Loongson 3 is expected to have 16cores

Another series of Loongson, the multi-core Loongson 3 is in designing. The developers said that they hope it will be a 16core cpu with 1.2+GHz each. The share L2 cache is 8MB.

Loongson 2F is to be taping out

The next member of Loongson 2 family, the 2F is sent to tape-out process on May 2nd, 2007. This is about 3 months later than the developers expected at the beginning of this year.

Improvements:
1. 30% faster clock frequency. We can expect for 1G+ product.
2. Comparing to 2E, 2F can saving up to 40% of the power consumption. Moreover, temperature sensor, frequency steps and other power management functions is available.
3. More integrated: DDR2 controller, 66MHz PCI/100MHz PCI-X controller, Local IO controller, GPIO, time Interrupt Controller、DMA controller and so on.
4. Smaller: 27mm x 27mm, comparing to 35 x 35 of 2E.
5. Better DFT and DFM to lower costs.

Beryl 0.2.0 on Loongson Box

It is not amazing that youbest again made the eye-candy project running on his Lemote Box. Although it is still not very stable and many special effects are not available for some reasons, it proves the ability of the little machine.

Finished slackware on Loongson

'lyh' successfully ported Slackware Linux on Loongson platform today. He says xfce4 and e17 nearly no problem on Slackware-Loongson and he is compiling and testing KDE.

Waiting for his screen shot.

QEMU running Win98 on Loongson

'jun7903' posted a message on Lemote BBS early this morning, which said he had made QEMU running Windows 98 on Loongson. Although QEMU on Loongson is not fully tested, it is the first time for a Windows OS to somehow "run" on Loongson2 platform. In 2006 I also saw WinCE running on GS32i (an improved Loongson I CPU).

I don't need Windows at all, but more functions are always better when it comes to marketing.

All 1000 Lemote Box has been delivered to users

By Feb 7, 2007, Lemote had sent all Lemote Box to their respective users. All fans are busy running and discussing Loongson now. No one can tell how much these users will contribute to Loongson's developing but it must be considerable.

Finished Gentoo on Loongson

"Henry", a Linuxer on Lemote BBS declared that he had ported gentoo to Loongson platform.

Loongson 2E details uncovered

The details of Loongson 2E (Godson 2E) has been published in a recent research article: Implementing a 1GHz Four-Issue Out-of-Order Execution Microprocessor in a Standard Cell ASIC Methodology

http://jcst.ict.ac.cn/content/papere.asp?lg=en&i=7101

In this paper, there is a table showing the SPEC2000 score of Loongson 2E vs PentiumIII and Pentium IV. The table is provided by "overself" on Lemote BBS.

Loongson 2E @ 1GHz achieved a peak score of 503 in both SPEC INT 2000 and SPEC FP2000 with ORC compiler, which is developed specially for Loongson.

Beryl 3D desktop on Loongson : Mission Completed!

Youbest, one of the most active Linuxers on Lemote BBS, successfully compiled and ran Beryl on Loongson Box, only two days after foxsen finished 3D driver.

Beryl is still not stable on Loongson, nevertheless, it does run.

Thanks youbest. I don't think 3D desktop can do much for our everyday work but it may attract more customers to Linux-Loongson system.

Solved 3D driver on Loongson

Foxsen, the administrator of Lemote BBS, says he has solved 3D driver for Loongson Box after one month work.

ATI didn't provide any proper driver for Loongson Box. I heard that Lemote collected some information and then used a guess-and-try method to write basic driver for R7000 before the Boxes were usable. And now foxsen further finished 3D driver.

However, currently the 3D driver doesn't fully exploit R7000's capacity which gives only 237 FPS on 24bit. Foxsen promised to improve it. Anyway, he' s really a respectable man.

200 Loongson laptops are going to be released

According to the Lemote, 200 laptops with Loongson Inside will be produced before Spring Festival(Feb. 17, 2007). However, these laptops are not for sale but for test. About 100 of them will be owned by cooperative enterprises and the rest for Lemote staffs.

The design of Lemote Box is actually blueprint of Loongson laptops. They have almost same hardware installed(Lemote Box use laptop main memory and harddisks). The Box does not have a DVD drive, which is a difference.

To my astonishment, Loongson fans seem to be even more enthusiastic about laptops than Lemote boxes, despite a possible higher price.

OpenRays for Loongson: First Linux distribution special for Loongson

OpenRays, a Chinese Linux distribution, started their support for Loongson CPU two days ago.

Rays and OpenRays (I don't know if their relationship is just like SUSE and OpenSUSE), are based on Debian GNU/Linux system. This kind of Linux are mainly designed for and used by Chinese, so it has better Chinese language support than other world-wide Linux distributions.

Because M$ Windows are so common in China, the default desktop of OpenRays looks like a Windows, making people easier to switch from Win. We can see from the screenshot(provided by "sanlunchefu" on Lemote BBS) that there is a START button on the left of bottom panel.

Notice that "$ cat /proc/cpuinfo" on Loongson box(see the terminal window in the screenshot) does not tell you the actual frequency of Loongson.

Loongson 2F may come out in 2007

Loongson 2F, a new member of Loongson CPU familiy, may come out in 2007.

According to Lemote official, Loongson 2F is planed to tape out before Chinese Spring Festival (Feb 17, 2007) if possible.

Better designed, Loongson 2F is expected faster than Loongson 2E(The CPU what I am using now) by 20％-30% with even smaller power consumption, 2W!

Meanwhile, it is said that Loongson 3, the multi-core Loongson CPU for web servers and supercomputers has been placed on developers' agenda. If Loongson 3 is successfully developed, we will enjoy multi-core performance with power consumption no more than a typical 1-core x86 CPU.

