China Develops Their Own CPU: The "Dragon Chip" 908
vaxzilla writes "China's People's Daily
Online is reporting in
this article that the Computer Institution of the Chinese Academy of
Science have developed a new CPU, which they're calling the Dragon Chip.
The report isn't clear on the technical details of the chip, though it
does state, somewhat confusingly, that it, `is based on the RISC
structure, a totally another standard. Therefore, it will not fall into
the intellectual property right trap.' They're running Linux on the chip
and have built a server around it, Soaring Dragon. It looks like China is
starting to tell both Microsoft and Intel to take a hike. Interesting
times are ahead."
Re:A serious curiousity question (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:A serious curiousity question (Score:2, Insightful)
I work with a lot of Taiwanese engineers. They don't consider forwarding stolen information to China to be stealing. They all believe that helping the Motherland is their duty.
It's funny that the U.S. is so vociferous about protecting Taiwan when the Taiwanese are already helping China out. Once Taiwan is folded back in to China, all those fancy weapons and huge investments in Taiwanese industry will benefit their biggest enemy.
Gotta love US foreign policy. It's so forward thinking.
You're a moron (Score:1, Insightful)
No Chinese Palladium? (Score:5, Insightful)
I dread the day when Chinese citizens talk amongst themselves about the funny things Americans can't do with their computers.
intelectual property? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:A serious curiousity question (Score:5, Insightful)
More importantly the Chinese who don't share will find themselves increasingly maintaining patched versions of software that are incompatible with the main branch (and therefore much more expensive to maintain).
Heck, I made some modifications to a GPLed project at one point, and I thought it was too much of a hassle to share. Next thing I knew the software package in question had changed enough that my patches no longer applied cleanly, one of the libraries that my software relied on adopted a new API. To make matters even worse the old version of the library was very tricky to compile by hand.
In short, the next thing I knew it was almost impossible to upgrade the boxes that this software was installed on. If I had shared my work might very well have become part of the mainstream distribution. New installations would have been as easy as installing the RPMs off of the CD.
The Chinese might have enough people working on Linux that they don't need to collaborate with the rest of the world, but my guess is that they would be far better off collaborating with the rest of us than trying to do everything themselves.
Open Source makes this possible (Score:4, Insightful)
So let's ponder that open source not only makes the software more available, but also the hardware choice. The source was in front of them. They have all the labor they could want and I'm guessing they pay just as much for the programming expertise as they do for rice field workers (next to nothing). Now we can run anything we like and still get the Linux that the world is just beginning to become comfortable with.
Hardware independance. Software vendor independance. If I didn't know any better, I'd say those were a bunch of damned capitalist pigs taking advantage of the free labor of others to their own advantage. (Did they release the source code of their changes?)
Congratulations to the Chinese -- they aren't the enemy that the Soviets were and the women are hotter too.
Re:Bah (Score:2, Insightful)
Remember, the united states is an exremely oppressive government that uses whatever it can get its hands on to harm people. I hope we fail.
Re:China isn't communist (Score:1, Insightful)
what China is.
China is no more a pure Communist country than the Us is a pure capitalist country.
(too many subsidies)
The important thing is that politically it is
an authoritrian state, which can be right or left.
An explanation like that basically trumps anything the Cia handbook has to say.
Arguement to authority is a logical fallacy.
Re:No Chinese Palladium? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:not a big deal (Score:5, Insightful)
Because, you know the Chinese or any of those other Asian countries have no originality. Only Westerners are creative.
Re:Very cool (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:A serious curiousity question (Score:2, Insightful)
http://www.nyu.edu/globalbeat/pubs/ib46.html [nyu.edu] "The election results mirrored poll after poll in recent years, which have shown that a majority of Taiwanese, especially in the younger generation, consider Taiwan and not China to be their homeland. Large blocs have opted either for the ambiguous status quo of separation from the mainland or have favored clear-cut independence at some undefined time. Only small numbers say they desire to see Taiwan become part of China while it remains in autocratic communist hands. "
RISC and CISC speed scaling. (Score:5, Insightful)
Linewidth scaling makes *any* CPU design faster. CISC was abandoned because it was very hard to pipeline, not because of some magical barrier to linewidth stepping.
Even the pipelining limit is a soft one, because with enough translation stages you can map any CISC set on to a RISC core - which is exactly what every x86 since the Pentium Pro has done.
