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Posted: **28 Dec 2011, 19:20**

China has now officially gone deep into the core of high end computing, way to the deepest level - designing and manufacturing its own CPUs - to complete the whole vertical stack from the processor to the application. That includes having own designs covering everything from smartphone to supercomputer, based on three main architectural families: ARM, MIPS and Alpha.

Our last week's report, and its coverage of the Chinese CPUs, has sparked quite a few online comments on various forums, from those of encouragement and seeking more diversified CPU futures, to outright dismissal of these chips as copies or inferior designs, or not having, out of all things, X86 architecture - widely regarded as the worst ever CPU architecture from a design point of view - as a 'proof of true capability'.

Well, let's take a look at the three chosen main architectures here. ARM, MIPS and Alpha are all native RISC architectures - meaning simple, symmetric, orthogonal instruction sets with only a few addressing modes and options, uniform instruction format and easy scalability to both wide cores, multi-cores and a range of speeds from low power to top performance, with much lower gate count required than any X86. Since China doesn't want to depend on Western software stack for its public and, especially, government use, it doesn't need to rely on X86 as this architecture's winning chip is software compatibility with hundreds of thousands of past applications.

So, why bother with the X86 complexities - both technical and legal - then? The internal market is more than good enough to, coupled with Linux and other open source stacks, provide complete solutions and the volumes required to justify these processors even commercially over long run.

Talking about legality: No, these are not fakes or illegal copies right now. The ARM and MIPS processors made in China are fully licensed by the relevant ARM and MIPS IP owning consortia, while the Shenwei Alpha-compatible chip is based on Digital (DEC) IP that is well over 15 years old now - quite ironic for a CPU that matches the best current X86 processors based on 2010 IP and in 2 generations later process.

Read more: http://vr-zone.com/articles/chinese-hig ... z1hr2U0cc2

Pretty interesting read, it's an article series in four parts. The last part is not published yet. Links to Part 2 and Part 3.

Posted: **29 Dec 2011, 06:38**

US should've invaded China when Soviet Union fell in 1991, and broken up into many pieces. It be similar to second suppression of Boxer Rebellion.

Ever since China open up its trading to the world, they have been acquiring vast amounts of foreign technologies because of their trading policy was to hand over technology for selling goods to China. The foreign nations who saw large market in China agreed to it, and now it's more problematic.

X86 is meant to die sooner or later. People's ignorance have kept it alive for this long and Microsoft. I hope that Intel can die with it, but they probably won't. They just need to learn to get license from ARM Holdings.

Anyway, this news of Chinese processor is not a good news, and I hope they fail.

Posted: **29 Dec 2011, 07:06**

China doing what it does best: using "obsolete" things and improving on them to compete with the newest. I never thought it would come so soon with CPUs though. I wonder how much of the research is funded by the government or done by partially state-owned companies.

Prominence: 2 words; ignorance and bigotry.

Posted: **29 Dec 2011, 08:20**

fc14159 wrote:China doing what it does best: using "obsolete" things and improving on them to compete with the newest. I never thought it would come so soon with CPUs though. I wonder how much of the research is funded by the government or done by partially state-owned companies.

Prominence: 2 words; ignorance and bigotry.

WTF, your way over your head.

1. China doesn't have any fabs with latest technologies.

2. China is catching up on old technologies, hence they would neither be improving nor competing with newest technologies

3. China stoled many of its technologies from TSMC of Taiwan, thus they had to pay huge settlement fees and royalties

From Chinese point of view, what you call "obsolete" is advanced technology, and they would be copying, not improving.

From what I can see, your describing yourself.

I will conclude my statements with modified version of Jerry Sander's statement. Real men have latest fabs!

Posted: **29 Dec 2011, 09:23**

Prominence wrote:US should've invaded China

China has the bomb.

Posted: **29 Dec 2011, 10:13**

Prominence wrote:US should've invaded China when Soviet Union fell in 1991, and broken up into many pieces.

Anyway, this news of Chinese processor is not a good news, and I hope they fail.

You're funny. Maybe without communism, China will be ahead of US already. So, better they let them be.

