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by HerbManic 23 days ago
The one major area they are still behind in is CPU tech, but they are hungry and thus moving quick.

Looking at Loongsons processors for instance. About 15 years ago they coudl barely compete with a Pentium 2. Now they are about 4-5 years behind Intel/AMD. Further behind on some more specific work loads (SSL decoding for example) Not great but that is a decent jump. The jumps between generations are pretty decent.

LA446 was a decent enough processor core but had an awful memory controller that held it back as soon as it needed to reach outside of cache. As such it was SLOW.

But they learned the lesson and now the LA664 almost entirely fixed that issue. I think a big part of performance issues is that they are working domestic 5 to 7nm processes, so a good 5-7 years behind.

They are launching the LA864 later this year and are touting some decent performance gains. That is just marketing so far but something to keep an eye on.

Considering that these chips are using their own ISA, own designs, domestic manufacturing and they aren't terrible is a big thing.

I suspect in the next 5 years they have the chance of completely closing the gap. But it can also go the other way that they end up stalling as smaller nodes get much more difficult to attain.

2 comments

> Now they are about 4-5 years behind Intel/AMD. [..] the LA664 almost entirely fixed that issue. I think a big part of performance issues is that they are working domestic 5 to 7nm processes, so a good 5-7 years behind.

I'm not finding many benchmarks but looking at this https://chipsandcheese.com/p/loongson-3a6000-a-star-among-ch...

it looks like it's right around Zen 1 class performance. Which I hate to tell you is 10 years old already...

How much does corporate espionage help them?
Probably the same amount it helped the US in the late 1800s/1900s, a substantial amount.
Who knows but any 'answer' anyone could give is pure speculation.

You could be right! But I do see this claim come up every time Chinese tech comes up. It might be a valid concern but it might also just be folks attempts to try and undermine the technology gains of the nation.

The ISA they have developed with based off years of with with MIPS and RISC V, so it isn't entirely new but they are definitely pushing it forwards. I have no idea if any of their developments could be back ported down the RISC V.

There are 1.4 billion Chinese. When they got their education system up and running again by the late 1970s it was simply a matter of statistics.