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Chinese chipmaker Loongson's new laptop and industrial chips have higher core counts, better GPU
Loongson, a fabless Chinese CPU manufacturer, announced the successful tapeout of two new processors, the 2K3000 and the 3B6000M, designed for industrial control and mobile, respectively. Both chips employ the same underlying silicon but have been uniquely packaged for their target markets. It's important to note that reaching High Volume Manufacturing (HVM) for these chips may take some time, and we're likely months away from seeing them being produced at scale.
Based on Loongson's roadmap, the 2K3000 family is overdue, as it was initially scheduled for late 2024. The CPU in question offers an eight-core LA364E-based CPU with a base frequency of 2.5 GHz. In-house testing shows the CPU can hit 30 points in integer performance under SPEC CPU2006, which is hard to compare against modern-day CPUs, as the software was retired in 2018.
Either way, even at iso-frequencies, this performance pales in contrast to the desktop 3A6000 based on the LA664 architecture. Due to Loongson's unclear naming scheme, it's hard to definitively say which architecture is more recent. Then again, we're probably barking up the wrong tree, given the age of SPEC CPU2006.
The iGPU (integrated GPU) draws its lineage from Loongson's recently introduced LG200 GPGPU (General Purpose GPU). Loongson claims in addition to basic graphics acceleration with OpenGL 4.0 support, the built-in GPU can also power lightweight AI workloads rated at 8 TOPS of INT8 performance, alongside 256 GFLOPS for FP32 compute. While FLOPS aren't a perfect indicator of real-world performance, that's somewhat faster than the original Nintendo Switch's GPU in handheld mode.
(Image credit: Loongson)
Both chips are said to integrate independent hardware encoding and decoding modules, capable of displaying output to three interfaces (eDP/DP/HDMI) at up to 4K at 60 FPS. Loongson has also implemented Chinese SM2/SM3/SM4 cryptographic standards directly in hardware for security. Regarding I/O, we get support for PCIe 3.0, USB 3.0/2.0, SATA 3.0, GMAC for Ethernet, eMMC for storage, SDIO, SPI, LPC, RapidIO, and CAN-FD.
These chips further segment and diversify Loongson's desktops, servers, and mobile/industry offerings. Chinese manufacturers are likely to integrate the 3B6000M into domestic laptops, tablets, smartwatches, retro handhelds, and other devices.
Meanwhile, the industrial control counterpart (2K3000) is better suited for PLCs, HMIs, and edge servers. Given that support for Loongarch is still quite limited, Huawei is reportedly prepping a new desktop/laptop Arm-based chip dubbed Kirin X90 for its upcoming AI PCs, rumored to be powered by HarmonyOS.
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Hassam Nasir is a die-hard hardware enthusiast with years of experience as a tech editor and writer, focusing on detailed CPU comparisons and general hardware news. When he’s not working, you’ll find him bending tubes for his ever-evolving custom water-loop gaming rig or benchmarking the latest CPUs and GPUs just for fun.
Perhaps it's not a perfect analogy, but I think the Loongson vs. RISC-V race is a little like watching POWER vs. ARM about a decade ago. POWER was very competent, but pretty much a one-man show (IBM). Meanwhile, the wave of ARM contenders was only beginning to swell, but the inundation seemed somewhat inevitable.
Loongson will probably find niches, but I doubt it'll manage to dominate the overall Chinese computing market, given the vibrant ecosystem in the RISC-V camp.
Perhaps it's not a perfect analogy, but I think the Loongson vs. RISC-V race is a little like watching POWER vs. ARM about a decade ago. POWER was very competent, but pretty much a one-man show (IBM). Meanwhile, the wave of ARM contenders was only beginning to swell, but the inundation seemed somewhat inevitable.
Loongson will probably find niches, but I doubt it'll manage to dominate the overall Chinese computing market, given the vibrant ecosystem in the RISC-V camp.
Agreed, I assume RISC-V will be dominant in the future, especially as its not completely China exclusive.
Perhaps it's not a perfect analogy, but I think the Loongson vs. RISC-V race is a little like watching POWER vs. ARM about a decade ago. POWER was very competent, but pretty much a one-man show (IBM). Meanwhile, the wave of ARM contenders was only beginning to swell, but the inundation seemed somewhat inevitable.
Loongson will probably find niches, but I doubt it'll manage to dominate the overall Chinese computing market, given the vibrant ecosystem in the RISC-V camp.
Excellent analogy! I wish we could get a desktop focused chip out of Sifive, to get a better idea of where the peak of RISC V performance is clearly. Loongson is cspable of roughly Skylake level performance but Sofive only has mobile designs so far. The newest chip is mobile focused and can range anywhere from ARM A73 level performance to below ARM A55 level in workloads where it doesn’t perform as well.
