Loongson 2F is to be formally released

On October 12, i found 2 photos showing the motherboard with Loongson 2Fas its heart on Lemote BBS

(http://www.lemote.com/bbs/viewthread.php?tid=10336&extra=page%3D1&page=8,see post #80, #81). Foxsen, the administrator of Lemote BBS, said thatthis is just one of the Loongson 2F's future applications, a homeserver. He decribed the motherboard: "Loongson 2F (the silver chip) +AMD CS5536 south bridge + dual 1000M LAN + Sil3114 Sata + 32MB norflash." This motherboard seems to be a mini-itx, 17cm X 17cm in size,with one IDE in addition to four ESata port and one PCI.

Foxsen appologized to members on Lemote BBS that he couldn't provide anyfurther details of the chip as it is not formally released.

It is said that ST Microelectronics has started Loongson 2F's massproduction. We may expect different kinds of things with 2F inside comeout next year.

Loongson 2F finished tape-out in July and has been get through 2 monthsof heavy test. It consumes 5.6W power at 1GHz, higher than i expected,unfortunately.

Again, thanks to the friend abroad for her help to post this stuff.

say sorry to all my friends on this blog

I am more than a little sad when i realize this blog, and possibly aswell as many other blogs on blogspot, has been under strict accesscontrol in mainland. Using a free web surf abroad helps me enter thesite and confirm its existence. However, i can't login to create new posts.The situation began in this summer. I thought it wouldn't last long asGoogle China should negotiate with someones. Wrong. I just can't loginand post.Thanks to the kind help from one of my best friend outside this country,i got this chance to talk on this blog again.What i know about the Linux-only chip now:1. 2F returned, at least 1 month ago. The chips are under intensetesting now. But no details are unveiled.2. Lemote has been doing survey about Lemote Box (formally called Fulongmini PC, though i never think they are PCs) with Loongson 2F inside onhttp://www.lemote.com/table/2f.php (in Chinese). So the marketing mustbe on the way.3. For some technical questions, i suggest we had better ask on theLemote BBS.All the best

Free Pascal Compiler at its very beginning on Loongson

After weeks of silence, Linuxer on Lemote forum finally made a little progress again. "Jiao Lin Tan Suo" said earlier today that he has been porting FPC to Linux-Loongson platform for some time. He has implemented the cross-compiler as the first step, and then used non-cross-compiler running on Loongson to implement a HelloWorld.pas successfully. The compiler itself is written in Pascal, completely independent of gcc.

It is just the beginning.

C Language Interface lib of Loongson Multimedia Instruction Set

I don't know if i was making translation errors again.

jamesr, a 17-year-old student in his 2nd year of high school, has been working on C language interface for Loongson multimedia instructions for some time. On May 8, he released his 0.1 version of libmmi_ls. Although it may not perform perfect, but his job is really appreciated. He studied C language by himself 1 year ago.

64bit PMON has been solved

On May 9, 64 bit PMON on Loongson is solved. Former PMON is 32bit despite a 64bit CPU. The developers said that the advantages to use a 64bit PMON :
1. We can get access to anywhere in the 64bit space by C pointers in PMON
2. DDR can be locate to any place in PMON. (???I don't know such technical stuffs so it might be a translation mistake）
3. Tool chain is gcc 3.4.6, which is consistent to 2.6 kernel tool chain.

CF card and handwriting stroke recognition are finished

Loongson 2E has already support CF card by miniIDE-CF adapter.

Another thing should be mentioned is the stroke recognition. As Chinese is base on thousands of characters instead of tens of alphabets, stroke recognition is generally more difficult and not opensource. I am afraid that there may be a negotiation between Loongson group and other companies.

XGI V3XT and SiS315E is now supported

Officially confirmed by Loongson Technology Service Center, Beijing.

SiS315E is solved at April 20 and XGI V3XT at April 24.