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.

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.

Progressing, but a little slowly

Lemote has release a new version of Loongson-optimized mplayer and new real codecs. From the instant feedback of users it is said that there may be a 20 percent better(faster) when playing rmvb and other videos. Strangely, still some rm file cannot be played. Perhaps we still need more work.

Foxsen today says he has solved 1G RAM problem. Current PMON has bugs so that it refused to recognize some 1G RAMs correctly.

64bit kernel is another issue. Many users have encountered a serious problem that 32bit Linux system running on 64bit kernel is accidentally down. It is difficult for developers to solve such random-occurring problems. Strangely, it seems that some users never had this problem but some usually got it.

Bochs on Loongson

Youbest has ported Bochs on Loongson platform and make NetBSD, OpenBSD, FreeNAS, GeeXBox, Red Flag Linux( a Chinese commericial Linux distro, I never used it) and Win98 running. The problem is Bochs is very very slow on Loongson.

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.

Control your Lemote Box when you are in bed

"Tony" has release an infrared port driver on Lemote BBS for testing. The driver enable us to control our Lemote Box with a common remote control (like those of a TV set) after a brief training.

This feature of Lemote Box, together with its size and NTSC support makes it possible that the little box be a home multimedia center.

I'll try it as soon as I go home this spring festival.

Finished Gentoo on Loongson

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

Video for Beryl on Loongson!!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=elZBzu9Gdl8

Provided by Youbest.

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.

Run EIOffice2007 on Loongson Box

"Sanlunchefu"(in Chinese means "pedicab driver"), a member on Lemote BBS, said that he had made Evermore Integrated Office 2007, the latest version of EIOffice, successfully run on Loongson Box.

Written completely in Java, EIOffice is portable to Linux, including Debian GNU/Linux on Loongson CPU.

The software looks and behaves very very much like M$ office. People may feel easier to switch from M$ to Evermore. It is excellent in exporting and importing M$ office filetypes. PDF and html are also supported. Moreover, EIOffice featured a Science Editor, which allow users to edit some complex math curves or chemical symbols, etc.

However, unlike OpenOffice, EIOffice is not a free software, though it is rather cheap. I hope Lemote will negotiate with Evermore Software on this issue.

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.