And just as importantly, they need to add more support for their ISA. It only got added to Harmony in November! It still needs to work with all the linux OS (especially ones in China) to have native support for their ISA. That to me seems like the main challenge for them. It's never easy to design your own ISA and then for the market to adopt it. I would like to see more Chinese companies license LoongArch ISA in their designs.
Alright, so more on the current desktop/server chip dilemma in China if we look beyond RISC-V, which is still probably 2 years away (since Nanhu hasn't completed taping out/testing yet).
Back in 2020, Phytium launched D2000 and S2500 using 14nm process and FTC663 core design
This was kind of impressive at the time since they achieved 94/97 for spec2006 scoring At the same time, they promoted a new core FTC860 that was supposed to be more than 25 point per core. With 64 core, this would've yielded server chip of over 1000 points on spec2006. This was developed for their next generation S5000 server chip and required TSMC 7nm process. Right after this, they got put entity list by us gov't and their plan got torpedoed. FTC860 still hasn't been unveiled after 2 years. I assume whatever core they design next has to use SMIC process, probably the N+1 process.
Even so, they got an advantage over the competition for the time being and D2000 + S2500 have been among the better design. Up there with Hygon CPUs for the past 2 years and have been winning many orders. As such, you see E2000 and D2000 winning a lot of orders.
I've become more bullish about LoongSon recently after seeing that more domestic software makers have finally developed software for LoongArch and that their chips are more competitive. For example, 3D5000.
4 32 core 3D5000 CPUs can achieve score of 1600, which is comparable to 4 64 core S2500 CPUs
So now, Loongson with 12nm proess 3D5000 has a competitive server CPU to Phytium's S2500 process.
