Loongson's 3B6600M: Chinese CPU aims to rival 7nm x86 processors

Loongson Technology, a Chinese semiconductor company, revealed significant progress in its CPU development and what it's planning next during the 2024 Loongson Industrial Ecosystem Conference. Chairman Hu Weiwu shared the latest on the company's three main product areas: high-performance CPUs, embedded SoCs, and MCU microcontrollers.

Their newest desktop CPU, the Loongson 3A6000, can go toe-to-toe with 14nm x86 chips. Running at 2.5 GHz, it's as powerful as Intel's 3.6 GHz Core i3-10100, showcasing how Loongson is focusing on design tweaks to boost performance without needing cutting-edge tech.

Looking ahead, the server CPU they're working on, the 3C6000, aims to keep up with 10nm x86 processors. Meanwhile, their next desktop CPU, the 3B6600M, could compete with 7nm x86 processors, possibly stacking up against Intel's 12th and 13th-gen Core chips in the mid-to-high-end range.

Loongson's also playing around with turbo frequency tech to hit 3 GHz speeds. Plus, they're adding x86 binary translation instructions, meaning Windows apps and systems should run just fine on their CPUs.

In terms of graphics, they're currently developing the 9A1000 GPGPU chip, with early versions expected sometime in the first half of 2025. They want it to perform on par with AMD's RX 550, handling AI tasks and supporting technology like OpenGL 4.0, PCIe 4.0, HDMI 2.1, and DP 2.1.

Loongson's isn't only focusing on CPUs—they've made good progress with their embedded SoCs and MCU microcontrollers, too, now in their fourth generation of products. These chips are meeting or even beating market expectations for performance and value.

Their in-house LoongArch architecture, which they rolled out four years ago, has undergone intellectual property checks and survived independent lawsuits. It's fully supported by operating system kernels, BIOS, and six major compilers, including GCC, LLVM, GOLANG, Java, JavaScript, and .NET.