Loongson |
| Marketed by | Loongson Technology, Jiangsu Lemote Tech Co., Ltd, Dawning Information Industry, and others |
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| Designed by | Institute of Computing Technology (ICT), Chinese Academy of Sciences, Jiangsu Lemote Tech Co., Ltd |
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| Common manufacturer(s) | |
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| Max. CPU clock rate | 200 MHz to 1.5 GHz |
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| Min. feature size | 180 nm to 28 nm |
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| Microarchitecture | MIPS64 |
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Loongson (academic name: Godson)[1] is a family of general-purpose MIPS64 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 Hu Weiwu.
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 64 bit Loongson general-purpose and embedded processors, together with developing software tools and reference platforms.
STMicroelectronics fabricates and markets Loongson chips for BLX, which is fabless.
China uses GNU/Linux with its Loongson processor family to achieve technology independence.[2]
MIPS patent issues
The current Loongson instruction set is a MIPS64, but the internal microarchitecture is independently developed by ICT. Early implementations of the family lacked four instructions patented by MIPS Technologies to avoid legal issues.[3]
In 2007, a deal was reached by MIPS Technologies and ICT. STMicroelectronics bought a MIPS license for Loongson, and thus the processor can be promoted as MIPS-based or MIPS-compatible instead of MIPS-like.[4][5][6]
In June 2009, ICT licenced the MIPS32 and MIPS64 architectures directly from MIPS Technologies.[7]
In August 2011, Loongson Technology Corp. Ltd. licensed the MIPS32 and MIPS64 architectures from MIPS Technologies, Inc. for continued development of MIPS-based Loongson CPU cores.[8]
Architecture revisions
Loongson 1
The first revision of the Loongson architecture, the Loongson1 (Godson-232 core) is a pure 32 bit CPU running at a clock speed of 266 MHz. It is fabricated with 0.18 micron CMOS process, has 8 kB of data cache, 8 kB of instruction cache and a 64 bit floating-point unit, capable of 200 double-precision MFLOPS.[9] Its main focus is on embedded designs such as POS, where 64-bit ability and high speed are unneeded.
Loongson 2
The Loongson 2 adds 64 Bit ability to the Loongson architecture. Initially running at 500 MHz, later revisions to Godson 2E were produced that run up to 1 GHz. The Godson 2F, released to market in early 2008, ran at 1.2 GHz.
Loongson 2E
Loongson 2F
Godson-2G
- 1.0 GHz, 65 nm CMOS, 3 W
- 100 M transistors, area 60 mm^2
- Single GS464 core
- 64 bit MIPS64 compatible
- HW support X86 binary translation
- Four-issue, OOO
- 64KB+64KB L1 (four-way)
- 1 MB L2 cache
- On-chip DDR2/3 controller.
- 16-bit HT
- PCI/PCIX, LPC, GPIO, etc.
Godson-2H
- 1 GHz, 65 nm
- Single GS464V core (HD media decoding)
- 512 kB L2 cache
- 3D low-power GPU
- DDR2/3 memory controller
- PCIE 2.0 controller
- SATA, USB, GMAC controller
- LPC, SPI, UART, etc.
Loongson 3
The 65 nm Loongson 3 (Godson-3) is able to run at a clock speed near 1 GHz, with 4 CPU cores (~15 W) first and 8 cores later (40 W). In April 2010, Loongson 3A was released with DDR2/3 DRAM support.
Loongson 3B
The updated 8-core 65 nm Loongson 3B processor runs at 1.05 GHz, with a peak performance of 128 GFLOPS double-precision or 256 GFLOPS single-precision.[10] This is accomplished by having two 256 bit vector processing units in each core. They produce a peak performance of 8 double-precision floating-point fused Multiply-Add results per cycle, or 16 GFLOPS per core operating at 1 GHz. The Godson-3B has exceptional energy efficiency in terms of performance per watt -- executing 128 GFLOPS using 40 watts.[11] The 32 nm upgrade of the Loongson 3B will have 8mb L3 cache to reduce cache misses.[12]
Hardware-assisted x86 emulation
Loongson 3 adds over 200 new instructions to speed up x86 instruction execution at a cost of 5% of the total die area. The new instructions help QEMU translate x86 instructions by lowering the overhead of executing x86/CISC-style instructions in the MIPS pipeline. With added improvements in QEMU from ICT, Loongson-3 achieves an average of 70% the performance of executing native binaries when running x86 binaries from nine benchmarks.[13]
Supported software
Unlike processors from Intel, Advanced Micro Devices or VIA Technologies, Loongson does not support the x86 instruction set. The processor's main operating system is Linux, while in theory any OS with MIPS support should also work. For example, Windows CE was ported to a Loongson-based system with minimal effort.[14] In 2010, Lemote ported an Android distribution to the Loongson platform.[15]
Many operating systems work on Loongson.
