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Loongson

Loongson (龙芯, academic name: Godson, also known as Dragon chip) is a family of general-purpose CPUs developed at ICT(Institute of Computing Technology), CAS (Chinese Academy of Sciences) in the People's Republic of China. The chief architect is Professor Weiwu Hu. Godson chips are manufactured in China by a French-Italian company ST Microelectronics - a MIPS64 licensee.

BLX IC Design Corporation, Ltd (BLX) was founded in 2002 by Institute of Computing Technology, China Academy of Sciences and Jiangsu Zhongyi Group. Based in Beijing, BLX focuses on designing the advanced 32bit/64bit Godson general and embedded processor, developing software tools and reference platforms.

There are other devices in development like Longmeng and Sinomanic.

The primary purpose of the chip is to run localized Chinese versions of Linux, with emphasis on Chinese character support.

Name

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” was proposed as the official name, which means the "Dragon Core" Chip, with "Godson" still being used as an internal codename by developers.

Architecture Revisions

Loongson 1

The first revision of the Loongson architecture, the Loongson1 is a pure 32-bit CPU running at a clock speed of 266 MHz. Its primary focus is with embedded designs such as cash registers, where 64-bit capability and high speed are not necessary. It was released in 2002. As of 2006 it was used in the Sinomanic Tianhua GX-1C PC.

Loongson 2

The Loongson 2 adds 64-bit capability to the Loongson architecture. Initially running at 500 MHz, later revisions to Godson 2E were produced that run up to 1 GHz, while the latest Godson 2F being produced at 1.2 GHz and released to market in early 2008.

On December 26, 2007, China revealed its first supercomputer of 1 tera flops (the actual capacity is about 350G) in Hefei, designated as KD-50-I. This supercomputer was designed by a joint team led by academician Mr. Chen Guoliang (陈国良), professor of the computer science technology major of the University of Science and Technology of China (the primary contractor, with the Institute of Computing Technology of Chinese Academy of Sciences as 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. The size of the computer was roughly equivalent to a household refrigerator and the cost was less than RMB 800,000. The Loongson-2F thus became the first domestic Chinese CPU to be used in a supercomputer.

Features

Loongson 2F:

Superscalar, out-of-order 32/64 bit MIPS Architecture processor core.
Little endian MIPS III-compatible ISA
Separate 64/64 KiB instruction and data L1 caches
on-chip 512 KiB 4-way set associative L2 cache
4 execution units including 2 ALUs and 2 FPUs
SIMD unit is integrated with one of the 2 FPUs
Integrated DDR2 memory controller
Integrated, very simple video accelerator
max 4W at 1 GHz

Loongson 3

The 65nm Loongson 3 (Godson-3) is planned to run at a clock speed between 1 to 1.2 GHz, with 4 cores first (10W) and 8 cores later (20W), and it is expected by 2010. It adds 200+ new instructions to speed up x86 instruction translation and run Windows . The first version of the chip will only support DDR2 DRAM, will not have SMT support or a built-in network interface.

Godson Microprocessor Specifications

Name	Model	Frequency [MHz]	Architecture Version	Year	Cores	Process [nm]	Transistors [millions]	Die size [mm^2]	Power [W]	Voltage [V]	L1 Dcache [k]	L1 Icache [k]	L2 Cache [k]	Performance [SPEC2000]
Godson-1	1	200	MIPS 32-bit	2002	1	180	--	--	1	--	8	8	none	19/25
Godson-2	2B	250	MIPS? 64-bit	2003	1	180	--	--	--	--	32	32	none	52/58
Godson-2	2C	450	MIPS? 64-bit	2004	1	180	--	--	--	--	64	64	none	159/114
Godson-2	STLS2E	1000	MIPS-III 64-bit	2006	1	90	47	36	7	1.2	64	64	512	503/503
Godson-2	STLS2F	1200	MIPS-III 64-bit	2007	1	90	51	43	5	1.2	64	64	512	--
Godson-3	STLS3?	1000	MIPS-III 64-bit	2009?	4	65	--	--	10	--	64	64	4096	--

History

The instruction set is MIPS compatible, but the creators have backed away from promoting the chip as such due to threats of a lawsuit (see a Lexra history).

