On the evening of December 10, the Listing Committee of the Science and Technology Innovation Board announced that Loongson Zhongke Technology Co., Ltd. was first launched on December 17. Dragon Core Zhongke, which has been stuck for 20 years, carries too many expectations of the Chinese people, as the first domestic independent CPU stock that has impacted the science and technology innovation board, let us analyze how much "hard technology" Loongson has from the prospectus.
Judging from the introduction in the prospectus, loongson's main business is the development, sales and service of processors and supporting chips, and the main products and services include processors and supporting chip products and basic software and hardware solutions. At present, Loongson Zhongke carries out industrial ecological construction based on the two main lines of information system and industrial control system, and maintains comprehensive market cooperation with partners in the fields of network security, office and business informatization, industrial control and Internet of Things, and the series of products have been widely used in e-government, energy, transportation, finance, telecommunications, education and other industries.
Build an industrial ecology based on the autonomous command system
As mentioned in loongson Zhongke's prospectus, Loongson Zhongke is a CPU enterprise in China that has always adhered to the construction of an open information technology system and industrial ecology independent of the Wintel system and AA system based on the independent instruction system. After long-term accumulation, it has formed a systematic accumulation of key core technologies for independent CPU research and development and software ecosystem construction.
In recent years, domestic CPU companies have developed a number of technical routes, such as HiSilicon and Feiteng using ARM licensing, and Haiguang and Zhaoxin using X86 licensing. As we all know, the command system is the most basic and core intellectual property right of the computer, carries the development and innovation of the software ecology, and is the foundation for establishing the information industry ecology. Any enterprise adopting the X86 command system and the ARM command system will greatly limit the development and independence of China's information industry ecology.
Different from the authorization to purchase foreign command systems, in 2020, through more than ten years of independent research and development and market-oriented operation, LoongArch launched the autonomous command system LoongArch (LoongArch architecture) under the condition that it has sufficient technology and experience accumulation in processor research and development, basic software research and development, and ecosystem construction. The LoongArch instruction system has passed the intellectual property assessment of the China Electronics Information Industry Development Institute, an authoritative third-party institution in China, and determined that the LoongArch instruction system is designed as a different command system from ALPHA, ARM, MIPS, POWER, RISC-V and X86.
After 20 years of technology accumulation and industrial exploration, why loongson zhongke will move towards the development path based on the independent command system, why dare to propose to build an open ecology independent of the Wintel system and AA system, the following author will analyze the three "differences" of the core technology of Loongson in the prospectus, to see what key core technology "hard power" Loongson has.
First, the key IP, outsourcing or self-research
Loongson Zhongke's prospectus mentioned that unlike most domestic integrated circuit design companies that purchase commercial IP for chip design, Loongson Zhongke insists on independent research and development of core IP, forming hundreds of IP cores including serialized CPUIP cores, GPUIP cores, memory controllers and PHY, high-speed bus controllers and PHY.
The IP mentioned in the chip industry is generally also known as the IP core. An IP core refers to a mature design of circuit blocks with independent functions in a chip. Generally speaking, a complex chip is composed of a circuit part designed by the chip designer and multiple purchased IP core connections.
(Chip design companies can design chips by purchasing commercial IP)
With the division of labor in the field of chip design becoming more and more refined, many integrated circuit companies usually buy mature foreign IP to do chips, such as mobile phone chips, and most of the CPUs use ARM's CPUIP core authorization. The purchase of commercial IP is currently a common practice of domestic chip design companies, but there are also certain risks, especially products like CPUs, the current more mature IP providers are foreign companies, once the authorized products can not be upgraded and iterated. And if you want to make some high-end IP like ARMCPU, domestic companies can't do it without more than 5-10 years of investment accumulation, why? Because the technical difficulty and requirements of IP development are very high, usually involving hundreds of thousands of lines of code logic and the circuit layout of hundreds of millions of transistors, and multiple tape-outs are required to verify its correctness, any small defect in the IP core may affect the success or failure of the entire chip design, affecting the input and output of the entire chip research and development that cost millions of yuan or even hundreds of millions of yuan. Therefore, the price of complex IP cores is also extremely expensive.
Here is the first "difference" of Loongson Zhongke, he is different from most domestic integrated circuit design companies to buy commercial IP design chips, Loongson Zhongke adheres to independent research and development of core IP, forming hundreds of IP cores including serial CPUIP cores, GPUIP cores, memory controllers and PHY, high-speed bus controllers and PHY.
In July 2021, Loongson Zhongke released the Loongson 3A5000 processor, and its self-developed CPU core performance has approached the mainstream products in the market. According to the evaluation data of Loongson 3A5000 by Guancun Online in THE IT media, loongson 3A5000 single-core SPECCPU 2006 Base fixed floating point score exceeds 26 points at the main frequency of 2.5GHz, with an average performance of more than 10 points per GHz, which is close to the level of mainstream X86 products in the market.
It is worth noting that in addition to the self-research of the CPU core, the prospectus also mentions that hundreds of IPs such as gpu core, memory controller and PHY, high-speed IO interface controller and PHY of loongson processor chip have been independently developed. For today's high-complexity CPU chip, its internal is composed of many IP, including CPU, GPU, memory controller, IO interface controller, high-speed SRAM, high-speed interface, phase-locked loop and other core IP. Similar to the GPU and memory interface of this IP core, for integrated circuit practitioners are extremely high threshold areas, domestic chip design companies to buy foreign GPU core and memory interface IP core single use quotation is from one million US dollars. Recently, a small number of GPU start-ups in China are the objects of capital pursuit. But Loongson's team can make so many IP at the same time, and only as a supporting IP for the CPU, this accumulation of technical strength and experience is very rare in China.