Linux distributions:
BSD operating systems:
Microsoft Windows:
Compiler support
The GNU Compiler Collection (GCC) is the main compiler for software development on the Loongson platform.[27][28]
ICT also ported Open64, an advanced optimizing compiler, to the Loongson II platform.[29]
User applications
Open source applications on Linux Platform can be ported with little effort. Most common open source applications (including OpenOffice.org, Mozilla Firefox, Pidgin, and MPlayer) and applications written for the Java platform are supported.[30] For .NET applications, an unofficial port of the Mono Common Language Runtime is available online.[31]
Godson microprocessor specifications
| Name / Generation | Model | Frequency
[MHz] | Architecture
version | Year | Cores | Process
[nm] | Transistors
[millions] | Die size
[mm2] | Power
[W] | Voltage
[V] | L1 Dcache
[k] | L1 Icache
[k] | L2 cache
[k] | Performance
[ SPECCPU2000] |
|---|
| Godson-1 (embedded CPU) | 1 | 266 | MIPS32 | 2002 | 1 | 180 | 4 | ? | 1 | ? | 8 | 8 | none | 19/25 |
|---|
| 1A | 300 | MIPS32 | 2011? | 1 | 130 | | 529 | 1 | | 16 | 16 | none | |
| 1B | 200 | MIPS32 | 2011 | 1 | 130 | | 289 | <0.5 | | 8 | 8 | none | |
| Godson-2 (singleCore) | 2B | 250 | MIPS-III 64-bit | 2003 | 1 | 180 | ? | ? | ? | ? | 32 | 32 | none | 52/58 |
|---|
| 2C[32] | 450 | MIPS-III 64-bit | 2004 | 1 | 180 | 13.5 | 41.5 | ? | ? | 64 | 64 | none | 159/114 |
| STLS2E | 1000 | MIPS-III 64-bit | 2006 | 1 | 90 | 47 | 36 | 7 | 1.2 | 64 | 64 | 512 | 503/503 |
| STLS2F | 1200 | MIPS-III 64-bit | 2007 | 1 | 90 | 51 | 43 | 5 | 1.2 | 64 | 64 | 512 | |
| L2G | 900–1000 | MIPS64 | 2010 | 1 | 65 | 100 | 60 | <4 | 1.1? | 64 | 64 | 1024 | ? |
| L2H? | 1000 | MIPS64 | 2011 | 1 | 65 | | | 4 | 1.1? | 64 | 64 | 512 | ? |
| Godson-3 (multiCore) | L3A/L2GQ | 1000 | MIPS64 | 2009+ | 4 | 65 | 425+ | 174.5 | <15 | 1.1 | 64�-4 | 64�-4 | 4096 | 568/788[33] |
|---|
| L3B | 1050 | MIPS64 | 2011? | 8 | 65 | 582.6? | 299.8? | <50 | ? | 64�-8? | 64�-8? | 4096 | ? |
| L3C? | 1500+ | MIPS64 | 2012? | 16 | 28 | 685 | ? | 20 | ? | ? | ? | ? | ? |
| Godson-T (manyCore) | Godson-T[34] | 1000 | MIPS32 | ? | 64 | 28? | ? | ? | ? | ? | 32�-64 | 16�-64 | 256�-16 | ? |
|---|
| Name / Generation | Model | Frequency
[MHz] | Architecture
version | Year | Cores | Process
[nm] | Transistors
[millions] | Die size
[mm2] | Power
[W] | Voltage
[V] | L1 Dcache
[k] | L1 Icache
[k] | L2 cache
[k] | Performance
[ SPECCPU2000] |
|---|
Loongson-based systems
Lemote FuLoong and YeeLoong with a Loongson 2F microprocessor
Lemote's Fulong MiniPC on top of a CD-ROM drive as reference
In March 2006, a €100 Loongson II computer design called Longmeng (Dragon Dream) was announced by Lemote.
In June 2006 at Computex'2006, YellowSheepRiver announced the Municator YSR-639,[35] a small form factor computer based on the 400 MHz Loongson 2.
