Chinese Loongson 3A6000 CPU Matches Intel "Raptor Lake" IPC

[AleksandarK]

The Chinese chipmaker Loongson has launched its newest desktop processors, the 4-core, 8-thread 3A6000 series, based on the company's LoongArch microarchitecture. We have previously reported that the company wants to match Intel's "Willow Cove" and AMD's Zen 3 instruction per clock (IPC) levels with its 3A6000 CPU series, and today we have the first preview of the performance. Powered by the LA664 cores, 3A6000 is built on a 14/12 nm manufacturing process, with clock speeds going from 2.0 to 2.5 GHz and power consumption of up to 50 Watts. It features 256 KB of L2 cache and 16 MB of L3 cache in total.

While several hardware partners are announcing new Loongson-powered solutions, ASUS China's "Uncle Tony" managed to get his hands on one of them and overclocker the CPU to 2.63 GHz on air cooling. In overclocking tests using liquid nitrogen cooling, a 3A6000 processor reached 3.0 GHz, though there are indications that there is still overhead. In standard out-of-the-box configuration, the 3A6000 performs similarly to Intel's Core i3-10100 four-core CPU, an achievement for Loongson but still behind Intel's latest offerings that clock nearly twice as high. This rapid development of Loongson IP has led to a massive performance increase, matching the IPC of modern CPUs. We are still left to see more information about these 3A6000 series SKUs; however, early benchmarks suggest a significant improvement. You can see the CPU benchmarks below, which include UnixBench and SPEC CPU 2006.




Addditionally, images of the overclocked CPU and ASUS XC-LS3A6M motherboard housing the Loongson 3A600 CPU are listed below.


View at TechPowerUp Main Site | Source

 

[Onasi]

Kind of impressive considering that they are a relatively new player. However, I would not expect the same meteoric rise in performance and efficiency as we saw with, say, Chinese NAND like the one YMTC makes. CPUs are so much more complex. But, I guess, this will more than satisfy the internal market as far as workhorse office laptops and desktops are concerned. You don’t really NEED much more than a 10100 to run your day to day tasks, really.

 

[phanbuey]

So basically just shy of the 2700K.

looks like 2500k performance.

 

[TheLostSwede]

Kind of impressive considering that they are a relatively new player. However, I would not expect the same meteoric rise in performance and efficiency as we saw with, say, Chinese NAND like the one YMTC makes. CPUs are so much more complex. But, I guess, this will more than satisfy the internal market as far as workhorse office laptops and desktops are concerned. You don’t really NEED much more than a 10100 to run your day to day tasks, really.

Maybe look at bit closer? All the CPUs are clocked at a mere 2.5 GHz. So no, it's not competitive at all.

So basically just shy of the 2700K.

looks like 2500k performance.

See above.

 

[persondb]

I am kinda doubtful seeing the previous generation

Loongson’s 3A5000: China’s Best Shot?

We at Chips and Cheese have covered two Chinese CPU architectures: Zhaoxin’s x86 compatible Lujiazui architecture found in the KX-6000 series of CPUs and Phytium’s ARM compatible FT663 architecture found in the D2000 series of CPUs. Zhaoxin was founded in 2013 as a joint venture between VIA and...

chipsandcheese.com

Kind of impressive considering that they are a relatively new player.

Longsoon isn't new and has been around for a long time.

 

[AnarchoPrimitiv]

Wonder how they accomplished that? Any architect's care to offer their guess?

 

[Onasi]

Maybe look at bit closer? All the CPUs are clocked at a mere 2.5 GHz. So no, it's not competitive at all.

Ah, so they are. I skimmed through the news post and from that got the impression that 2.5 locked comparison was with the 14600K only. Since it was written that “in standard out-of-the-box configuration, the 3A6000 performs similarly to Intel's Core i3-10100”. Thought that meant 10100 was OOB too. Mea culpa. This does make it look worse.
Still would stand by the fact that this is more than enough for usual desktop tasks though.

 

[phanbuey]

Maybe look at bit closer? All the CPUs are clocked at a mere 2.5 GHz. So no, it's not competitive at all.


See above.

And to add.. this is custom RISC chip. Not x86, i.e. - it's like comparing M1 when doing M1 things to x86, great, but that means you have to build out the software ecosystem or use an interpreter.

Yeah looks like a modified MIPS64 ISA with binary translation for x86. I'm assuming these are native benchmarks though, which makes this pretty misleading.

 

[AGlezB]

I welcome the competition so kudos to Loongson but "my CPU is as fast as your CPU as long as you limit your CPU to the same speed as mine" is just too cringey.

EDIT: Also, I'll believe the numbers when I see them in a Gamer's Nexus video.

 

[Assimilator]

China's homegrown 3A6000 matched the performance of Intel's Core i5-14600K when both were clocked at 2.5 GHz, meaning that the IPC level of Intel's designs has been achieved

In standard out-of-the-box configuration, the 3A6000 performs similarly to Intel's Core i3-10100 four-core CPU

Which one is the truth, TPU news posters? Can you perhaps do some editing before you post nonsense?

 

[Denver]

I doubt anyone would transition from using a budget-friendly $200-300 Chinese x86 mini PC that can run any software to being limited by that. But they will certainly be used in supercomputers.

 

[Imouto]

"Ha, ha! The serial killer is gaining on me again"

Said the dumb CPU teenager while his friends "electric car industry" and the gang laid slaughtered on the floor.

 

[TheLostSwede]

I doubt anyone would transition from using a budget-friendly $200-300 Chinese x86 mini PC that can run any software to being limited by that. But they will certainly be used in supercomputers.

