Engineering, chip design or FPGA design is a lot of what we do.
Granted, it was an oversimplification, but I've seen groups that were a mix of grad students and undergrads crank out hardware designs a hell of a lot more complicated then a CPU and have a fairly good implementation. (Granted, mostly targeting FPGAs. One example I know a lot about was speech processing/reconigition.)
I always prefer to start the year off with a bang - or, to be more precise, a series of loud hums, a crackle or two, and
Graduate student projects can often be fairly interesting and impressive, but you very deeply underestimate the work involved here. To put it this way; Academic projects are often very clever in a fundamental way, but commercial designs have year after year of very clever work done on every detail. This is not interesting to academia since it proves nothing about the design as such, it just creates a good end product.
I do recognize this myself though, I am often of a similar opinion about great pieces of software (I am firmly on the software side of things actually, though I have written some VHDL and have a general interest in computer architecture). It is easy to look at the fundamentals and say "the basic workings of this is trivial", but the devil is always in the details.
But, anyway, this story has long since dissappeared from the frontpage, lets get on with out lives.