The title is very attractive: “Loongson Claims its CPU IPC Will Match AMD Zen 3 and Intel Willow Cove by 2023”, the translation is:Loongson says its CPUs will match AMD Zen3 and IPC performance by 2023IntelWillow Cove (the architecture of the eleventh generation Core) is comparable.
To be honest, Xiaolei’s first reaction after looking at the title is whether today is April Fool’s Day, obviously not, after all, it’s been more than a month since the May Day holiday.
Readers who are not familiar with the semiconductor and chip fields may not feel it, but as long as they have a certain understanding of these two fields, they will be shocked. After all, Zen3 and Willow Cove are real advanced processes + advanced architecture, representing the current semiconductor industry in the world. highest level.
Not to mention Zen3 and Willow Cove, as long as Godson can reach the level of Zen1, it is enough to make us proud in the semiconductor field and directly challenge AMD and Intel. Reason tells me that although the domestic semiconductor industry has developed very rapidly, the possibility of catching up with the world’s advanced level in such a short period of time is still too low.
What is it that allows foreigners to give such reports? ?
Godson vs Zen3?
In an article on the Internet, Loongson claims that it will launch a processor that can rival AMD Zen3 in IPC performance in 2023. First of all, let’s understand what IPC performance is. In simple terms, IPC is the number of instructions executed in each clock cycle of the CPU. Assuming that the clock cycle is 1, the previous generation CPU can execute 100 instructions in 1 clock cycle, and the next generation CPU can execute 100 instructions in 1 clock cycle. If it is increased to 115, then it is equivalent to a 15% increase in IPC performance.
Moreover, the CPU performance judgment formula proposed by Intel is CPU performance = IPC * frequency, so in the case of the same frequency, the improvement of CPU performance can be obtained by comparing the IPC performance. For example, the same frequency is 3.0GHz, the IPC performance of the A-type CPU is 100, and the B-type CPU performance is 150, then the performance of the B-type CPU is 50% higher than that of the A-type CPU.
Of course, the real performance of the CPU involves more complex variables, such as the system, application environment, etc., but only in terms of data, this calculation is also correct. so,IPC performance indicators are very important, and it can even be said that the improvement of IPC performance is basically equivalent to the improvement of CPU performance.
So the IPC of Godson’s next-generation processor 3A6000 can be comparable to Zen3, indicating that 3A6000 can be comparable to Zen3 in performance? No, IPC performance is an important indicator, but the CPU frequency is equally important. As long as one of the data cannot keep pace, the real performance cannot be equal.
AMD’s Zen3 processor is currently the lowest-end entry model Ryzen3 5400U, with four cores and eight threads, the base frequency is 2.6GHz, and the maximum acceleration clock frequency is 4.0GHz. As a comparison, the main frequency of the Loongson 3A5000 is 2.3GHz-2.5GHz (currently the processor with the highest frequency of Loongson on sale). The huge gap in the main frequency means that even if the IPC performance of the two is equal, the highest performance of the 3A5000 is not as good as that of the Ryzen3 5400U. normal minimum performance.
Even if it is optimistic that the next-generation 3A6000 can increase the main frequency, the probability will not exceed 2.8GHz. The increase of 0.3GHz seems to be very small, but readers who understand the field of processors should know that the change of 0.3GHz is basically equivalent to AMD Zen2 to The improvement of Zen3 is actually very difficult.
Of course, even if the real performance is not comparable to the Zen3, the IPC performance alone is enough to be exciting. However, I did not see any relevant reports on the official website of Godson, but only saw that the Godson 3A6000 and Godson 3C6000 series will adopt the 12nm process and the new LA664 architecture design.
In addition, Loongson’s simulation test results based on the new architecture and process show that:The single-core SPEC CPU 2006 fixed-point/floating-point base score of the Loongson 3A6000 processor increased from 26/28 to 35/45, an increase of 37% and 68% respectively.The above is the official news about the performance of the 3A6000 series processors, without mentioning the IPC performance, so where does the IPC performance data come from?
(Image source: Loongson official website)
After searching, under the guidance of netizens, I found that the relevant reports on IPC performance came from a self-media. The author calculated the SPEC06 single-core fixed-point Base by integrating the performance test results of the previous two generations of Godson and based on the 3A6000 simulation data given by Godson. and floating point Base grades. Finally, if the main frequency of 3A6000 reaches 2.5GHz-2.8GHz, then the IPC performance of 3A6000 will be similar to Zen3.
In short, this result is based on a hypothetical imitation test, and there is no actual data support for the time being, so supporters of domestic CPUs should not be too happy too soon.
What is the status of Godson?
Where has Loongson gone now? The recently held “2022 LoongArch Ecological Development and Tongming Lake Innovative Application Forum” may give the answer. Not many people may have heard of LoongArch, but another name should be familiar to everyone – Loongson, LoongArch is an instruction set architecture developed by Loongson Zhongke, which is currently mainly used in its Loongson series chips.
(Image source: Loongson official website)
On the forum, Loongson Zhongke officially released the 3C5000 series chips, which use the LoonArch instruction set architecture mentioned above. According to the official statement, the 3C5000 series chips can meet the needs of general computing, large data centers and cloud computing centers.
(Image source: Loongson official website)
Although the domestic semiconductor industry has encountered many difficult problems in the past, as the leader of domestic self-developed semiconductor chips, Godson is indeed worthy of their name.The official data of the 3C5000 series shows that it adopts a 16-core design, the unixbench score reaches more than 95,000 points, the double-precision computing power can reach 560GFlops, and the peak performance is comparable to that of a typical ARM 64-core processor.
In addition, the 3C5000 series supports up to 16-way interconnection, and with the Loongson 7A2000 bridge chip launched together, the PCIe bandwidth is increased by more than 400% compared to the previous generation chip. From the description, the 3C5000 series does have good performance, so what is the specific performance?
In terms of specific parameters, the main frequency of 3C5000L is 2.0GHz-2.2GHz, supports 4 72-bit DDR4-3200 controllers, supports ECC verification, supports 1 SPI, 1 UART, 3 I2C, and 16 GPIO interfaces. Consumption is 130W.
(Image source: Loongson official website)
Although the 3C5000L does not seem to be outstanding, it is one of the best among domestic processors, and the speed of progress is much faster than expected. and,LoongArch has also gotten rid of the shackles of MIPS. According to relevant information, LoongArch is a new type of architecture completely independently developed, which is compatible with MIPS only through binary translation technology.
It can even be said that the main factors that bind domestic chips today are actually only the process technology and lithography machine, and domestic chips have already burst out with amazing strength in chip design. In the case of steady progress, as long as the lithography machine can be solved etc., then it is not impossible to catch up with the leading level in the next 10 years or so.
Some readers may think that 10 years is too long? In fact, it takes 30 years to catch up with the R&D achievements of Intel and AMD for 60 or 70 years, which is enough to make people sigh that we have made rapid progress in the field of semiconductors.