Sorry if I'm venting, but you were the lucky post that finally made the "uninformed comment" bucket overflow
The Big Picture (Score:5, Insightful)
I believe that this is a very short-sighted and narrow-minded view of what's happenning here. This is not about being able to spy or citizens or having control of citizens' computers. This is about having economic freedom. It's about building an technologically based governmental system and economy built from the ground up in a way which is not regulated by Western governments and corporations. It is similar to the Linux movement and that's why they're getting Linux to run on it.
By building computer systems from the ground up on their own hardware, own chips, own Linux builds with their own applications, they are no longer on the leash represented by terms of service agreements with intel, microsoft, and any other company and have the freedom to do their business their way.
And I greatly admire this sentiment because it represents a 100% swing away from being controlled by anyone and anything.
And don't just think of this in the context of China! The scope of this is much bigger. For example, why do we use Linux? It's because we want to achieve freedom from the requirements, restrictions, fallacies, and roadblocks imposed by using solutions owned by big companies with who knows what code in them. We use Linux because we control it and it represents freedom from the restrictions of some other software maker. China has taken this one step further and has built their own architecture so they can do exactly what they want with no silly restrictions designed to channel money so some exective in a Western office tower. Wouldn't you like to do that?
I give TWO BIG THUMBS UP to China and their initiative in making a non-half-assed attempt to build their system their way. They have the long-term vision to realise that they need true economic freedom from the West to achieve modern-day economic greatness and I admire their initiative. I wish we were all so lucky.
$2.35 cpu sounds scary to me (Score:2, Insightful)
I don't know if anyone has noticed but Western countries are at the beginning of an economic war with China. I've seen it already happening with tools during the past 2 years. Automotive tools from China are being sold for 1/2 to 1/3 the cost of Western made tools. How can we compete with an economic giant where the average earnings are only $750/yr?
In the early 70s, if you purchased something "made in Japan", it was considered a joke and poor quality. We've seen how that has changed over the past 30 years. Made in Japan now indicates a quality product. I believe we are seeing the same growth cycle happening now with China except that it involves a country of 1 billion people.
I think that Western nations should start to get worried about the future of their industries....
Whereas all those damned Chinese ever. . . (Score:5, Insightful)
Just who is standing on who's shoulders? Why on earth do you think people bothered the risk of the "Silk Road?"
Not to mention the fact that in modern times Chinese researchers have walked off with genuine Nobel Prizes.
Don't mistake China with China's government of the mere last 50 years or so.
KFG
Re:The Big Picture (Score:4, Insightful)
In rosey hued glasses maybe. I bet most people use it because it's more stable, more secure and less expensive. If it were made by some mega-corporation, but still free as in cost and still a quality OS, I believe almost as many people would still use it. Face it, most Linux users are not those free thinkers who carefully weigh the pros and cons of a tool they use to get a job done based on what philosophies it represents. Sure, most may not admit it, some may characterize themselves as holy crusaders against Microsoft seeking to save civilization, but most, I think, use Linux because it's good. Of course I don't mean to say that no Linux users care about things such as software freedom, but I don't think it'd be accurate to say that that is the reason why all use it.
Flame on...
Re:More details from a magazine article (Score:5, Insightful)
Not too bad for an embedded processor? I guess the chip makers do spend so much money on marketing, conditioning people to believe that we need ridiculously fast processes to do useful computing, I shouldn't be surprised by this attitude. For 90% of useful computer work-- including things like web browsing, word processing, spreadsheets, programming, e-mail--a processor equivalent to a PII is overkill. In the mid-1990s, the Western world's technology sector was doing just fine with 486s and Pentiums in their desktops. So I'd say that if China's initial attempt at a processor is close to a PII in performance, that's something very noteworthy. They may be starting on the road to their own technological revolution quite a few years behind everyone else, but they're starting it on a lot better footing than we did.
And if China, as I'd imagine they're intending to do, shuts out the likes of Microsoft and Intel from their consumer PC market, that's both a huge blow to those companies and an amazing boon to the Chinese. China has a vast and untapped market, if China chooses to keep that market for itself, their own technology companies will end up very well off--maybe even rivaling in size the Intels and Microsofts of the West.
[]
My VAX 6420 will crush all of your PCs--literally.
Re:Pot, kettle, black. (Score:3, Insightful)
Reversing The Boards (Score:2, Insightful)
Ring! Ring! A Bell should be ringing in our heads now! Or does it "toll" for us, instead?
