Despite U.S. trade restrictions aimed at keeping advanced chips and chipmaking equipment out of China, domestic semiconductor production continues to impress there.
Recently, Loongson informed investors that the first samples of the Loongson 3C6000/3D6000/3E6000 server processor series had been successfully returned and were “meeting expectations.” According to its roadmap, the launch is planned for the fourth quarter of 2024.
Loongson says its 3C6000 design, a single chip with 16 cores and 32 threads, significantly improves the price-performance ratio of its server CPUs.
Loongson coherent link
The chip features a six-core LA664 processing core, which Loongson says doubles overall processing performance compared to the previous generation 3C5000.
Additionally, it features 4×4 DDR4-3200 RAM, which increases the memory bandwidth several times over its predecessor. The PCIe 4.0 x64 interface also significantly improves I/O performance compared to the 3C5000. The 3C6000 supports high-speed national encryption standard calculation, with SM3 encryption bandwidth exceeding 20Gbps.
Loongson’s 3D6000 contains two 3C6000 chips connected using “Loongson Coherent Link” technology, creating a 32-core, 64-thread processor, while the 3E6000 connects four 3C6000 chiplets for 64 cores and 128 threads. Chiplet architectures are increasingly being recognized as the future of microprocessors, and things are no different in China.
Coherent Link technology is similar to Nvidia’s NVLink and AMD’s Infinity Fabric (or the recently announced UALink) and enables core-cache coherent interconnects between multiple devices, ensuring all resources are virtualized and allowing for dynamic device and chip allocation. Loongson claims its technology is compatible with all major PCIE hardware ecosystems and electrical standards, and supports 1-to-8 chip interconnection and upgrades.
While there is no independent verification of the 3C6000’s performance, Loongson continues to make impressive strides within regulatory constraints. Leveraging its MIPS-based LoongArch ISA and local Chinese fabs, the company may not yet be competing directly with EPYC and Xeon chips, but the gap is narrowing.
