My CPU Is Loongson(Godson)!!!

Loongson 2F is to be formally released

2007-10-18T11:29:00.000Z

On October 12, i found 2 photos showing the motherboard with Loongson 2Fas its heart on Lemote BBS

(http://www.lemote.com/bbs/viewthread.php?tid=10336&extra=page%3D1&page=8,see post #80, #81). Foxsen, the administrator of Lemote BBS, said thatthis is just one of the Loongson 2F's future applications, a homeserver. He decribed the motherboard: "Loongson 2F (the silver chip) +AMD CS5536 south bridge + dual 1000M LAN + Sil3114 Sata + 32MB norflash." This motherboard seems to be a mini-itx, 17cm X 17cm in size,with one IDE in addition to four ESata port and one PCI.

Foxsen appologized to members on Lemote BBS that he couldn't provide anyfurther details of the chip as it is not formally released.

It is said that ST Microelectronics has started Loongson 2F's massproduction. We may expect different kinds of things with 2F inside comeout next year.

Loongson 2F finished tape-out in July and has been get through 2 monthsof heavy test. It consumes 5.6W power at 1GHz, higher than i expected,unfortunately.

Again, thanks to the friend abroad for her help to post this stuff.

say sorry to all my friends on this blog

2007-10-06T11:59:00.000Z

I am more than a little sad when i realize this blog, and possibly aswell as many other blogs on blogspot, has been under strict accesscontrol in mainland. Using a free web surf abroad helps me enter thesite and confirm its existence. However, i can't login to create new posts.The situation began in this summer. I thought it wouldn't last long asGoogle China should negotiate with someones. Wrong. I just can't loginand post.Thanks to the kind help from one of my best friend outside this country,i got this chance to talk on this blog again.What i know about the Linux-only chip now:1. 2F returned, at least 1 month ago. The chips are under intensetesting now. But no details are unveiled.2. Lemote has been doing survey about Lemote Box (formally called Fulongmini PC, though i never think they are PCs) with Loongson 2F inside onhttp://www.lemote.com/table/2f.php (in Chinese). So the marketing mustbe on the way.3. For some technical questions, i suggest we had better ask on theLemote BBS.All the best

Free Pascal Compiler at its very beginning on Loongson

2007-06-09T14:06:00.000Z

After weeks of silence, Linuxer on Lemote forum finally made a little progress again. "Jiao Lin Tan Suo" said earlier today that he has been porting FPC to Linux-Loongson platform for some time. He has implemented the cross-compiler as the first step, and then used non-cross-compiler running on Loongson to implement a HelloWorld.pas successfully. The compiler itself is written in Pascal, completely independent of gcc.

It is just the beginning.

C Language Interface lib of Loongson Multimedia Instruction Set

2007-05-10T12:38:00.000Z

I don't know if i was making translation errors again.

jamesr, a 17-year-old student in his 2nd year of high school, has been working on C language interface for Loongson multimedia instructions for some time. On May 8, he released his 0.1 version of libmmi_ls. Although it may not perform perfect, but his job is really appreciated. He studied C language by himself 1 year ago.

64bit PMON has been solved

2007-05-10T11:40:00.000Z

On May 9, 64 bit PMON on Loongson is solved. Former PMON is 32bit despite a 64bit CPU. The developers said that the advantages to use a 64bit PMON :
1. We can get access to anywhere in the 64bit space by C pointers in PMON
2. DDR can be locate to any place in PMON. (???I don't know such technical stuffs so it might be a translation mistake）
3. Tool chain is gcc 3.4.6, which is consistent to 2.6 kernel tool chain.

CF card and handwriting stroke recognition are finished

2007-05-08T07:56:00.000Z

Loongson 2E has already support CF card by miniIDE-CF adapter.

Another thing should be mentioned is the stroke recognition. As Chinese is base on thousands of characters instead of tens of alphabets, stroke recognition is generally more difficult and not opensource. I am afraid that there may be a negotiation between Loongson group and other companies.

XGI V3XT and SiS315E is now supported

2007-05-08T06:49:00.000Z

Officially confirmed by Loongson Technology Service Center, Beijing.

SiS315E is solved at April 20 and XGI V3XT at April 24.

