Monday, December 21, 2009

China's Homegrown Computer Chips

People's Processor: Embrace China's Homegrown Computer Chips

http://www.wired.com/magazine/2009/12/st_essay_china/

Called the Loongson.


from Wikipedia :
Loongson (Chinese: 龙芯pinyin: lóngxīn, academic name: Godson, also known as Dragon chip) is a family of general-purpose MIPS-compatible CPUs developed at the Institute of Computing Technology (ICT), Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) in the People's Republic of China. The chief architect is Professor Weiwu Hu.
Loongson is the result of a public-private partnership. BLX IC Design Corporation was founded in 2002 by ICT and Jiangsu Zhongyi Group. Based in Beijing, BLX focuses on designing the advanced 32-bit/64-bit Loongson general-purpose and embedded processors, together with developing software tools and reference platforms.
ST Microelectronics fabricates and markets Loongson chips for BLX, which is fabless.

The processor was initially named 狗剩 (pinyin: Gou Sheng), meaning "Dog Leftover" in Chinese, to follow the Chinese tradition of giving a newborn baby a humble name for easier upbringing and better health. "Godson" was the English name, as it is pronounced similarly to "Gou Sheng". Later, Loongson, which means the "Dragon Core" Chip, was declared as the official name, with "Godson" still being used as an internal codename by developers.

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