Computing to the
workers
Chinese boffins have released details of a microprocessor
that they claim will bring computing to the workers by 2010. Godson-3 was
developed with government funding by more than 200 boffins at the Chinese
Academy of Sciences' Institute of Computing Technology (ICT).
Zhiwei Xu,
deputy director of ICT said that it has taken 20 years for China to get around
to supporting R&D for microprocessors. Now Chinese mandarins want the
country to be technology independent from the likes of Intel and AMD. Some of
this is because US federal laws also prohibit the export of state-of-the-art
microprocessors from the United States to China, meaning that microchips shipped
to China are usually a few generations behind.
Godson chips are manufactured
in China by a French-Italian company called ST Microelectronics and are
available commercially under the brand name Loongson, meaning "dragon
chip." They are based around open source software and will be installed into
PCs in schools and as many workplaces as the Chinese government.