China’s CPU rival to Intel and AMD is catching up on a key metric — nonetheless don’t seek data from it to be competitive with Ryzens and Cores anytime soon
You obtained’t be too conversant in Loongson, nonetheless it surely has been developing computer processors since 2000, and in China the corporate is broadly considered because the grandfather of domestic CPUs.
The birth of Loongson 1 in 2002 was as soon as China’s first independently developed general-motive CPU, the consume of the MIPS III instruction attach. in 2020 Loongson transitioned from the MIPS instruction attach to its self sustaining instruction attach, LoongArch (which is broadly considered as being a clone of MIPS). The first LoongArch-supported processor, the 3A5000, debuted in 2021, marking the muse of the Loongson ecosystem’s Dragon architecture era.
The 3A6000, a apply-up made of the 3A5000, is the second-generation processor the consume of the LoongArch instruction attach. Fabricated on a 12nm direction of it has four cores and eight threads able to boosting to 2.5GHz below a 50 watt TDP. It has an L2 cache of 256KB and an L3 cache of 16MB, and is esteem minded with DDR4-3200 RAM.
Hit and pass over performance
In a recent video analysis by Geekerwan (Geek Bay), Loongson’s 3A6000 demonstrated colossal growth in its Instructions Per Cycle (IPC), nearly on par with the most up-to-date architectures from Intel and AMD. Whereas it unruffled lags at the again of the most up-to-date x86 and Arm CPUs in raw performance, the excessive IPC suggests a promising future, supplied Loongson can attain increased frequencies.
In SPEC 2017’s integer and floating level performance test with all CPUs locked to 2.5GHz, Loongson’s chip impressed. It surpassed the Zen 3-based fully fully Ryzen 9 5950X and was as soon as appropriate a miniature of at the again of the Zen 4-powered Ryzen 9 7950X and Raptor Lake Core i9-14900Okay. Tom’s Hardware has more on the test outcomes.
Alternatively, the 3A6000 can no longer truly harness its spectacular IPC due to its low clock run and its barriers in core count and cache dimension. The corporate’s subsequent-generation 3A7000, rumored to consume a 7nm direction of, would possibly well well toughen on these factors, doubtlessly boosting clock speeds and taking into account more cores and more cache.
Whereas the 3A6000 demonstrates substantial growth, it unruffled falls at the again of Intel and AMD’s performance when working at still frequencies above 5GHz. Alternatively, the rapid enchancment in Loongson’s architecture like, coupled with its excessive IPC, suggests a promising future for China’s homespun CPU.
