The huge image: Loongson is supposedly simply three years behind its Western opponents relating to the IPC efficiency of its CPUs. While spectacular, their use of outdated course of nodes means they can not sustain with the clock charges of AMD and Intel chips, making real-world efficiency lag even additional behind.
Last week, Chinese CPU developer Loongson began transport its 3C5000L server processor. It options 16 cores, a clock price of as much as 2.2 GHz, and makes use of a 12 nm course of node.
The firm claims the CPU can ship as much as 560 GFLOPS of compute efficiency at 130W with out offering another benchmark numbers. Loongson’s 5000-series processors use its proprietary LoongArch ISA, though they’re additionally suitable with MIPS to keep up assist for purposes written for its previous-generation processors.
The chipmaker did publish some efficiency numbers for its 3A5000 CPU operating at 2.5 GHz, claiming it delivers related single-threaded efficiency in UnixBench to an Intel Tenth-gen Core i7 10700. However, multi-threaded efficiency is considerably decrease, because the 3A5000 solely options 4 cores.
Loongson plans to make use of a brand new LA664 structure for its upcoming 6000-series processors to extend effectivity, supposedly placing their IPC efficiency on par with AMD’s Zen 3 structure. The firm expects to launch its 16-core 3C6000 and 32-core 3D6000 in 2023 or 2024.
While that does sound spectacular, Loongson’s chips will in all probability nonetheless be restricted to the sub-3 GHz vary, that means real-world efficiency will probably be considerably decrease.
The firm can also be planning to introduce a 64-core variant with its 7000-series chips. These will hold utilizing the LA664 structure, though they’ll in all probability swap to a more recent course of node, rising their effectivity additional.
It’ll be attention-grabbing to see if Russia begins utilizing Loongson’s CPUs extra in its infrastructure. The nation might need no alternative contemplating latest sanctions, at the very least till it develops its home chip manufacturing capabilities extra.