AskDefine | Define godson

Printer Friendly
 
Go to Dictionary Definition
Go to User Contributed Dictionary
Go to Extensive Definition

Dictionary Definition

godson n : a male godchild

User Contributed Dictionary

English

Noun

  1. A male child whose baptism is sponsored by a godparent.

Translations

Related terms

Extensive Definition

The Loongson series (龙芯, also known as the Godson or Dragon chip) is an architecture of general CPUs developed at CAS (Chinese Academy of Sciences) in the People's Republic of China as an alternative to US-made Intel and AMD chips. The chief architect is Professor Weiwu Hu of ICT (Institute of Computing Technology).
BLX IC Design Corporation, Ltd (BLX) was founded in 2002 by Institute of Computing Technology, China Academy of Sciences and Jiangsu Zhongyi Group. Based in Beijing, BLX focuses on designing the advanced 32bit/64bit Godson general and embedded processor, developing software tools and reference platforms.
There are other devices in development like Longmeng and Sinomanic.
The primary purpose of the chip is to run localized Chinese versions of Linux, with emphasis on Chinese character support.

Name

Initially named 狗剩 (pinyin: Gou Sheng), which literally meant “Dog Leftover” in Chinese, following old Chinese traditions of naming a newborn baby with a humble name for easier upbringing and better health. And "Godson" was the English name as it is pronounced similarly to "Gou Sheng". Later “Loongson” was proposed as the official name which means the "Dragon Core" Chip, with "Godson" still being used as an internal codename for developers.

Architecture Revisions

Loongson 1

The first revision of the Loongson architecture, the Loongson1 is a pure 32-bit CPU running at a clock speed of 266 MHz. Its primary focus is with embedded designs such as cash registers, where 64-bit capability and high speed is not necessary. It was released in 2002.

Loongson 2

The Loongson 2 adds 64-bit capability to the Loongson architecture. Initially running at 500 MHz, later revisions to Godson 2E were produced that run up to 1 GHz, while the latest Godson 2F being produced at 1.2 GHz and released to market in early 2008.
On December 26, 2007, China revealed its first supercomputer of 1 teraflops (the actual capacity is about 350G) in Hefei, designated as KD-50-I. This supercomputer was designed by a joint team led by academician Mr. Chen Guoliang (陈国良), professor of the computer science technology major of the University of Science and Technology of China (the primary contractor, with the Institute of Computing Technology of Chinese Academy of Sciences as the secondary contractor). KD-50-I is the first Chinese built supercomputer to utilize domestic Chinese CPUs, with a total of more than 330 Loongson-2F CPUs. The size of the computer was roughly equivalent to a household refrigerator and the cost was less than RMBY 800,000. The Loongson-2F thus became the first domestic Chinese CPU to be used in a supercomputer.

Features

Loongson 2F:

Loongson 3

The Loongson 3 is planned to run at a clock speed between 1 to 1.2 GHz, with 4 cores. The first version of the chip will only support DDR2 RAM, will not have SMT support or a built-in network interface.

History

The instruction set is MIPS compatible, but the creators have backed away from promoting the chip as such due to threats of a lawsuit (see a Lexra history).
In March 2006 a €100 Godson II computer design called Longmeng (Dragon Dream) was announced.
In June 2006 at Computex'2006, Taipei YellowSheepRiver company has announced a Municator YSR-639, a mini-computer based on the 400MHz Godson 2.
In September 2006, Li Guojie, director of the Institute of Computer Technology under the CAS announced a Longxin IIE (Godson IIE) a 64-bit chip containing 47 million transistors and reaching 1GHz. It implements a subset of the MIPS III ISA.
In the second half of the third quarter of 2006, China revealed the latest addition to the Godson series, the Godson 2E, which was already in early stage of manufacturing, and mass production was scheduled at the end of the year. According to developers' paper published on the Journal of Computer Science and Technology, tests show that the Chinese chip can rival Intel Pentium 4 processor in performance and it was superior to the early series of the Pentium 4 CPUs, but the Chinese CPU could be produced at a much lower cost.
Unlike processors from Intel, Advanced Micro Devices or Via Technologies, the Godson-2E is not based on the x86 instruction set. Instead, the chip uses a modified version of the MIPS instruction set that replaces proprietary instructions with ones developed by ICT. This means the Godson 2E cannot be used in PCs running Microsoft's Windows XP operating system, and thus the computing devices based on the Godson 2E would be most likely running the Linux operating system. In January 2007 Gentoo Linux was ported on this machine, the initial port was compiled on a Cobalt Qube micro-server.
In March 2007 STMicroelectronics bought a licence from MIPS Technologies Inc. and announced a partnership wherein STMicro will manufacture and distribute Godson-family processors.
The processor runs at clock speed of 1 GHz and like other chips in the Godson family, the Godson 2E was designed by the Chinese Academy of Science's Institute of Computing Technology (ICT) and was the first Chinese CPU produced using 90-nanometer process technology. Earlier versions of the Godson 2 chip were produced using a 180-nanometer process and ran at clock speeds up to 500MHz. Godson 2E CPU contains 47 million transistors, more than the 42 million of the original Pentium 4. But this processing power will not be a drain on laptop batteries, as power consumption is between 3 to 8 watts, according to CAE Fellow Li Guojie (李国杰), director of the institute. Li Guojie also announced that at the end of 2006, scientists would start to upgrade Godson 2E to Godson 2F, which will improve performance by about 30% and power consumption reduced by about 50%. By 2008, Godson-3 is scheduled to enter production.
On November 13, 2006, at the Chinese Academy of Sciences' Institute of Computing Technology (ICT), Li Guojie announced to the public that "Godson 2E is ready for mass production. Li Guojie told the public that from Godson 1 to Godson 2B, the capability of the chip has tripled, and from Godson 2B to Godson 2C, from Godson 2C to Godson 2E, the capability has continuously tripled. On the average, the capability of Godson series chip doubles every year, four times of what Moore's law claims, and China should accumulate small successes into large success." Currently, the Loongson box that comes with a 600Mhz Godson 2E processor is sold in China at CNY1599 (~US$200) without monitor, mouse, and keyboard.

Operating Systems

These computers primarily run the Linux operating system, however users have managed to port other operating systems such as Windows CE to the Loongson architecture.
Linux distributions that work on Loongson:

References

See also

External links

godson in Spanish: Godson
godson in French: Loongson
godson in Russian: Loongson
godson in Chinese: 龙芯
Privacy Policy, About Us, Terms and Conditions, Contact Us
Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2
Material from Wikipedia, Wiktionary, Dict
Valid HTML 4.01 Strict, Valid CSS Level 2.1