The 3D5000 has come out of the oven:
Loongson, a Chinese fabless chipmaker, has launched the new 3D5000 processor for data centers and cloud computing. MyDrivers (opens in new tab) reported that Loongson claims its 32-core domestic chips deliver 4X higher performance than rival Arm processors.
The 3D5000 still leverages LoongArch, Loongson's homemade instruction set architecture (ISA) from 2020. The chipmaker was previously a firm believer in MIPS. However, Loongson eventually built LoongArch from the ground up with the sole objective of not relying on foreign technology to develop its processors. LoongArch is a RISC (reduced instruction set computer) ISA, similar to MIPS or RISC-V.
The 3D5000 arrives with 32 LA464 cores running at 2 GHz. The 32-core processor has 64MB of L3 cache, supports eight-channel DDR4-3200 ECC memory, and up to five HyperTransport (HT) 3.0 interfaces. It also supports dynamic frequency and voltage adjustments. Officially, the 3D5000 has a 300W TDP; however, Loongson stated that the conventional power consumption is around 150W. That's roughly 5W per core.
The 3D5000 flaunts a chiplet design since Loongson has glued together two 16-core 3C5000 processors. Loongson developed the 3C5000 server part to compete with AMD's Zen and Zen+ architectures. The latest 3D5000, which measures 75.4 x 58.5 x 7.1mm, slides into a custom LGA4129 socket.
The processor supports 2P and 4P configurations; therefore, Loongson has launched the 7A2000 bridge chip to manage the communication between the processors and other components. As per the chip designer, the 7A2000 is up to 400% faster than the previous generation. Furthermore, with the help of the 7A2000, there's a possibility to scale up to 128 cores per motherboard.
According to Loongson's provided numbers, the 3D5000 scores over 425 points in SPEC CPU 2006, a depreciated benchmark replaced with the newer SPEC CPU 2017 version. The 3D5000 also delivers over 1 TFLOPs of FP64 performance, up to 4X higher than regular Arm cores. Meanwhile, the processor's stream performance with eight channels of DDR4-3200 memory crosses the 50GB mark.
While performance isn't the 3D5000's strong suit, security is. The 32-core processor allegedly has a custom-made mechanism to defend against vulnerabilities such as Meltdown or Spectre. The chip also has its Trusted Platform Module (TPM), so it doesn't rely on an external solution. In addition, according to MyDrivers' report, the 3D5000 also supports a secret national algorithm with an embedded security module that seemingly delivers excellent encryption and decryption efficiency higher than 5 Gbps.
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 12, @11:04AM (3 children)
It can report any data back to china faster than any other chip on the market putting intel on the backfoot to leech customer data right off the CPU core to the internet. How will Intel respond? Find out in next week's episode
(Score: 3, Touché) by Snotnose on Wednesday April 12, @01:19PM (2 children)
Yeah, but ARM can report data back to the NSA and Five Eyes fast enough. It's like saying your Maserati can do 185, but the speed limit is 65.
I just passed a drug test. My dealer has some explaining to do.
(Score: 5, Funny) by turgid on Wednesday April 12, @01:31PM
Life's been good to me so far.
I refuse to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 12, @10:53PM
Assuming the Loongson chip is basically a copied clone of an old Intel chip, the NSA backdoor is also available. You can report to both the CCP and NSA on the chip without having to install software workarounds.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by driverless on Thursday April 13, @10:12AM
I have a 6502 that's faster than a rival ARM chip, as long as the ARM chip is undervolted and underclocked sufficiently that the 6502 is faster than it.
So, which ARM chip is it faster than, and under what conditions?