Loongson developers described a beautiful prospect for the CPU. But I think there are a lot of difficulties on their way. How can the new-born CPU compete with mainstream x86 CPUs?

Loongson Box can use TV set as monitor

These are the front and the back panels of Lemote Box.

Upper is the front panel, from left to right: 4 USB 2.0 ports, mic, phone, line out, infrared port, IDE indicator light, power indicator light, reset button, power switch.

Lower is the back panel, from left to right: PS/2 port, networking port, VGA output, S-Video output, COM, power supply(DC 12V).

The S-Video output makes it possible that TV set with NTSC mode be the monitor of Lemote Box. Currently, it supports only 800x600 resolution on TV set. But it is a good start.

Linuxers are working on genuine 64bit OS on Loongson

Youbest, lyxmoo, along with other members on Lemote BBS are now developing a genuine 64bit Linux system for Loongson. Former Debian GNU/Linux installed on Loongson Box had got a 64bit kernel but the operation system is still 32bit only.

Youbest had already finished a simple command-line 64bit Linux OS on Loongson by Jan. 12. The OS is now available for every Loongson users. On Jan. 15, lyxmoo released 64bit compiler environment for Loongson 2E.

Moreover, kingkongmao finished developing a new PMON supporting ELF64 for Loongson this morning.

Correction

In a recent post I said that float point(FP) ability of Loongson cannot be fully exploited by gcc because gcc only take use of two FP elements of total four in Loongson. That is not exactly true. Loongson Instruction Set has special instructions like multiply-add (MADD), multiply-subtract (MSUB), etc. Every FP element can execute an MADD-like instruction but gcc can not generate assembler executables with these Loongson-specific advanced instructions. As a result, one MADD will be cut into a muliplication and an addition by gcc, being executed in two steps. So the complier seems utilize only two of the four FP elements in effect.

About Loongson Box: something I must say

Loongson Box is sold at CNY 1599 (US$ 200) without monitor and keyboard/mouse. All Lemote boxes of the pilot run will be delivered to users before Chinese traditional new year, Spring Festival.

The photo is taken from "SNAiL", a friend of mine on Lemote BBS, showing a contrast between Lemote Box and regular PC.

The Box possess Loongson 2E processor of 666MHz, laptop hard disc of 40G, laptop DDR memory of 256M, VGA Card of ATI RADEON 7000M and operating system of Debian GNU/Linux Etch.

Are Loongson Boxes cheap? I don't think so. Hardwares seem to be out of date. CNY 1599 may buy a x86 PC with (perhaps) better performance. However, Loongson Box is actually NOT a PC. It is really something else which will change your ways of thinking. Small and lovely, it consumes little power and saves a lot money every month. It is indeed cheap in a sense. And I bet things will get better in future.

Are all loongson first users experts on Linux? NO. Some users never used any distribution of Linux before. I am a newbie to Linux, too. I just gave up Windows half a year ago. Both regular users and experts will contribute to Loongson's growth.

Is Loongson "Chinese Pentium 4"? At present, the answer is NOT. Loongson 2E generally performs about as same as PentiumIII at same frequency but much faster in pure computing works because it is an RISC. Specially optimized L2E@1G does achieve what Pentium4 1.3G does in SPEC CPU2000 but ordinary L2E@666 doesn't. Loongson is now not as good as some media trumpet but is much better than some rumors said. That's the fact, but I believe that it will be Chinese Pentium 4 in near future.

Loongson@home!

After days of boring waiting, I've received my Loongson Box! No.41 of the first 1000. I'm trying to find any problems. Yes, there's one. The four USB ports are too close. I posted the problem on Lemote BBS and they promised to improve the design.

In general it works well. Better than I expected. Debian GNU/Linux (Etch) and most applications run fluently on Loongson. The lovely box satisfies all the basic needs for a regular user.

However, to be honest, Loongson somehow has a poor performance when running applications which have not been optimized for Loongson, e.g. OpenOffice2.0. I need more than a dozen seconds to open an odp file(something like M$ PowerPoint).

Nevertheless, Loongson Box does work and live up to its reputation and fans' trust. It beats up all rumors.

Users have received Loongson PC

About a score of Loongson users had received their ordered Lemote Box by Jan 4th. They are all cheering in Lemote BBS. Everyone is congratuating them and just cannot conceal envy.

I'm waiting for my Loongson. Jiangsu is too far from here.

A piece of news about purchase orders of Lemote Box

Original from:
http://www.tmcnet.com/usubmit/-loongson-pcs-receive-stunning-orders-/2006/12/11/2155723.htm

Loongson PCs Receive Stunning Orders

(SinoCast Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) BEIJING, Dec 11, 2006 (SinoCast via COMTEX) --Loongson PCs, with China's independently developed CPU, have received thousands of orders within one week after the developer started to accept purchase orders.

Jiangsu Lemote Technology Corporation Limited, a joint venture between Jaingsu Menglan Group Corporation and the Institute of Computing Technology under Chinese Academy of Sciences, takes charge of the research and production of Loongson PCs.

The computer is installed with Linux operating system. It can handle operations like Internet surfing and sending and receiving e-mails. However, programs like Ourgame and QQ game that are supported only by windows cannot be played.

Loongson PC is installed with 2E CPU. It is sold at CNY 1,599 per unit excluding the monitor, keyboard and mouse. The first 1,000 Loongson PCs were ordered as soon as it was launched.

From www.nbd.com.cn, Page 1, Friday, December 08, 2006
info@SinoCast.Com

Copyright (C) 2006 SinoCast, All rights reserved