Wednesday, May 17th 2023

Enablement Continues for Chinese Loongson 3A6000 CPUs Poised to Compete with Intel Willow Cove and AMD Zen 3

by
AleksandarK
 Discuss (23 Comments)
Chinese company Loongson, specializing in creating processors for usage in mainland China, has been steadily working on enabling its next-generation Loongson 3A6000 CPUs. Aiming to provide the performance level of Intel Willow Cove and AMD Zen 3, these new CPUs will use Loongson's custom LoongArch Instruction Set Architecture (ISA) with a new set of 64-bit superscalar LA664 cores. Today, thanks to the report from Phoronix, we find out that Loongson has submitted some Linux patches that enable the upcoming 3A6000 CPUs to work with Linux-based operating systems at launch. Interestingly, as the new CPU generation gets closer to launch, more Linux kernel patches begin to surface.

Today's kernel patches focus on supporting the hardware page table walker (PTW). As PTW can handle all fast paths of TLBI/TLBL/TLBS/TLBM exceptions by hardware, software only needs to handle slow paths such as page faults. Additionally, in the past, LoongArch utilized "dbar 0" as a complete barrier for all operations. However, this full completion barrier severely impacted performance. As a result, Loongson-3A6000 and subsequent processors have introduced various alternative hints. Loongson plans to ship samples to select customers in the first half of 2023, so we could see more information surfacing soon.
Source: Phoronix

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23 Comments on Enablement Continues for Chinese Loongson 3A6000 CPUs Poised to Compete with Intel Willow Cove and AMD Zen 3

#2
persondb
I don't see how that's feasible at all, considering that they were at most equal to Zen 1 or older Intel Archs, while having way less clock speed.

As you can see:

Loongson’s 3A5000: China’s Best Shot? – Chips and Cheese

So they need to massively increase IPC and Clock Speed. I don't doubt that they can eventually achieve it, I just think it's just too much to do in a single generation.
Posted on Reply
#3
R-T-B
What you need to keep in mind is these chips do not need to appeal to Western performance oriented design audiences at all to succeed at their goals.

They are simply meant to be an independent cpu for China, and they are that, at least. They don't care terribly if they are a gen or two behind. Obviously they'd love to beat us, but that's not the primary goal here.
Posted on Reply
#4
LabRat 891
Overboisterous PR from a CCP defense contractor Chinese Tech Firm?
Oh, I'm so very surprised... /s
Posted on Reply
#5
R-T-B
LabRat 891Overboisterous PR from a CCP defense contractor Chinese Tech Firm?
Oh, I'm so very surprised... /s
I mean Loongson is literally a project of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, so it's directly government funded yeah. They don't even pretend.
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#6
LabRat 891
R-T-BI mean Loongson is literally a project of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, so it's directly government funded yeah. They don't even pretend.
Correct.

Still, one usually gets flamed for bringing up such things, most places.

It's like the years of cheap consumer goods somehow 'bought off' consumers to shill and defend Chinese interests...
Posted on Reply
#7
R-T-B
LabRat 891Correct.

Still, one usually gets flamed for bringing up such things, most places.

It's like the years of cheap consumer goods somehow 'bought off' consumers to shill and defend Chinese interests...
Nah, not here I don't think (though true elsewhere for sure). I've been accused of that on occasion but honestly, I just try to be impartial to a quality product if it is in fact quality. But quality is not the whole story, and there's no denying the CCP has internal social issues that even given two equal products, makes it fair to want to look elsewhere.

In this case though, the product isn't even equal.
Posted on Reply
#8
Solaris17
Super Dainty Moderator
R-T-BI just try to be impartial to a quality product if it is in fact quality.
If its good its good and if it sucks it sucks, as soon as it gets into anything more than that, thats when we will step in. Judge products by their merits not who makes them.

I really wish I could play with some of these CPUs its a shame they are so hard to get a hold of, not this one specifically but in general. I know they have like a zen 1 or 2 performant in x86 land IIRC. Would be neat to play with it.

Id really really like to play with the Altra stuff: www.ipi.wiki/products/com-hpc-ampere-altra one day. I need to get rid of things in my office before wife will let me buy new stuff.
Posted on Reply
#10
R-T-B
Solaris17If its good its good and if it sucks it sucks, as soon as it gets into anything more than that, thats when we will step in. Judge products by their merits not who makes them.
That's indeed how I try to stick with it. I was just saying I can understand a personal moral code one has to follow being justifiable, not saying more than that.
Solaris17I really wish I could play with some of these CPUs its a shame they are so hard to get a hold of, not this one specifically but in general. I know they have like a zen 1 or 2 performant in x86 land IIRC. Would be neat to play with it.
I actually have a really early 800Mhz Loongson first gen devkit somewhere. It's obviously pretty lame compared to well... anything, but was a fun experiment a few years back. I got it in exchange for some OSS work.
Posted on Reply
#11
Solaris17
Super Dainty Moderator
persondbThe IPC can be somewhat similar to Zen 1 but performance is sill pretty below.

