Loongson revealed at the Innovation Forum that the Loongson 3C6000, Loongson 3D6000, and Loongson 3E6000 have all completed tape-out and are set to be released in the fourth quarter of 2024.
The Loongson 3C6000 processor will introduce the LoongChain 1.0 for the first time, similar to NVIDIA NVLink, supporting interconnects between 2 to 8 chips—potentially achieving 128 cores and 256 threads.
The core of the Loongson 3C6000 is an upgraded version of the LA664 core, which offers improved IPC compared to the 3A6000, with a manufacturing process of nm, featuring 16 cores and 32 threads.
The Loongson 3D6000 is a dual-chip package, essentially a “glue” with 32 cores and 64 threads.
From the perspective of Loongson’s development, there has been a continuous update of CPU cores, enhancing IPC, followed by improvements in manufacturing processes and clock speeds. As long as Loongson utilizes 5/7nm processes and raises the clock speed to 3GHz, achieving a SPEC06 score of 60, it will be close to the level of mainstream international CPUs.
Additionally, Loongson has a high-performance CPU core, LA864, which features 8 issue slots and a larger CPU architecture, resulting in higher IPC than the LA664.
Since server CPUs generally do not have high clock speeds, typically below 3GHz (non-boosted), Loongson’s server CPUs can leverage their high IPC advantage to mitigate the disadvantage of lower clock speeds, resulting in CPU performance that surpasses ARM CPUs, and even competes well against x86 CPUs. As long as the software ecosystem is robust, Loongson’s server CPUs have great potential.