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Chinese chip released by top boffins

by on04 September 2008

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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.
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