Second, the software ecology, follow or self-built
As we all know, the instruction system carries the software ecology, and the software ecology controls the industrial system, Loongson Zhongke insists on building an open information technology system and industrial ecology independent of the Wintel system and the AA system, so it is bound to establish its own discourse system on the command system and software ecology to create its own industrial "foundation".
As mentioned in the opening paragraph, LoongArch launched the autonomous command system LoongArch (LoongArch architecture). In fact, it is not difficult to launch a command system, but it is difficult to get the operating system and software ecology that accompanies it. This is probably the fundamental reason why even if you look at the world, not many companies dare to launch a new command system in the field of general-purpose CPUs. In the author's opinion, the strength of Loongson Zhongke to do the command system may not lie in the command system design itself, but more in its own mastery of the key CPU design and software ecological construction capabilities, and this is the second difference of Loongson Zhongke.
In terms of operating system. According to the prospectus, unlike most domestic CPU companies mainly based on ARM or X86 instruction systems into the existing foreign information technology systems, LoongArch launched an autonomous command system LoongArch, and based on LoongArch migrated or developed the core modules of the operating system, including the kernel, the three major compilers (GCC, LLVM, GoLang), and the three major virtual machines (Java, JavaScript, . NET), browsers, media players, KVM virtual machines, etc. The basic operating system Loongnix for information applications and LoongOS for industrial control applications have been formed. In the two mainstream systems of X86 and ARM, the above core modules are maintained by large foreign companies such as Intel and ARM, and domestic operating system companies integrate these modules into their own operating systems. In order to push the autonomous command system, Loongson Zhongke must master these core modules. For example, in the new version of the prospectus, Loongson Zhongke disclosed the JDK14 version released in the OpenJDK international open source community, and Loongson Zhongke's contribution ranked among the top four in the world. There are millions of engineers programming in Java in China, but there are few teams that have the ability to do Java virtual machines, and the core modules of other operating systems such as browsers are the same, and Loongson Zhongke has fully mastered the core modules of the operating system in order to support the autonomous command system.
(Loongson ranks fourth google fifth)
Loongson Zhongke on the operating system core module research and development, not only with the basic "support", but also with a considerable "innovation", according to the prospectus, LoongArch is a full consideration of the compatibility of the needs of the autonomous command system, through the "instruction system innovation + binary translation" way, efficient operation of binary applications on other platforms, so as to achieve the purpose of ecological integration. This also means that through the efficient binary translation system, the Loongson computer platform can realize that the Loongson platform does not run Windows, but can directly run Windows applications, completely open up the application ecological compatibility problem between different instruction sets, including peripherals such as printers, even if only Windows drivers, can also be translated on the Loongson platform, which is convenient for the majority of users to use the existing equipment and compatibility. On December 9, Loongson Zhongke and Tongxin Software jointly established the "Wukong Joint Innovation Lab", mentioning that it will complete the migration of 6,000 peripheral drivers throughout the year, as well as the migration of more than 100 X86 commercial applications including QQ, IE Browser, Tencent Conference, Baidu Network Disk, Foxmail, AutoCAD, Xmind, etc., which should be based on the above core technologies.
Third, improve performance, rely on technology or design
The third difference in Loongson is that it relies more on design than process to improve performance. The prospectus shows that unlike most domestic CPU design companies that mainly rely on advanced processes to improve performance, Loongson Zhongke improves performance through design optimization and advanced processes, and gets rid of the dependence on the most advanced processes. Through the independent design of IP cores, we can overcome the shortcomings of insufficient domestic process IP cores.
The "card neck" problem of integrated circuit manufacturing process has now become the pain in the "core" of China's IT information industry and even the people of the whole country, for the majority of integrated circuit design enterprises, most of them hope to improve performance by using advanced technology, but the problem is also obvious, that is, the more dependent on advanced technology, the more there will be a supply chain "stuck neck" problem. Loongson Zhongke has always been more conservative in the choice of process, but looking back now, it is the most correct choice with "foresight". Loongson Zhongke's latest 3A5000 processor in 2021 uses a 12/14nm process node, while the previous 3A4000 uses a mature process of 28nm, and no 7nm process node product has been seen yet. This is very different from many integrated circuit companies at the beginning of the pursuit of 7nm or even 5nm process technology, Hu Weiwu has repeatedly emphasized in public: the domestic 14nm-28nm process can meet the needs of most of China's information application scenarios, but also conducive to our country based on such a mature process node for equipment and material autonomy, the formation of basic technical capabilities and then iteration. On the one hand, Loongson Zhongke improves product performance through design itself, and on the other hand, it overcomes the shortcomings of domestic process IP core deficiency by independently designing various TYPES of IP core support. The advantage of this is obvious, that is, it can get rid of the dependence on international advanced technology and try to be uncontrolled in the production supply chain. At the same time, it also shows that the process advantages of Loongson Zhongke have not yet been fully exerted, and there is still a lot of room for subsequent products to rise in process improvement and performance improvement.
"Chip IP, software ecology, chip production" is the three major pain points of China's chip industry, but also the three major blockages in China's technology industry to open up the internal cycle, can not be detoured, to meet the difficulties. After 20 years of development, the science and technology innovation board has finally ushered in the first domestic CPU stock, which will also be recorded in the history of China's independent CPU development. Scientific and technological self-reliance and self-improvement is an important strategy of the 14th Five-Year Plan of the country, through Loongson Zhongke can see that our industry independence and autonomy can be completely achieved, and we also hope to see more and more enterprises with truly independent technology listed, develop and grow.
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