An important step for China
China-based chip maker Loongson announced the 3D5000 at an event. This is the third processor the company has produced using proprietary ISA LoongArch. The firm had previously launched the quad-core 3A5000, powered by the 16-core 3C5000 in 2021 and 2022. The newly announced 32-core 3D5000 consists of an interconnected 3C5000 core complex. Meanwhile, LoongArch is actually an old architecture, but the company built LoongArch from scratch in order not to rely on foreign technology to develop its processors.
Scalable up to 128 cores
It’s hard to predict how CPUs like the 3D5000 will perform. Loongson says it scored 425 in the SPEC CPU 2006 integer benchmark. Estimating performance is very difficult, but not impossible, as the test result presented is based on an older version. Because the six-year-old 32-core AMD EPYC 7601 scores 1170 in the same test. So it’s about 2.5 times faster than the 3D5000. While this is still a good result for Loongson, it shows how far Loongson has to go before it can compete with AMD and Intel. Of course, Loongson did not aim to compete with its giant rivals because the goal is to be self-sufficient.
While performance isn’t the 3D5000’s strengths, security seems to be. It is claimed that the processor has a custom-made mechanism against security vulnerabilities such as Meltdown or Specter. The chip also has its own Trusted Platform Module (TPM) so it doesn’t need an external solution. It is also stated to have a built-in security module that supports a secret national algorithm.