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A Chinese Challenge To Intel
motang writes "Chinese government funded Godson-3 a CPU that is developed to bring personal computing to majority of Chinese people by the year 2010. Will this pose any threat to Intel?"
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No.
Kinda looks like a Cyrix. We won't be seeing any all-Chinese Alienware boxen anytime soon.
The funny thing is that they're made in China by a Swiss company, then rebranded Chinese. Ya'd think that they'd want to do it the other way around. Must be a national pride thing -- China's motto is "Ours is crappier than yours, but we have so much damn more of it!"
Even in real (before Gorbachov) communist era, USSR was shipping 8086 compatible chips as far as I searched.
Guess what? They care about Windows, DirectX and millions of x86 centric developers. China has always been a realistic country and even Russia couldn't dare to ship a non x86 small chip. Their mainframes were also DEC/S360 etc. clones. There is even a DEC chip saying "Steal from the best" when looked under electron microscope ;)
on x86 compatibility from TFA:
on watt usage from TFA:
so, yes, it will be x86 compatible.
Quoting Apple community who got sick of FreeScale's (G4 era) non shipping announcements and watt/mhz claims say: "Lets see the actual silicon chip and measure it".
When its shipped, Freescale will be at very interesting watt powers (as they are concentrated) and Intel will be at SSE something level. Intel and AMD has a sharing agreement and MS is very close friend of Intel that has lead to "Wintel" term. Emulating the CPU? Ask Linus how well it went.
I have seen some great promises not happening at all or wasn't delivering the promise. Especially x86 market. Today's fashion is Watts and number of cores, it was Mhz way back then.
Take a look at a 9 years old story:
http://slashdot.org/articles/99/02/19/1543222.shtml
I don't care who makes the processor - let's face it, most chips in US computers are made in Asian countries anyway - all I need is for it to work well. I doubt the Chinese are doing anything radical (that's not generally their style), which is a pity because current chip designs are going down a dead-end and it'll take a radical shift to solve many of the issues to do with parallelism, increasing abstraction in programming languages, and increasing demand for highly robust software. Serious efforts into such radicalizing of technology can be seen with the IBM Cell design (which isn't going anywhere, at the moment) and could be seen in the Transmeta Crusoe and the Inmos Transputer, and the Manchester AMULET was ingenious enough, but pretty much everything else in the CPU world is based on stale ideas and stagnant approaches. Good for backwards compatibility at the binary level, lousy for long-term potential.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Asian language pedantry: Sayonara is Japanese. You're looking for Zai Jian. 再 見
It's not x86 compatible. It's a MIPS64 clone. According to this, they'll use binary translation and extra instructions to run x86 binaries.
http://www.pldesignline.com/news/210201111
Both the four- and eight-core versions of the Godson-3 are implemented at 65 nm, with clock speed of 1GHz. The design features a distributed, scalable architecture with reconfigurable CPU core and L2 cache. The devices are designed for low power consumption - the four-core draws 10w while the eight -core draws 20w, according to Xu's presentation. The designs utilize MIPS64 cores with more than 200 additional instructions for X86 binary translation and media acceleration.
Problem is it's unlicensed, so they would most likely be sued for patent infringement if they sell it outside China.
http://www.mdronline.com/watch/watch_Issue.asp?Volname=Issue+%23072505&on=1
In December 2003, Advanced Micro Devices and BLX IC Design announced a relationship and opened the AMD/BLX Computing Client Development Center in Beijing. BLX IC Design is creating reference designs for thin clients and other computing products using AMD and BLX IC Design processors. The first two products are thin clients powered by AMDâ(TM)s MIPS32 - compatible Alchemy Au1500 processor and BLX IC Design's Godson-1. The creators of the Godson-1 say its architecture is "MIPS-like" - a description that annoys MIPS Technologies, which doesnâ(TM)t authorize the Godson architecture or license any intellectual property to ICT or BLX IC Design. AMD, which is a MIPS licensee, says it encourages BLX IC Design and MIPS to resolve their licensing issues.