Why do you want it to fail? Competition is generally good. But yes, you have to work hard for that and at least some people in the western part of the world are not that interested. I'm in an university and there are a lot of Chinese and Indian students (also east European). I am sure the university would prefer local students but less people enroll.

Posted: **29 Dec 2011, 11:39**

Its clearly failure of the west to outcompete china at manufacturing. If you dont want to learn and work hard for $1 and instead increase trade deficit, there is no help.

Only chance would be limiting foreign trade and that would probably end up much worse.

We lived decades of prosperity while doing nearly nothing. Now its time for payback.

Posted: **29 Dec 2011, 11:52**

China's growth is fertilized with human blood.

Posted: **29 Dec 2011, 12:02**

We lived decades of prosperity while doing nearly nothing. Now its time for payback.

I dont agree with this.
Lots of improvements have been made, and if you mistake the current debt problem , and overlook the advancements in tecnology, you are missing a lot.

China's growth is fertilized with human blood.

Couldnt have said it better.

Posted: **29 Dec 2011, 12:21**

scifi wrote:
We lived decades of prosperity while doing nearly nothing. Now its time for payback.
I dont agree with this.
Lots of improvements have been made, and if you mistake the current debt problem , and overlook the advancements in tecnology, you are missing a lot.

The current debt problem seems more related to lack of advancement in social structures and politics. Banks and corporations seem to strong...

In fact, it is like in spring with the exponential evolution. Once someone has 80% of the metal (or of the capital) it is kind of hard to "share" willingly with the rest.

Posted: **29 Dec 2011, 12:39**

or you have comunism where everything is shared

like in CA/ZK

But the horrible truth is they have the capital, we must either atract theyr capital and hope theyr dumb enough, not to dominate our companies, or develop new tecnologies that they cant replicate.

Posted: **29 Dec 2011, 14:02**

As I thought the thread has basically turned into an off topic debate on China stealing technology.

Some people have a hard time seeing China being a manufacturing power as a mutually beneficial relationship for the world. Or perhaps they would rather see it being more one sided. Chinese are working for close to $1/day, how can you begrudge them for being willing to take the jobs that the rest feel they are too good for?

China is where all the companies are earning money now. It's simple file for chapter 12 then raise some capital, buy shit from China and sell in the US or vice versa, you're back on your feet again. Chapter 12 is what the US is built on.

Yes China is vain and nationalist and think they need their own, often times inferior, copy of every single thing. The Chinese citizens really are brainwashed and buy into the state propaganda that their inventions are the very latest in technology. This is out of ignorance. The west can point fingers and laugh but in this case they bought a license for Alpha and scaled it up - found something we abandoned. It's not super power efficient as the article claims(there are a lot more power efficient supercomputers than Sunway BlueLight) but it's probably very cheap.

On the issue of reverse engineering, do you know AMD started out using Intels sockets and chipsets? In the end competition is good for the consumer although intellectual theft is not. What they should do is take a bunch of company boardmembers and CEOs and jail them for 50 years. Keep doing that until they get the message.

Posted: **29 Dec 2011, 14:04**

even with same processors etc linux is barely used in the world, only for servers and bunch of nerds like you :), the biggest part (and by far) of the work is done on the softwares ... and you won't move them to another processor type easily so ... this news is like a lot of other news, when you read it it sounds like the truth and the futur will be like it says, but 5years later, it just didn't happen and you forgot about it, but still you were happy to read it. I like reading that kind of news too, where they tell you we'll have talking robot with petabyte of memory in cristals and we'll be able to move to other planets in 2seconds ... that's fun

Posted: **29 Dec 2011, 14:42**

Cheesecan wrote:As I thought the thread has basically turned into an off topic debate on China stealing technology.

What thread are you talking about?! Nobody accused them of stealing anything.

Cheesecan wrote: Chinese are working for close to $1/day, how can you begrudge them for being willing to take the jobs that the rest feel they are too good for?

The problem are the corporations that do profit and share less to the people. Ok, maybe you are millionaire, but the general trend in the US does not seem to be socialism (in the way of protecting the interests of the people in front of monopolies, banks or huge corporations). I might be wrong but this is how it looks "from Europe".

