Chinese government designs quad-core processor

Darius Chang | Sep 08, 2008

When you have a population of more than a billion, economy of scale takes on an entirely new meaning. The Chinese government were involved in chip design as far back as 2001, when it came out with Godson-1 processors that were manufactured by Singapore Technologies Microelectronics under the Loongson brand name.

Its latest iteration, the Godson-3, follows the multi-core trend with a quad-core model expected to be ready by 2009, while an eight-core variant is in the works. With pricing expected to be significantly lower than Intel and even AMD processors, why hasn't it hit mainstream yet?

A major stumbling block is that the Godson chips do not support x86 instructions natively and, instead, simulates the x86 environment. According to reports, this means a performance decrease of over 20 percent is expected compared with an Intel or AMD equivalent. So if you are in the market for a low-cost PC and don't mind the performance hit, hop on down to China in 2009 and snag yourself a Loongson PC.

Via The Inquirer

Filed under: PC & Peripherals
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shade

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shade says...
ST is for SGS-Thomson Microelectronics. Not "Singapore Technologies Microelectronics". Pls get your facts right.

Sep 08, 2008 23:15