Re:A serious curiousity question (Score:3, Insightful)
No, if the Chinese government chooses to violate the GPL there is nothing anybody can do about it, nor should there be. It's an independant country that makes laws it feels are best for it's own people. [At least in theory - in practice many counties, even the most "democratic", are full of corruption like "The Senator from Disney" in the U.S. - that's a side issue and has nothing to do with this.] If they choose to do this then it's not theft - they make the laws and they can make it legal.
So the question, then, is whey would they possibly want to do this? Is there some advantage to forking the code and keeping your changes private? I can't think of any.
The underlying assumption in the question seems to be that the Chinese are rabidly and irrationally anti-social and would keep the code just out of spite. What a sad, lonely, world-view.
Re:Best quote ever: (Score:5, Insightful)
So you see by buying chips from intel they are helping the US economy. By building their own chips they are helping their own economy.
The same goes for windows. Everytime a chinese (or any other nationality for that matter) buys a copy of windows money flows out of their country and into the US where we can use it to build bombs so we can bomb the shit out of them when the tehir turn comes around.
The chinese are apparently wise to this scheme. They want to develop their own chips and use linux on it thereby keeping the money inside china helping the chinese companies and people as opposed to sending their money to the US.
It makes perfect sense I am surprised that other countries don't get it. I suspect the reason for that is the influence companies like MS and Intel have in democracies where they can buy politicians to act against the interests of their own countrymen. In a dictatorial communist regime that tactic is not very effective.
I have always wondered why very lucrative industries like operating systems and micro chips are not being actively pursued by other countries. It's not like they are not smart enough considering the some of the best and brightest engineers in this country are chinese, hindu, arab or whatever. Every dollar spent on windows or intel is one less dollar in their country and one more dollar in ours.
"And to think that my neighbors call me crazy! At least my data isn't being uploaded to a secret government satellite!"
I remember during the gulf war of Bush Sr. reading that the US had modified the chips of printers and computers going to Iraq to carry viruses and trojans. Why don't you do a search on google about it. The chinese are not stupid enough to presume that the computers going to china will have the exact same pentiums that you have.
I have no doubt half the computers in iraq, iran saudi arabia, china etc have rigged chips nor do I have any doubt half the software sent to those countries have trojans. It's an easy way to spy.
Re:Bah (Score:1, Insightful)
You could always move to the middle east.
I'm sure as long as you have a bouquet of flowers and a wooden box they would welcome you with open arms.
How long until we have extensive trade barriers... (Score:4, Insightful)
To benefit workers in industries in which American companies can't compete due to very expensive regulation (minimum wage; workplace environment standards; disability; collective bargaining; parental leave; health care; etc.), some dumbnut president is bound to suggest that we try to keep foreign goods out with tariffs or quotas.
Witness W.'s protective tariffs for steel.
The natural impulse for government will be to protect special interests (in this case, unionized voters) against the evils of the free market, instead of telling them what they don't want to hear: that they should find a new profession, since the one they're in can't make them the amount of money they are used to making without artificially inflating prices for the rest of the public.
I don't know about you, but I am simply not willing to pay more than I absolutely need to in order to get the goods and services I want, just to subsidize the ability of someone to continue working in a job that would be better sent overseas. If the quality of the Chinese-made goods is the same as or similar to the quality of the USA-made goods, and the price is lower, then I'm going to buy Chinese; done and done.
Free trade increases efficiency and, in the long run, will raise standards of living for all people. Pat Buchanan and the Jurassic-era conservatives are living with leftist union shills in a fantasy world of 50's America. Libertarians and the 80's-90's conservatives are the ones who truly understand what makes America great, and it isn't artificial trade barriers. =)
Re:RISC and CISC speed scaling. (Score:3, Insightful)
A possible explanation for this is that processors in the past 5 years or so have been scaling their clock speeds faster than linewidth shrinks alone would allow, by adding stages to the pipeline (and reducing the amount of work done at each stage).
For a design that's easily broken down, this works decently enough.
For a design with stages that are already broken down as far as is practical, or for a design (like MIPS) where you have a philosophy of having a relatively short pipeline, you reach a point where you have to do a major redesign before being able to increase the clock speed.
In principle, you might not need to, as the _performance_ you get would be comparable (and maybe higher, as you have less pipelining overhead) [witness the whole Athlon vs. P4 debate]. However, there will always be pathological cases where you're instruction rate is limited by the clock speed, and these cases can actually be pretty common. So, low clock speed will be a bottleneck even if your logic is just as fast as anyone else's.
Linewidth shrinks still speed things up just fine.
Infowar (Score:3, Insightful)