Actually, all government agencies in the PRC are mandated to use local hardware from next year, so they won' have a choice.
Bloomberg Article via Taipei Times (since it's free to read there)

China orders government to dump foreign computers - Taipei Times

Bringing Taiwan to the World and the World to Taiwan

www.taipeitimes.com

 

[Assimilator]

Actually, all government agencies in the PRC are mandated to use local hardware from next year, so they won' have a choice.
Bloomberg Article via Taipei Times (since it's free to read there)

China orders government to dump foreign computers - Taipei Times

Bringing Taiwan to the World and the World to Taiwan

www.taipeitimes.com

I somehow doubt that's going to happen within that timeframe.

 

[Denver]

Actually, all government agencies in the PRC are mandated to use local hardware from next year, so they won' have a choice.
Bloomberg Article via Taipei Times (since it's free to read there)

China orders government to dump foreign computers - Taipei Times

Bringing Taiwan to the World and the World to Taiwan

www.taipeitimes.com

The side effect of living in a dictatorship...

 

[TheLostSwede]

I somehow doubt that's going to happen within that timeframe.

Got any proof to back that up? There are at least three or four local CPUs, the most sensible option being the VIA partnership with Zhaoxin, since those x86 chips run Windows. That said, there's the AMD partnership with Hygon as well, which should offer more powerful chips based on the original Zen architecture.
Apart from Longsoon you also have Phytium.

数字飞腾门户

www.phytium.com.cn

The side effect of living in a dictatorship...

Indeed.

 

[Onasi]

Got any proof to back that up?

I am sorry, I couldn’t help myself.

 

[Crackong]

They must have spent a lot of time swiming in these ancient benchmarks trying to find these 'Good' results to advertise.

 

[Metroid]

The chinese gov loves to steal technology, soon intel will be done for and thanks to chinese gov for making that to happen.

 

[AleksandarK]

Which one is the truth, TPU news posters? Can you perhaps do some editing before you post nonsense?

Edited to avoid confusion.

 

[Assimilator]

Got any proof to back that up? There are at least three or four local CPUs, the most sensible option being the VIA partnership with Zhaoxin, since those x86 chips run Windows. That said, there's the AMD partnership with Hygon as well, which should offer more powerful chips based on the original Zen architecture.
Apart from Longsoon you also have Phytium.
https://www.phytium.com.cn/

The fact that the PRC has some local CPU copies - sorry, designs - doesn't mean they have capacity to actually fab the 50 million the article suggests are needed. In particular we have no idea of what the defect rate of their fabs are - I suspect it's incredibly high. They've demonstrated that they can produce decent amounts of SSD controllers and NAND, but those are relatively simple chips compared to proper CPUs/GPUs.

And if AMD/Intel CPU shipments to PRC had slowed notably, say due to the introduction of vast numbers of home-grown CPUs in that market, it would be all over the tech news. Yet there's zero indication this has happened.

 

[Zendou]

The chinese gov loves to steal technology, soon intel will be done for and thanks to chinese gov for making that to happen.

Intel is not going anywhere. You can figure that out based purely on logistics. AMD does not have the infrastructure to be the worlds chip supplier since they like many companies use TSMC to make their CPUs. Since it is a shared pool for manufacturing, they can only make so many chips, which is why in the past they have had several paper launches of products that did not become readily available until much later.

 

[FeelinFroggy]

Kind of impressive considering that they are a relatively new player.

It's not that impressive to steal technology. Developing technology it is what is impressive.

 

[TheLostSwede]

The fact that the PRC has some local CPU copies - sorry, designs - doesn't mean they have capacity to actually fab the 50 million the article suggests are needed. In particular we have no idea of what the defect rate of their fabs are - I suspect it's incredibly high. They've demonstrated that they can produce decent amounts of SSD controllers and NAND, but those are relatively simple chips compared to proper CPUs/GPUs.

Well, the Zhaoxin chips are co-developed with VIA, so they're old tech and should be easy enough to manufacture. No idea about the Higon chips.
As for Longsoon, they seem to be doing ok, they apparently even sell to russia...
Phytium is anyone's guess.
If you look at the specs of this Lognsoon chip, it's 12/14 nm, so well within the abilities of xinese foundries.
Also, don't forget that TSMC still has one 8-inch fab and one 12-inch gigafab in xina, although the latter is apparently only at 28 nm and I can't find any details on the former.

And if AMD/Intel CPU shipments to PRC had slowed notably, say due to the introduction of vast numbers of home-grown CPUs in that market, it would be all over the tech news. Yet there's zero indication this has happened.

I guess we'll just have to wait and see next year when the change is supposed to happen. Considering the motherboard in this news post is apparently from Asus, something is clearly going on, as Asus wouldn't make something like that on a whim.

As most of these home baked chips are running some local version of a Linux based OS, it might not be so strange that there haven't been a drop in AMD/Intel sales, since most people still prefer to use Windows. Also, as this only applies to government agencies, consumers and non government related businesses will continue to use them.

Unity Operating System - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

It's not that impressive to steal technology. Developing technology it is what is impressive.

Longsoon started out with MIPS64 (minus a few modern additions still under patent) and then built on that, so hardly stealing, but obviously not a from the ground up new design either.
Their more recent chips are based on some weird MIPS/RISC-V hybrid architecture.

Loongson - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[FeelinFroggy]

Longsoon started out with MIPS64 (minus a few modern additions still under patent) and then built on that, so hardly stealing, but obviously not a from the ground up new design either.
Their more recent chips are based on some weird MIPS/RISC-V hybrid architecture.

Loongson - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

It's not just the architecture. They steal design patents on the manufacturing equipment. I have sat in meetings with the FBI about concerns with China stealing IP from my current employer, and we are not a big company. It is happening in every industry in China and I'll be skeptical of any new tech coming out of China.

Love you work by the way. Keep it up!