Chinese semiconductor industry

Loongson has completed development for 32 core 3D5000 and need a little more time to push to market. The 16 core 3C5000 is already put on the market. The 3A6000 PC CPU has completed development and will have prototype in first half of 2023. Is also developing 8 core 2K3000 SOC which will have tape out in first half of 2023. 3A6000 with use the same 12nm process as 3C5000. Overall, Loongson seems to promote its product more than other Chinese CPU developers. Not sure if it's because of their underperformance financially.

Alibaba T-head has joined OpenKylin development community. I think all the major Chinese chip designers realize they have to support domestic OS by this point.

This will allow development of RISC-V chips with openKylin support. Keep in mind that they came out with the "Roma" desktop using TH1520 SoC back in October.
As such, T-head is getting into desktop CPU world. Supporting linux type of OS with RISC-V seems like a good first step toward putting it into commercial use.

The problem with Loongson is that they use an instruction set which no one else uses. I think they should just switch to RISC-V.
Because they use their own instruction set they have to spend way more developing their own software than other companies would.

Looking at the openKylin website, it is interesting that, besides its own Linux distribution, it also ports the Ubuntu 20.04 LTS to RISC-V. It feels like the primary purpose is to help create an open source eco-system around RISC-V. It is not trivial in creating and maintaining a dedicated Linux LSP for Ubuntu LTS running on RISC-V. I don't remember the Canonical Ubuntu LTS distribution ever runs on RISC-V.

tphuang said:

I'd be surprised if America region remains 20% of their revenue long term.

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Definitely not. But OTH this means additional capacity for Chinese fabless firms. For SMIC to lose US companies is like to increase available capacity of 20%...but without building new fabs.

BTW SMIC biggest US customers are Qualcomm and Broadcom, so not exactly mature process, more like 28 / 65nm.

From high-level point of view, if US sanctions aim at slowing SMIC development, losing US customers goes in the oposite direction: there will be new capacity available for Chinese firms.

gelgoog said:

The problem with Loongson is that they use an instruction set which no one else uses. I think they should just switch to RISC-V.
Because they use their own instruction set they have to spend way more developing their own software than other companies would.

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Assuming that openKylin or Harmony or UOS is fully compatible with LoongArch instruction set, I'm not sure why software built for those OS wouldn't work with Loongson CPUs. If LoongArch instruction set isn't supporting all the needed features of openKylin, then they need to add support for that.

4Runner said:

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Looking at the openKylin website, it is interesting that, besides its own Linux distribution, it also ports the Ubuntu 20.04 LTS to RISC-V. It feels like the primary purpose is to help create an open source eco-system around RISC-V. It is not trivial in creating and maintaining a dedicated Linux LSP for Ubuntu LTS running on RISC-V. I don't remember the Canonical Ubuntu LTS distribution ever runs on RISC-V.

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The primary purpose of openKylin is to have a domestic OS that the gov't deems to be secure that all the Chinese domestic software developers can build applications for. RISC-V is just another instruction set that openKylin needs to support.

4Runner said:

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Looking at the openKylin website, it is interesting that, besides its own Linux distribution, it also ports the Ubuntu 20.04 LTS to RISC-V. It feels like the primary purpose is to help create an open source eco-system around RISC-V. It is not trivial in creating and maintaining a dedicated Linux LSP for Ubuntu LTS running on RISC-V. I don't remember the Canonical Ubuntu LTS distribution ever runs on RISC-V.

Click to expand...

Well openKylin is Ubuntu with Chinese characteristic

gelgoog said:

The problem with Loongson is that they use an instruction set which no one else uses. I think they should just switch to RISC-V.
Because they use their own instruction set they have to spend way more developing their own software than other companies would.

Click to expand...

Loongson made an press release last year that they were looking at supporting RISC-V... but that could mean anything including moving to the risc-v isa or adding special intructions into their mips/loongson isa so they can build a more effective emulation layer.

caudaceus said:

Well openKylin is Ubuntu with Chinese characteristic

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That is not a trivial undertaking, especially if this distribution is certified for gov. That would essentially re-qualify a Ubuntu LTS distribution for domestic regulated use cases. A more sensible long-term approach would be to create its own Linux distribution right off kernel.org. It may use Debian package manager and/or yum/rpm etc. Porting Ubuntu LTS is not a long-term strategic solution if the target LSPs are going to be Chinese specific (or strategic) such as LoongArch ISA or RISC-V ISA. That would be too much of an external dependency as host OS of everything. And I would also pull a latest BSD distribution and make it another "NEXT/MacOS" type undertaking for those Chinese ISAs, just in case ......

tphuang said:

Assuming that openKylin or Harmony or UOS is fully compatible with LoongArch instruction set, I'm not sure why software built for those OS wouldn't work with Loongson CPUs. If LoongArch instruction set isn't supporting all the needed features of openKylin, then they need to add support for that.

Click to expand...

OpenKylin is the OS, one still needs to re-compile all the apps to run on the Loongson CPU which majority of the developers aren't willing to do with such a tiny niche market.

This is why China should push RISC-V because any app that runs on RISC-V instruction set can run on Chinese made RISC-V CPUs