Currently, Loongson boxes that come with a 667 MHz Godson 2E processor or a 800 MHz Godson 2F processor are sold in China at CNY 1599 (USD 200) or CNY 1800 respectively without monitor, mouse, or keyboard.
As of July 2008[update], two manufacturers have announced Loongson 2F products for sale outside China.
- Van der Led, a Dutch company, announced a 8.9″ subnotebook, named Jisus, in April 2008.[36] As of September 2008, however, no orders have been fulfilled, the manufacturer does not respond to inquiries, and the product is no longer on their catalogue.
- EMTEC, a French company, announced in June 2008[37] a 10″ subnotebook under the brand name Gdium[2], to be sold for "less than 399€" running Mandriva Linux. EMTEC announced the subnotebook would be available for sale in September in Europe, the United States, and China. EMTEC has already shown the devices in public events,[38] and is reaching out to the developer community through the "one laptop per hacker" program.[39]
As of November 2008[update] the new 8.9" netbook from the Chinese manufacturer Lemote that replaced mengloong, Yeeloong (Portable Dragon),[40] running Debian, is available[41] in Europe from the Dutch company Tekmote Electronics.
Loongson 3A laptop
Loongson insiders [42] revealed a new model based on the Loongson 3A quad-core laptop has been developed and is expected to launch in August 2011. With a similar design to the MacBook Pro[43] from Apple Inc., it will carry a Linux operating system by default.
In September 2011, Lemote announced the Yeeloong-8133 13.3" laptop featuring 900 MHz, quad-core Loongson-3A/2GQ CPU.[44]
Supercomputers
On 26 December 2007, China revealed its first Loongson based supercomputer with performance 1 teraFLOPS of peak performance, and about 350 GFLOPS measured by LINPACK in Hefei, designated as KD-50-I.[45] This supercomputer was designed by a joint team led by Chen Guoliang at the computer science technology department of the University of Science and Technology of China and ICT (the secondary contractor). KD-50-I is the first Chinese built supercomputer to utilize domestic Chinese CPUs, with a total of more than 330 Loongson-2F CPUs, and nodes are interconnected by Ethernet. The size of the computer was roughly equivalent to a household refrigerator and the cost was less than RMB 800,000 (approximately USD 120,000, EUR 80,000).[citation needed]
On 20 April 2010, USTC announced Loongson 3A based KD-60-1. The new supercomputer is a cluster of standard blade servers with a total of over 80 quad-core Loongson processors, providing theoretical peak performance of 1 TFLOPS and reduces power consumption by 56% compared to the KD-50-I system that has similar performance.[46][47]
Dawning 6000
Main article: Dawning Information Industry#Dawning 6000
The high-performance Dawning 6000, which has a projected speed of over one quadrillion operations per second, will incorporate the Loongson processor as its core. Dawning 6000 is currently jointly developed by the Institute of Computing Technology under the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Dawning Information Industry Company. Li Guojie, chairman of Dawning Information Industry Company and director and academician of the Institute of Computing Technology, said research and development of the Dawning 6000 is expected to be completed in two years. By then, Chinese-made high-performance computers will be expected to achieve two major breakthroughs: first, the adoption of domestic-made central processing units (CPUs); second, the existing cluster-based system structure of high-performance computers will be changed once the computing speed reaches one quadrillion operations per second.
Major events
Development of the first Loongson chip was started in 2001.
On 25 June 2008, Hu Weiwu (chief designer of Loongson processors) gave a keynote speech at ISCA 2008, held in Beijing. The topic of the speech was "Research and Development of Godson processors".[48]
2010 January, Jiangsu province plans to buy 1.5 million Loongson PCs.[49]
On 24 August 2010, Hu Weiwu presented a paper on Godson-3C at the Hot Chips 22 conference, held in Stanford, USA. The title of the paper was "GS464V: A High-Performance Low-Power XPU with 512-Bit Vector Extension".[50]
On 21 February 2011, Hu Weiwu presented a paper on Godson at ISSCC 2011, held in San Francisco, USA. The title of the paper was "Godson-3B: a 1GHz 40W 8-core 128GFlopS processor in 65nm CMOS".[10]
On 19 August 2011, Dongrui Fan presented a paper on Godson-T at Hot Chips 23 conference at Stanford University (USA), titled "High-Efficient Architecture of Godson-T Many-Core Processor".[51]
See also
- Ingenic XBurst, a Chinese MIPS64 compatible processor.
- Sinomanic
- Red Flag Linux
- 863 Program
References
External links
