Loongson's first LoongArch processors - 3A5000 for computers, 3C5000L for servers

Loongson has officially launched the first processors based on LoongArch CPU instruction set architecture designed for made-in-China SoCs without the need to license technology made outside of China.

Loongsoon LS3C5000L (3C5000L) 16-core server processor clocked at up to 2.5 GHz is now official and is apparently comprised of four LS3A5000 (3A5000) LoongArch processors designed for desktop computers and laptops.

Loongson 3A5000

CnTechPost reports Loongson 3A5000 quad-core 64-bit GS464V processor runs at 2.3GHz-2.5GHz. GS464V microarchitecture comes with four fixed-point units, two 256-bit vector operations units, and two access memory units. The processor also includes two 64-bit DDR4-3200 controllers with ECC checksum support, as well as four HyperTransport 3.0 controllers with multi-processor data consistency support.

Performance-wise, Loongson 3A5000 is said to achieve 26+ points in the single-core and floating-point SPEC CPU2006 benchmarks, and over 80 in the multi-core version of the benchmarks. That’s about 50 percent higher performance than the previous pin-compatible Loongson 3A4000 processor, and the company also claims 30 percent lower power consumption. The SoC also embeds hardware security with a secure and trusted module, and an SM2/3/4 crypto engine with a performance of more than 5Gbps, as well as support for other crypto algorithms.

Software support includes Loongnix Linux operating system with a desktop environment, LoongOS for industrial and terminal applications (probably Loongnix without graphics), GCC, LLVM, and GoLang compilers, and three virtual machines for Java, JavaScript, and .NET. As previously reported, Loongson also implemented Arm and x86 binary translation, so Windows and Android should also be supported. But considering the plan is to avoid “foreign” technology they may not be the preferred platforms.

Loongson 3C5000L LoongArch server processor

ITHome wrote both about 3A5000 and 3C5000L, a 16-core LoongArch server processor that integrates four 3A5000 processors, and archives more than 900 points in SPEC CPU2006 performance score when used in a server with four 3C500L processors. That makes the server powerful enough to meets the performance requirements of cloud computing and data centers for the Chinese market.

LoongArch – A political affair

It was clear that LoongArch was designed in response to US sanctions against Chinese companies, but just in case there were any doubts that the initiative was political, instead of serving a technological purpose, Loongson 3A5000 is codenamed “KMYC70” to “commemorate the 70th anniversary of the War of Resist US Aggression and Aid Korea” (as per Google Translate), while Loongson 3C5000’s codename is “CPC100” to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Chinese communist party. Those codenames are also etched into the silicon if we are to believe the photo above.

Via Liliputing and Tom’s Hardware

Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft)

Jean-Luc started CNX Software in 2010 as a part-time endeavor, before quitting his job as a software engineering manager, and starting to write daily news, and reviews full time later in 2011.