Godson-2 will be 64 bit Dragon

By klsh on March 6, 2003 9:41 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

EE Times - Chinese start-up readies 64-bit processor
Almost MIPS, but not MIPS, the removal of certain instructions, because of patent issues seems a sticking point. Can this chip server as a functional replacement without those? What about GNU/Linux, a MIPS port would be easier to modify with the source code, I wonder if it has been...

One of the country's most promising start-ups, BLX IC Design Corp., Ltd., told EE Times Wednesday (March 5) that it is closing in on a 500-MHz microprocessor that it will market toward China's leading server vendors, including Legend Group and Dawning Technology. It would eventually be positioned as the engine of a distributed grid computing network that will be used by public and private firms here.

The chip is dubbed Godson-2 and is the follow-on to a 32-bit, 266-MHz version released last year that is aimed at the embedded systems market. Both chips are largely based on the MIPS instruction set, but are not fully compatible because they avoid the use of key instructions that would run afoul of MIPS patents.
[...]

Godson-2, which has also been translated into English as Dragon or Longxin, has already been prototyped. Samples are expected to roll in the first half of next year. The chip will be binary backward compatible to the 32-bit Godson-1, a path of compatibility first chosen by Advanced Micro Devices in development of its Opteron line.
Some of the improvements over Godson-1 include a four-issue super-scaler architecture, dynamic branch prediction and a non-blocking cache design to allow for multiple misses in the memory array. The chip will probably be made on a 0.18-micron process at Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., although Shanghai's Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp. is also being considered.

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