Which brings us back to LoongArch & Loongson. So, what is Huawei's option for chip design if it never gets license to go beyond Armv8? Even if SMIC gets the ability to produce 5nm chips in a couple of years, how can Hisilicon design chips that are competitive with its rivals if gets hobbled by ARM license restrictions?
Well, I think the most obvious answer is that they will work on creating the best HPC chip they can with RISC-V (either with their own core or using Xiangshan gen 3). That is certainly a possible solution for data centers and cloud computing. But what about smartphone, tablets or desktops? RISC-V is energy efficient, but hasn't reached the raw performance of x86 or ARM design. It might be quite a few years before we reach that point.
Well, recently Huawei has added support for LoongArch on harmony. I think they should at least consider the possibility of designing chips with LoongArch, since it is supported in both openEuler and Harmony. Something to think about as Huawei & Hisilicon undoubtedly are still experiencing a lot of pressure.
Anyway, as we discussed before, 3A6000 single core performance (LA664 core) is 37 to 68% better than 3A5000 single core performance (LA464 core). This is despite continued usage of 12nm process. On top of that, I/O speed is also 50% higher. So through control of its own ISA and core design process, Loongson has managed to get significant gains in its architecture while still using a process that's extremely mature. This chip is almost taped out, which means it will be in production this year. Similar 3C6000 and 3D6000 may go in production this year and experience similar jumps in performance vs 5000 series.
3C6000是16核服务器芯片，内核是LA664，与3A6000相同。3D6000则是两片3C6000封装在一起构成32核服务器CPU，可以匹敌搭载Zen2核心的AMD EPIC。只要软件能跟上，商业市场已经没有性能短板了。
Given the likely decline in Huawei's Kunpeng-920 stock, it would make sense for them to purchase to buy some 3D5000 or 3D6000 for their own data centers. And if LA664 core is as good as advertised and continue to have lower energy consumption then ARM core, isn't it a good idea for them to get into smartphone and tablet?
Looks like from this, Huawei is already gong to be using the less advanced 2K0500 CPU for industrial control and other low performance use cases. I'm not sure what would prevent further usage except for more work with Loongson. A large investment by Huawei into Loongson would be a big vote of confidence.
龙芯下一代7000系列CPU，进一步提升CPU核性能，IPC瞄准Zen3和12代酷睿，计划采用7nm工艺，SPEC06定点Base最保守估算是40分，届时，会有24-32核的3D7000（7nm）和48-64核3E7000（两片封装）。
Now the 7000 series will come out probably sometimes next year and aim to for even better performance with 7nm technology. This commentary from guancha link about its performance is likely very conservative. Needless to say, a 48 to 64 core 3E7000 would be quite powerful. On top of that, they can get that performance level with N+1 or N+2 technology. Which is quite impressive when you think about the fact that all the other advanced HPC chips are using 5nm technology by now.
