Loongson Godson. Just half a dream.Forum: Hardware Talk Topic: Loongson Godson. Just half a dream. started by: humpty Posted by humpty on Mar. 06 2007,13:56
I only heard about this chinese chip called the 'Godson' today.Apparently China has been developing it's own cpu. Because of the architecture, it won't run windows and so is probably targeted for linux with chinese support - but don't get excited yet. The most info I got was from the wiki: < http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godson > which points to a pic here: < http://tech.sina.com.cn/it/2006-11-20/00141245061.shtml > Current ranges are from 500mhz to 800mhz (Godson II) with the Godson III rumoured to reach 1GHz. Similar to AMD and VIA, the performances have been compared to the Intel range at higher clock rates but at cheaper prices. I couldn't very much find out any more, but what did catch my eye was the power rating : 3W(600Mhz) 5W(800Mhz), hey! now you're talking!, this puts it in the territory of the VIA fanless series. The downside ofcourse is that wouldn't run DSL (poof - dream dies here) since it's not i386. Debian is known to run on other architectures such as PowerPC, but think of the manpower behind that, the kernel, the re-compiling, the drivers. Just goes to show how dependent we are on the i386 - eh? Posted by lucky13 on Mar. 06 2007,16:36
From your wiki link:
It's MIPS-compliant, Debian already has a MIPS port. < http://www.debian.org/ports/mips/ > I don't think we're dependent, per se, it's just that our technical culture favors standards-compliance and the de facto standard for PC (and now even Mac) architecture is x86. That's a good thing because it reduces the amount of work it would take to make systems work -- either by themselves or networked together -- otherwise. Any new chip based on a different instruction set than x86 is going to have to comply with another known standard if its manufacturers want global adoption of it. Evolution, not revolution. |