China’s semiconductor industry is making impressive progress despite U.S. restrictions. Loongson today announced that it has released a test batch of 3C6000, 3D6000, and 3E6000 server processors, which are currently being tested. Loongson’s new line of server chips will be released in the fourth quarter of 2024, exactly as planned.
Fonte da imagem: Loongson
Loongson’s new server processors stand out for their chiplet arrangement. While the 3C6000 itself is a 16-core, 32-thread processor, the 3D6000 contains two 3C6000 dies connected via the high-speed Loongson Coherent Link bus, forming a 32-core, 64-thread processor. And the 64-core, 128-thread 3E6000, in turn, combines four 3C6000 chiplets.
The 3C6000 features 16 LA664 cores based on Loongson’s LoongArch microarchitecture. The manufacturer claims that the LA664 cores deliver twice the performance of their predecessors in the last-generation 3C5000 processor, which ran at 2.2 GHz. The 3C6000 family will also support up to four channels of DDR4-3200 memory.
Chiplet packaging has long been considered the future of microprocessors in a post-Moore’s Law world, and nowhere is this more true than in China. Due to U.S. sanctions, the technology is seen as a way to achieve higher performance in a roundabout way. Still, Loongson is working hard to develop cutting-edge chips, unlike many Chinese manufacturers that have completely switched to older manufacturing processes.
Loongson’s efforts are impressive – thanks to its own MIPS-based LoongArch ISA architecture and the use of domestic factories, the company is successfully promoting its developments in the Chinese (and other) market. The latest Loongson processors are approaching the performance of Intel’s 10th generation processors.
As China restricts the use of computers with foreign-made processors in government institutions, Loongson continues to increase its share of the Chinese market. In particular, all Chinese schools are equipped with PCs with Loongson processors.