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China's first homegrown 6nm GPUs are no longer a show-floor exclusive.
Earlier this year, Lisuan took the stage to announce its G100 series of GPUs, based on the in-house "TrueGPU" architecture and fabricated on TSMC's N6 process. It was the first time a Chinese company had potential to directly rival AMD and Nvidia's duopoly in the discrete GPU market. Sampling for these cards was expected to begin in September and now, IT Home is reporting that they've begun initial deliveries.
There are two GPUs part of the G100 family: the gaming-oriented 7G106 and the enterprise-focused 7G105. It was the former that really made headlines by touting RTX 4060-level performance, even beating the GPU in early benchmark results. Specs-wise, we're looking at 192 texture units, 96 ROPs, and an FP32 throughput of up to 24 TFLOP/s.
The 7G106 has 12GB of GDDR6 VRAM saturated across a 192-bit wide bus, which is doubled to 24GB on the workstation-class 7G105, with proper ECC support. These GPUs support modern APIs including DirectX 12, use the PCIe 4.0 interface, and even have a custom upscaling solution called NSRR, akin to Nvidia's DLSS or AMD's FSR. Unlike those two, however, Lisuan supports Microsoft's Windows-on-Arm initiative.
IT Home says the G100 series began production on September 15, 2025, in China, and now that customers have started to receive the first batch of orders, these graphics cards have successfully transitioned into commercialization. This is a big deal for the region, and Lisuan's TrueGPU architecture represents China's self-reliance ambitions in the boldest way possible — something that even local darling Moore Threads hasn't been able to achieve yet.
When these GPUs were first announced, we were impressed by the performance Lisuan was touting. While reviews are still up in the air, if the numbers at the launch event were real, then Lisuan's efforts would've paid off massively in creating a legitimate homegrown alternative. Now that the G100 is finally shipping, we should start to see those claims validated sooner rather than later.
(Score: 2) by Dr Spin on Wednesday January 07, @10:50AM (2 children)
.. DO they support Linux?
Warning: Opening your mouth may invalidate your brain!
(Score: 2) by looorg on Wednesday January 07, @11:03AM
It will when you write the driver.
(Score: 3, Informative) by KritonK on Thursday January 08, @07:02AM
According to Gemini, Linux support is mandatory in China, so Linux drivers probably exist, but, if they do, they are currently proprietary.
(Score: 2) by coolgopher on Wednesday January 07, @11:52AM (5 children)
This article [howtogeek.com] mentions actual benchmarks more in line with an old GTX 660 Ti (if anyone can cast their minds that far back).
(Score: 4, Insightful) by PiMuNu on Wednesday January 07, @02:22PM (3 children)
Thanks for the article link.
"""
Here's the thing, though. Even if this card performs like a GeForce GTX 660 Ti, it's still pretty good. Creating a functional GPU architecture from scratch—specifically one that relies on a domestic 6nm supply chain rather than TSMC—is an immense engineering triumph. The fact that the G100 boots, runs Windows, and executes modern APIs like DirectX 12 is the "zero to one" breakthrough. A bunch of the Lisuan G100's issues could be patched with software, and even if the hardware and the silicon are to blame, Lisuan could definitely put something together in a few years that, at the very least, rivals NVIDIA and AMD in some segments.
"""
I believe it is better than the graphics cards produced in Europe and the US (because they don't exist).
(Score: 3, Insightful) by coolgopher on Wednesday January 07, @10:24PM (1 child)
Oh it's a highly impressive achievement! But claiming it's rivaling the previous generation of NVIDIA/AMD GPUs is disingenuous. If they'd said they're about par with a 1070 and then benched at 660, I would've considered that no worse than the usual spin from the big two. The big gap demonstrated here though, that's overhyping (imo). I will add that I read the article hoping that this might be something I could actually afford to upgrade to, so I was disappointed to see it really not measure up performance wise at this point.
(Score: 2) by PiMuNu on Thursday January 08, @10:08AM
Good point.
(Score: 2) by driverless on Thursday January 08, @03:38AM
That's my thoughts as well, I don't need it to be pissing-match best (for the next two weeks or so anyway until a new model comes out), I just need it to be good enough and at a reasonable price. And these certainly look good enough.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 07, @04:12PM
Well Intel took about 2 years to get to that performance level too. Gen12 in 2020? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_Graphics_Technology#Gen12 [wikipedia.org] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_Xe#History [wikipedia.org]
Lisuan started in 2021 so they're about twice as slow but Intel might have some advantages...
(Score: 3, Informative) by Mojibake Tengu on Wednesday January 07, @12:38PM (5 children)
It's SMIC's 6nm DUV, not TSMC's 6nm N6 EUV. Just like Huawei Kirin 9100.
This is the third SN arcticle in a row containing misleading information about current Chinese chip production technology.
What's wrong with you, guys?
Rust programming language offends both my Intelligence and my Spirit.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Username on Wednesday January 07, @05:45PM (1 child)
>What's wrong with you, guys?
The only country bypassing a singular monopoly on silicon lithography has to be dismissed at every opportunity.
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Wednesday January 07, @06:00PM
[nostyle RIP 06 May 2025]
(Score: 5, Insightful) by janrinok on Wednesday January 07, @05:58PM (2 children)
Nothing is wrong with us. It is the quoted source material - which we print verbatim in almost all circumstances - with which you seem to have a problem. Your comment has made it clear about the difference between the 2 standards, which is exactly what we like to see in a discussion.
[nostyle RIP 06 May 2025]
(Score: 2) by Username on Thursday January 08, @02:46PM (1 child)
I read it as us guys being the west and not specifically this website.
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Thursday January 08, @05:15PM
OK, maybe that was the intended meaning.
[nostyle RIP 06 May 2025]
(Score: 2) by MonkeypoxBugChaser on Wednesday January 07, @01:47PM
Yawn. Unusable for ML workloads. That's the main reason to pay a half-baked drivers and software support tax.