Lexra tried to sell unlicensed MIPS clones and was effectively shutdown by lawsuits. As this Lexra guy puts it -
http://jonahprobell.com/lexra.html
It has been interesting to watch as the Chinese company, BLX, has made and sold powerful processors in China that execute MIPS-based instruction sets. BLX is legally and morally clear of violating MIPS Technologies' patents. BLX has chosen not to pay anything to MIPS Technologies while a host of American companies with their own powerful MIPS instruction set processors pay large sums of money to MIPS Technologies for the privilege of not being hassled by lawsuits. After its experience with Lexra MIPS Technologies changed all of its 32-bit cores to ue its new MIPS32 instruction set which extends the MIPS-I instruction set to include other features patented by MIPS Technologies. This is similar to Intel's addition of the MMX instruction set extensions to Pentium III in order to prevent AMD from building compatible processors.
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
Actually, from the article, I think this is the dragon cpu (dragonchip in the article)
/not suck/.
And it is being produced.
It also makes the VIA processors look like incredible speed demons.
So the problem isn't being able to make them, but being able to make them
Self proclaimed typo king, and inventor of the bear destroying coffee table (patent not pending).
You realize that most US PCs are either designed and manufactured in China and Taiwan?
This is the third major redesign of the Dragon chip. If you had read the article (haha, slashdot joke etc) you would have seen that apparently with each update they've tripled the performance, or so they say. There's been about 8 updates for the second major design of the chip, they're on 2G or 2H now, with integrated GPUs, and even integrated chipsets (System on Chip).
Godson-3 / Dragon-3 chip will have 4 cores at 5W/core (allegedly) and interface using HyperTransport to a chipset (so they can probably use any compatible chipset from the PC world).
Actually this seems to confirm it
http://news.idg.no/cw/art.cfm?id=01923563-17A4-0F78-313A27C7A88124BA
Godson's use in PCs has been held back by the fact that it is based on a MIPS core, as opposed to the x86 design used by Intel and AMD. To run Windows it has to use translation software to achieve x86-compatibility, and the Godson loses a lot of its native MIPS power in the process.
The Godson 3 adds new instructions that speed the x86-to-MIPS translation by a factor of 10, Xu said. "Our goal is to eventually reach 80 percent of the native MIPS performance," he said. "Right now we are at 40 percent, so we have a long way to go."
So it's not going to be quick, a 1Ghz Godson running x86 code through software translation will currently perform like a say P3 at 400-800Mhz.
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
I thought that was Iran that allowed Euros to buy oil. Also that was after Iraq was invaded.
Intel chips are I believe made in America, Ireland and Israel. AMD's I believe are mostly made in Germany.
For other sorts of chips, try Taiwan and South Korea. Both of those countries have economies that are very close to Western standards.
>Iraq started breaking stride with the other oil producing nations and allowing Euros to be traded instead of US Dollars. Then they got invaded, and that put a stop to that.
That sounds bad for Iran since they did that too some months ago.
http://www.reuters.com/article/oilRpt/idUSBLA02024820080430
Iran conducts all crude trade in euro, yen
Do those laws apply if say the microprocessors are fabbed in Germany/Israel/Ireland, assembled/packaged in Malaysia, and then exported to China?
How about if the microprocessors are assembled/packaged in China itself?
http://www.intel.com/pressroom/kits/manufacturing/manufacturing_qa.htm
http://www.amd.com/us-en/Corporate/VirtualPressRoom/0,,51__104_543~117787,00.html
ARM is denser than x86, especially if you use Thumb. Anyway, nothing mainstream has a high-performance FPU these days, apart from x86.
Finally! A year of moderation! Ready for 2019?
Yes. They're being included in low-end computers, set-top boxes, and supercomputers, all over China. Such as the Tianhua GX-1C.
The Dragon chips (and variations of) are also gaining some traction in Europe and the US, being used in a couple dirt-cheap $250 EEE PC clones. eg.: http://www.compsource.com/pn/3KRZ40074GB/3k_Computers_2340/
http://www.gdium.com/description/
They've made millions of them.
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