Loongson 3 is expected to have 16cores

2007-05-02T16:35:00.000Z

Another series of Loongson, the multi-core Loongson 3 is in designing. The developers said that they hope it will be a 16core cpu with 1.2+GHz each. The share L2 cache is 8MB.

Loongson 2F is to be taping out

2007-05-02T16:19:00.000Z

The next member of Loongson 2 family, the 2F is sent to tape-out process on May 2nd, 2007. This is about 3 months later than the developers expected at the beginning of this year.

Improvements:
1. 30% faster clock frequency. We can expect for 1G+ product.
2. Comparing to 2E, 2F can saving up to 40% of the power consumption. Moreover, temperature sensor, frequency steps and other power management functions is available.
3. More integrated: DDR2 controller, 66MHz PCI/100MHz PCI-X controller, Local IO controller, GPIO, time Interrupt Controller、DMA controller and so on.
4. Smaller: 27mm x 27mm, comparing to 35 x 35 of 2E.
5. Better DFT and DFM to lower costs.

I am back

2007-05-02T16:04:00.000Z

After a boring month full of college course and laboratory training, I am finally free.

Exciting things is coming soon...

64bit kernel problem may be related to RAM size

2007-03-18T07:06:00.000Z

Recently I upgraded my Lemote Box to 512M main memory. 256M is indeed a little small for GNOME. As current 32bit kernel do not support memory larger than 256M (If you can solve it, just contact Lemote and get one machine!), I was forced to use 64bit kernel. It no longer freezes.

Talked with foxsen and he agrees. His Loongson laptop is with 512M memory and never dumps. But his Loongson Box with 32bit kernel did freeze once.

Waiting for explanations and solutions.

To friends who are interested in Lemote Box

2007-03-18T06:48:00.000Z

If you want a Lemote Box, you'd better contact Lemote and prove that you can make good use of it, e.g. software porting. Lemote still keep a very few Lemote Boxes for super Linuxers. Lemote Box will be free of charge if you do something important . Several days ago Lemote has given a Loongson Box to a high school student as a gift for his undergoing contribution to multimedia lib, though he didn't have a purchase order. His work is try to write a lib useing Loongson Multimedia Instructions.

Another choice is to wait for better products which will come out this year.

Beryl 0.2.0 on Loongson Box

2007-03-18T06:02:00.000Z

It is not amazing that youbest again made the eye-candy project running on his Lemote Box. Although it is still not very stable and many special effects are not available for some reasons, it proves the ability of the little machine.

Progressing, but a little slowly

2007-03-10T14:56:00.000Z

Lemote has release a new version of Loongson-optimized mplayer and new real codecs. From the instant feedback of users it is said that there may be a 20 percent better(faster) when playing rmvb and other videos. Strangely, still some rm file cannot be played. Perhaps we still need more work.

Foxsen today says he has solved 1G RAM problem. Current PMON has bugs so that it refused to recognize some 1G RAMs correctly.

64bit kernel is another issue. Many users have encountered a serious problem that 32bit Linux system running on 64bit kernel is accidentally down. It is difficult for developers to solve such random-occurring problems. Strangely, it seems that some users never had this problem but some usually got it.

Bochs on Loongson

2007-03-04T07:43:00.000Z

Youbest has ported Bochs on Loongson platform and make NetBSD, OpenBSD, FreeNAS, GeeXBox, Red Flag Linux( a Chinese commericial Linux distro, I never used it) and Win98 running. The problem is Bochs is very very slow on Loongson.

Finished slackware on Loongson

2007-02-24T15:44:00.000Z

'lyh' successfully ported Slackware Linux on Loongson platform today. He says xfce4 and e17 nearly no problem on Slackware-Loongson and he is compiling and testing KDE.

Waiting for his screen shot.

QEMU running Win98 on Loongson

2007-02-24T14:51:00.000Z

'jun7903' posted a message on Lemote BBS early this morning, which said he had made QEMU running Windows 98 on Loongson. Although QEMU on Loongson is not fully tested, it is the first time for a Windows OS to somehow "run" on Loongson2 platform. In 2006 I also saw WinCE running on GS32i (an improved Loongson I CPU).

I don't need Windows at all, but more functions are always better when it comes to marketing.