In March 2006, a €100 Godson II computer design called Longmeng (Dragon Dream) was announced.

In June 2006 at Computex'2006, Taipei YellowSheepRiver company has announced a Municator YSR-639, a mini-computer based on the 400 MHz Godson 2.

In September 2006, Li Guojie, director of the Institute of Computer Technology under the CAS announced a Longxin IIE (Godson IIE), a 64-bit chip containing 47 million transistors and reaching speeds of 1 GHz. It implements a subset of the MIPS III ISA.

In the second half of the third quarter of 2006, China revealed the latest addition to the Godson series, the Godson 2E, which was already in the early stages of manufacturing. Developers claim tests show that the Chinese chip can rival Intel Pentium 4 processor in performance and it was superior to the early series of the Pentium 4 CPUs, with much lower production costs.

Unlike processors from Intel, Advanced Micro Devices or Via Technologies, the Godson-2E is not based on the x86 instruction set. Instead, the chip uses a modified version of the MIPS instruction set that replaces proprietary instructions with ones developed by ICT. This means the Godson 2E cannot be used in PCs running Microsoft's Windows XP operating system, and thus the computing devices based on the Godson 2E would be most likely running the Linux operating system.

The processor runs at a clock speed of 1 GHz and like other chips in the Godson family, the Godson 2E was designed by the Chinese Academy of Science's Institute of Computing Technology (ICT) and was the first Chinese CPU produced using 90-nanometer process technology. Earlier versions of the Godson 2 chip were produced using a 180-nanometer process and ran at clock speeds up to 500 MHz. The Godson 2E CPU contains 47 million transistors, more than the 42 million of the original Pentium 4. Battery drain will be less, with power consumption between 3 to 8 watts, according to CAE Fellow Li Guojie (李国杰), director of the ICT. Li Guojie also announced that at the end of 2006, scientists would start to upgrade Godson 2E to Godson 2F, which will improve performance by about 30% and reduces power consumption by about 50%. It was announced that the Godson-3 is scheduled to enter production by 2008. In January 2007 Gentoo Linux was ported on this machine, the initial port was compiled on a Cobalt Qube micro-server.

In March 2007 STMicroelectronics bought a licence from MIPS Technologies Inc. and announced a partnership wherein STMicro will manufacture and distribute Godson-family processors.

Currently, Loongson boxes that come with a 667 MHz Godson 2E processor or a 800 MHz Godson 2F processor are sold in China at CNY1599 (~US$200) or CNY 1800 respectively without monitor, mouse, or keyboard.

Operating Systems

These computers primarily run the Linux operating system, however users have managed to port other operating systems such as Windows CE to the Loongson architecture.

Linux distributions that work on Loongson:

Debian Linux, specifically their mipsel port
Gentoo Linux, work in progress
Slackware Linux is also being ported, although nothing has been released yet.
Red Flag Linux
Mandriva, since September 2007

Devices

The first known devices using Loongson processors were only available inside the People's Republic of China. Sinomanic's Tianhua GX-1C was the first subnotebook using a Loongson I processor, and Lemote has 2E and 2F products on sale.

As of July 2008 two manufacturers have announced Loongson 2F products for sale outside China.

First a Dutch company ( Van der Led) announced a 8.9" subnotebook under the name of Jisus on April 2008 but as of September 2008 no one has gotten any device or answer from them, the product is no longer on their catalogue, and in the blogosphere it has been labeled as scam.
The French company EMTEC announced in June 2008 a 10" subnotebook under the brand name Gdium for "less than 399€" running Mandriva Linux and available for sale in September in Europe, US and China. In opposition to previous scam, EMTEC has already shown their devices in public events.