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Godson-3 Chip likely to be Created in Chongqing
(Comtex Business)CHONGQING, Dec 15, 2005 (SinoCast China IT Watch via COMTEX) --After a short talk with the local government, the producer and marketer for Chinese homegrown microprocessor series just decided to establish a research and development base in Chongqing, a major city in southwestern China.
The best-known Chinese microprocessor is the Godson-2 (also known as the Dragon chip), which is a 64-bit microprocessor developed by a team of researchers at the Institute of Computing Technology (ICT), part of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) in Beijing.
While ICT handles the design of the Godson chips, the responsibility for sales and marketing belongs to an ICT spin- off company, BLX IC Design Co. Ltd. (BLX), which is headed by Eddie Zeng, a former Intel Corp. executive.
Since the Godson-2 chip debuted in this April, ICT and BLX started seeking proper places to shape a more integrated base for the Godson chip industry.
Then in this October, Chongqing started construction of the Xiyong Microelectronics Industrial Park. The industrial park is expected to open in 2010 as a manufacturing and R&D park for IC design, software development, chip manufacturing and electronics manufacturing.
Eddie Zeng and Chongqing local officials had their deal made on almost the first time they met. "I think this is partly because that I myself was born in Chongqing," Eddie Zeng revealed jokingly.
Under the cooperative frame, BLX will launch a downline company named Chongqing Godson IC Co., Ltd. in the industrial park, with CNY10 million initial investments.
"The new subsidiary will doing the chip system designing work at first," said a BLX official, "Later, it will be in charge of the software designing and finally, the whole Godson-3 CPU will be developed there, if things go smoothly."
As scheduled, Chongqing municipal government will invest USD8 million to construct the industrial park. The park already has commitments from semiconductor and software companies totaling USD2.3 billion in value. Production value from the park is expected to reach CNY100 billion to CNY150 billion in 2010.
The first member of the Godson family, the 32-bit Godson-1 processor, was introduced in 2002. It ran at a clock speed of 266MHz and was produced by contract chip manufacturer Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. Ltd. (TSMC).
The latest addition to the family, the Godson-2, is produced by another contract chip maker, Shanghai-based Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp. (SMIC). Been manufactured through a 180-nanometer process, the Godson-2 runs at a clock speed up to 500MHz but it is based on different instruction set that is not compatible with x86. As a result, the chip is intended for use in applications such as a set-top box rather than a personal computer.
As for the Godson-3, it was rumored that it will apply a four-core structure and hardware-assisted simultaneous multithreading technology.
"By the end of next year, we hope we can add in multiprocessor support and on-chip secondary cache. If these features are added, the new chip's power consumption may be around 10 watts," said Tang Zhimin, a senior ICT engineer who headed up the Godson project. The power budget for Godson-2 is around 5 watts, based on a 1.8V core and 3.3V I/O.
"We are also looking at how to integrate multithreading with our current superscalar architecture," Tang said.
Besides, the Godson designers also are working on a second version of the Godson-2. That chip will be produced next year using a 130-nanometer process and run at a clock speed of up to 1GHz. It will also include a faster front-side bus, more cache, and support for DDR (Double Data Rate) memory.
International analysts believe the Chinese already are capable of designing world-class microprocessors, assuming they have access to world-class fabrication technology. Although Chinese fabs are about two process generations behind the curve, China's technology is rapidly accelerating.
SMIC announced earlier that it would start massive production of 90-nanometer chips at the beginning of next year and launch its first 65-nanometer sample no later than 2006- end.
From eNet.com.cn, Page 1, Wednesday, December 14, 2005
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