Cheesecan wrote: The Chinese citizens really are brainwashed and buy into the state propaganda that their inventions are the very latest in technology.

How many Chinese do you know? Most I have met have more balanced opinion that what you present. I would say that in most countries more than 50% are brainwashed by their government. You know, thinking is hard

.

Cheesecan wrote: On the issue of reverse engineering...

Quote from the first post "No, these are not fakes or illegal copies right now. The ARM and MIPS processors made in China are fully licensed by the relevant ARM and MIPS IP owning consortia". So, they BOUGHT it.

Posted: **29 Dec 2011, 14:47**

Satirik wrote: linux is barely used in the world, only for servers and bunch of nerds like you :),

You joking right? What about 3.7 million Android devices activated only last weekend? No, Linux is more present that we realize.

Posted: **29 Dec 2011, 15:14**

malric wrote:
Cheesecan wrote:As I thought the thread has basically turned into an off topic debate on China stealing technology.
What thread are you talking about?! Nobody accused them of stealing anything.

Maybe you put Prominence on ignore.

malric wrote:
Cheesecan wrote: Chinese are working for close to $1/day, how can you begrudge them for being willing to take the jobs that the rest feel they are too good for?
The problem are the corporations that do profit and share less to the people. Ok, maybe you are millionaire, but the general trend in the US does not seem to be socialism (in the way of protecting the interests of the people in front of monopolies, banks or huge corporations). I might be wrong but this is how it looks "from Europe".

Last time I checked China say they are communists, USA say they are capitalists. In between these two black and white political views in your world view somebody would have to be defender of the poor. No?

Or is it maybe that "I might be wrong"..but Chinese government has banned worker unions for the specific reason of keeping workers unempowered and lowly paid.

malric wrote:
Cheesecan wrote: The Chinese citizens really are brainwashed and buy into the state propaganda that their inventions are the very latest in technology.
How many Chinese do you know? Most I have met have more balanced opinion that what you present. I would say that in most countries more than 50% are brainwashed by their government. You know, thinking is hard .

I know quite a few and they really are nationalistic, even the ones who are good people in general. Of course they know some things are bad, they won't deceive themselves into buying Chinese cars or baby milk powder if they can avoid it, that sort of thing which is related to private enterprises(always painted out to be evil in chinese media, this is a propaganda duality).

But they also have touchy subjects. If you stir those, they will come right at you with fangs. Try mentioning Taiwan, Tibet or human rights. You will see what I mean. You can't really criticize the state. If the ones you meet let you do that, I think they are probably lying to you or feel resentment in secret.

Posted: **29 Dec 2011, 15:14**

malric wrote:
Satirik wrote: linux is barely used in the world, only for servers and bunch of nerds like you :),
You joking right? What about 3.7 million Android devices activated only last weekend? No, Linux is more present that we realize.

talking about PCs ofc

Posted: **29 Dec 2011, 15:18**

malric wrote:
Satirik wrote: linux is barely used in the world, only for servers and bunch of nerds like you :),
You joking right? What about 3.7 million Android devices activated only last weekend? No, Linux is more present that we realize.

He has a point though. We won't be seeing any Chinese CPUs on desktop for a very long time because Alpha architecture basically only runs on some Unix systems and Linux.

In 5 years they still won't have a x86 license and they still will only be able to build some average supercomputer and maybe sell a few servers at most.

Posted: **29 Dec 2011, 16:19**

Desktop computing becomes quite a commodity. Companies need word editor and browsers, not 3D graphics. And even if they build these "obsolete" systems they build up experience. The danger for me is to consider unable to advance. So, I would invest more in research and engineering to make sure we are better than china.

Last time I checked China say they are communists, USA say they are capitalists. In between these two black and white political views in your world view somebody would have to be defender of the poor. No?

Totally not. I am just saying that in both systems people are abused, and this is because of social organization, not because of lack of resources.

Posted: **29 Dec 2011, 16:23**

Chinnese are hardly communists, their social services are worse than in europe. Its just one party country with limited freedoms, thats all you can say..

In communistic europe, you could not run a private enterprise, there was no such thing, it was forbidden to employ people, only state could do it, it was forbidden to own a company etc..

Its nothing like a communism.

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