Known Problems in Loongson Box (Part)

2007-02-15T15:12:00.000Z

As a product in testing, Lemote Box satisfies my need. However, there are still problems at present which are expected to be solved in future. Some friends asked me if they can get a Lemote Box. The answer is "yes" if you are keenly looking for it and prepared for any potential annoying problem and you can do something with it. Recent posts on Lemote BBS suggest that there are still about a score of Boxes remaining.

Recent feedback from users shows problems as follows:
1. Auto switch on without pushing the power button when power supply is given.
2. No APM is present. We have to switch it off manually by pushing the power button for 5 seconds. Moreover, sometimes we must press reset button after pressing power button to switch it on.
3. There may be waves or bands on the screen. The design is not so good that electronic flows are interfering with each other.
4. Command line interface is rarely failed to be shown when pushing Ctrl+Alt+F1 in Xwindows
5. If we set screensaver to "blank screen", we sometimes can't activate the machine from being locked.
6. The box may be a little longer than it should be. This leads to that some USB device like flash disks cannot be recognized. Some user also found they have to press their audio plugs hard into the Box to make them work.
7. Current 32-bit kernel only support a main memory of 256M. Debian on Lemote Box is extremly stable at 32-bit. So far as I know, no system breakdown is reported! Some ones continuously ran the box for over a month(>720 hours), it is still in good state. But if we would like to try 512M memory we have to use 64bit kernel. Recent posts on Lemote BBS shows that 64bit kernel is not very stable with 32-bit applications.
8. The fan is noisy. CPU, graphic card and FPGA share one small fan. As no APM is available, the fan always runs and it do make some noise.

To be continued.

Control your Lemote Box when you are in bed

2007-02-11T16:40:00.000Z

"Tony" has release an infrared port driver on Lemote BBS for testing. The driver enable us to control our Lemote Box with a common remote control (like those of a TV set) after a brief training.

This feature of Lemote Box, together with its size and NTSC support makes it possible that the little box be a home multimedia center.

I'll try it as soon as I go home this spring festival.

All 1000 Lemote Box has been delivered to users

2007-02-09T18:51:00.000Z

By Feb 7, 2007, Lemote had sent all Lemote Box to their respective users. All fans are busy running and discussing Loongson now. No one can tell how much these users will contribute to Loongson's developing but it must be considerable.

Finished Gentoo on Loongson

2007-02-07T13:03:00.000Z

"Henry", a Linuxer on Lemote BBS declared that he had ported gentoo to Loongson platform.

Loongson 2E details uncovered

2007-02-05T05:06:00.000Z

The details of Loongson 2E (Godson 2E) has been published in a recent research article: Implementing a 1GHz Four-Issue Out-of-Order Execution Microprocessor in a Standard Cell ASIC Methodology

http://jcst.ict.ac.cn/content/papere.asp?lg=en&i=7101

In this paper, there is a table showing the SPEC2000 score of Loongson 2E vs PentiumIII and Pentium IV. The table is provided by "overself" on Lemote BBS.

Loongson 2E @ 1GHz achieved a peak score of 503 in both SPEC INT 2000 and SPEC FP2000 with ORC compiler, which is developed specially for Loongson.

Video for Beryl on Loongson!!!

2007-02-04T04:58:00.000Z

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=elZBzu9Gdl8

Provided by Youbest.

Beryl 3D desktop on Loongson : Mission Completed!

2007-02-01T14:10:00.000Z

Youbest, one of the most active Linuxers on Lemote BBS, successfully compiled and ran Beryl on Loongson Box, only two days after foxsen finished 3D driver.

Beryl is still not stable on Loongson, nevertheless, it does run.

Thanks youbest. I don't think 3D desktop can do much for our everyday work but it may attract more customers to Linux-Loongson system.

Solved 3D driver on Loongson

2007-01-30T13:29:00.000Z

Foxsen, the administrator of Lemote BBS, says he has solved 3D driver for Loongson Box after one month work.

ATI didn't provide any proper driver for Loongson Box. I heard that Lemote collected some information and then used a guess-and-try method to write basic driver for R7000 before the Boxes were usable. And now foxsen further finished 3D driver.

However, currently the 3D driver doesn't fully exploit R7000's capacity which gives only 237 FPS on 24bit. Foxsen promised to improve it. Anyway, he' s really a respectable man.