Recently, according to reports from the well-known American technology media "Tom's Hardware" and the well-known military media "1945", China will not export Loongson to any country (including Russia) for the time being. China's domestic chips must give priority to ensuring domestic supply rather than entering the international market.
For Loongson products, it has penetrated into various fields of government, enterprise, commercial and military scientific research. The strategic layout is of incomparable importance to the development of semiconductor in our country. The development layout of
Loongson
Loongson was originally a project proposed by Dr. Hu Weiwu in Chinese Academy of Sciences in 2001, with the purpose of creating a purely domestically designed CPU.
The research and development of Loongson is equivalent to building a car from the wheel. From the very beginning when Loongson was proposed, many people were not optimistic about this topic. They believed that Loongson's R&D technology was too difficult, expensive, and time-consuming. But Hu Weiwu did not give up. He formed a team and immediately entered into the research and development of the Godson project.
In 2002, Loongson 1 was successfully tape-out.
In 2010, Loongson's 3a series CPU, which focuses on the consumer market, successfully started mass production. From the establishment of the
project in 2001 to 2010, Loongson's R&D funding basically came from state and government support. Until 2015, Loongson gained favor from domestic capital and began to make profits through its products, turning losses into profits.
It was also in the same year that my country launched its first Beidou satellite equipped with Loongson chips.
In April 2021, the infrastructure of Loongson's independent command system architecture (LoongArch) passed the evaluation of the well-known domestic third-party intellectual property assessment agency. Loongson CPU achieved pure self-research in design.
Loongson started with the American MIPS architecture. Then based on this architecture, it developed the instruction set , and then developed a self-developed architecture, replacing the previous open source MIPS, and realized self-research.
can be said that so far, Loongson's self-research level is the highest in the country, followed by and Shenwei .
The following are Loongson's mass-produced and commercial chip series:
The importance of Loongson
Loongson has already marked some CPU models that are already commercially available. There are also a small number of CPUs related to military use that have not been officially explained.
For example, the Loongson 2J of the Loongson 2 series. This CPU is a product purely focused on the domestic military field. Currently, no relevant configuration can be found online, not even a picture.
Hu Weiwu once wrote an article called "On Loongson's Protracted War" based on the teacher's "On Protracted War". The article reads as follows:
In the 30 years since the founding of the People's Republic of China, our ancestors established a independent and controllable complete industrial system through self-reliance and hard work. However, in the 30 years of reform and opening up, when human society moved from an industrial society to an information society, we were unable to establish an independent and controllable information industry system.
We can rejoice for the Shenzhou 7 astronauts' extravehicular walk. Although it is 40 years behind the United States, we cannot tolerate Loongson technology being 4 years behind the United States. Under the same circumstances, giving priority is equivalent to no priority.
The reason is that it is more difficult to break a monopoly when it is open than to break a blockade when it is blocked.
is backed by a national research institution such as the Chinese Academy of Sciences that is oriented to national strategic needs, which is an important reason why Loongson can persist in forming accumulation and breakthroughs for a long time.
Microsoft's "black screen" incident and the abandonment of maintenance of Windows XP have strengthened the confidence of relevant departments in supporting domestic software and hardware. Relevant departments are already seriously considering whether it is time to say "byebye" to Microsoft.
It can be said that if there is a place in the world that can break the monopoly of Wintel, that place must be China; if there is a force in the world that can break the monopoly of Wintel, that force must be the power of the people.
The words Mr. Hu wrote in the article are not just words.
blogger Coldplay Labs once interviewed Dr. Hu Weiwu. Dr. Hu said that one of his students came to study for a Ph.D. with him at the age of 18. He graduated with a Ph.D. at the age of 23 and was promoted to associate professor at the age of 25. He resigned at the age of 26. He gave up his professional title and high-tech job and followed Dr. Hu into the laboratory to develop Godson.
The success of Loongson is not an accident. It is through the collaborative work of the state, the government, the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and scientific researchers that it has implemented self-research on the design step by step, ensuring the country's information security issues to the greatest extent.
Common problems of domestic CPUs
The biggest problem of Loongson now is that the ecological connection lags behind wintel. This is also the biggest reason why Loongson CPU cannot enter the personal consumer market on a large scale.
Looking at the development of our domestic chip market, Beidazhi is the first CPU brand to implement self-developed architecture and independent instruction sets. Peking University is a wholly-owned school-run enterprise led by Peking University. At the beginning, it received national policy support and was responsible for many national high-tech research and development projects. After the successful development of
's independent CPU, a supporting ecosystem was also established. During the decentralization of the market, computers equipped with Zhongzhi chips received orders from many schools and enterprises. Compared with computers equipped with Windows systems and Intel chips, which were worth about 8,000 yuan at the time, Demosis Computer only cost 3,000 yuan. Although
has an advantage in terms of price, after all, the wintel alliance was established too early and has formed a relatively complete ecological barrier. In the end, Dezhi Computer could not beat the Windows system in terms of ecology, and the project failed.
The second one is Ark led by Ni Guangnan . Ark is a CPU developed based on Linux, bypassing the x86 architecture of Intel . However, after the development of Ark 1 was completed, it has not been put into commercial use on a large scale. The boss of Ark Technology announced that it would stop developing Ark chips and develop real estate.
Looking at it this way, Loongson is the only hope for domestic independent CPUs. Before
, the United States imposed sanctions on Russia, which greatly affected Russia's imported chips. Some Russian institutions and companies hope to purchase Chinese Loongson CPUs to reduce the impact of sanctions.
However, according to the latest news, in order to ensure the country’s information security to the greatest extent, our country has banned the export of Loongson.
itself is used in the country's scientific research and military industry. Products related to military use are very sensitive. The technology companies sanctioned by the United States a few days ago are to prevent these companies from collaborating with the military in subsequent products.
Fortunately, Loongson's independent technology development period is early and fast. If it delays for a few more years, it is estimated that it will be included in the entity list of the United States.
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