Previewing China’s Loongson 3A5000 with Performance Counters – Chips and Cheese
R-T-BI actually have a really early 800Mhz Loongson first gen devkit somewhere. It's obviously pretty lame compared to well... anything, but was a fun experiment a few years back. I got it in exchange for some OSS work.
Sorry maybe im wrong, but in that context, I thought there was another CPU manufacturer, I wasnt speaking on or I thought, loongson or this specific chip.

Ah yes, Zhaoxin thats the one I was remembering.
Posted on Reply
#12
R-T-B
Solaris17Ah yes, Zhaoxin
Yeah, those are kind of intriguing as well. Never seen one though in the well... silicon.
Posted on Reply
#13
Count von Schwalbe
How are they comparing to x86-64 processors when they have a custom ISA?

Don't most "benchmarkable" programs require support for the specific ISA?
Posted on Reply
#14
TumbleGeorge
Information about Zhaoxin is clearly classified. I do not believe that they stay in one place last few years. And that's almost how it looks when you read the news in the media.
Posted on Reply
#15
Unregistered
It's good news if true and in the long term it means more competition and lower prices, plus we'll have another source of computing as brainless politicians have the tendency to limit advancement for no reason.
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#17
Minus Infinity
Xex360It's good news if true and in the long term it means more competition and lower prices, plus we'll have another source of computing as brainless politicians have the tendency to limit advancement for no reason.
Why is it more competition? This will never compete in the Western markets. I would buy a Qualcomm Arm SoC over a Chinese state backed cpu, even if magically it could deliver competitive performance.
Posted on Reply
#18
A Computer Guy
persondbI don't see how that's feasible at all, considering that they were at most equal to Zen 1 or older Intel Archs, while having way less clock speed.

As you can see:

Loongson’s 3A5000: China’s Best Shot? – Chips and Cheese

So they need to massively increase IPC and Clock Speed. I don't doubt that they can eventually achieve it, I just think it's just too much to do in a single generation.
Maybe they got the KFC recipe if you know what I mean?
R-T-BWhat you need to keep in mind is these chips do not need to appeal to Western performance oriented design audiences at all to succeed at their goals.

They are simply meant to be an independent cpu for China, and they are that, at least. They don't care terribly if they are a gen or two behind. Obviously they'd love to beat us, but that's not the primary goal here.
Technological independence is a likely goal considering the political climate.
R-T-BI mean Loongson is literally a project of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, so it's directly government funded yeah. They don't even pretend.
I'm kind of surprised that there hasn't been more of a prominent divergence of technologies over the years along political/national lines. I think it will only accelerate and unfortunately may lead to vast parts of the internet becoming isolated forming great barriers to communication and knowledge sharing.
Xex360It's good news if true and in the long term it means more competition and lower prices, plus we'll have another source of computing as brainless politicians have the tendency to limit advancement for no reason.
I think more so than politicians limiting advancement the number one limiter is complicated legalities. There are great pieces of software in both closed and open source realms but combining them together can be complicated legally or even prohibited, thus providing a barriers to innovation.
Posted on Reply
#19
Bomby569
Minus InfinityWhy is it more competition? This will never compete in the Western markets. I would buy a Qualcomm Arm SoC over a Chinese state backed cpu, even if magically it could deliver competitive performance.
ideally i wouldn't have to buy nothing from dystopian countries like the US or China. Even if only the US has been factually found to be spying on "allied" government and civilians, i really don't trust China either. So between the 2 i really don't care, price will be my primary driver.
Posted on Reply
#20
Fourstaff
I am more interested in the performance trajectory and where they are going to end up with. A lot of people wrote off Apple ARM processors for the longest time, but they are now becoming competitive.
Posted on Reply
#21
persondb
A Computer GuyMaybe they got the KFC recipe if you know what I mean?
While that's possible, I still think it's too big of a jump. Those things are really done in iterative processes that gradually gather experience and knowledge to improve the designs(or use it for a brand new design). I would say it's very hard to go from 2.5GHz part to 5GHz in one generation, while maintining and/or reducing instruction latency.

As an example, the latency of some of the SIMD instructions of Loongson are below, comparatively Zen 1 has 3-cycle latency for FADD and FMUL while the same for Multiply-Add, while also clocking higher. I believe that AMD has improved that in Zen 2 and 3.

Loongson will have to improve that while greatly increase clocks and other parts of the architecture(likely also including stuff in the SoC as it seemed to have issues with handling the bandwidth of DDR4).

Posted on Reply
#22
Unregistered
Minus InfinityWhy is it more competition? This will never compete in the Western markets. I would buy a Qualcomm Arm SoC over a Chinese state backed cpu, even if magically it could deliver competitive performance.
Well there isn't only western Europe in the world, the rest of Europe, Asia, Africa, America. So yeah more competition in most markets.
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