Chinese Loongson 3A6000 CPUs crosses Zen3 and Tiger Lake by 68% in Single Core performance test

August 31, 2022

2 min read

According to Loongson, a Chinese chip manufacturer, their next-generation 3A6000 CPUs have up to 68% more single-core performance than Zen 3 and Tiger Lake combined. The Loongson 3A5000 quad-core CPU lineup, which uses the 64-bit GS464V microarchitecture developed in-house by the Chinese government, was unveiled last year. It includes support for DDR4-3200 dual-channel memory, a primary encryption module, two 256-bit vector units per core, and four arithmetic logic units. The new CPU from Loongson Technology also features four HyperTransport 3.0 SMP controllers, which enable several 3A5000s to run in tandem within a single system.

However, Loongson said at its semi-annual investor call that they want to release their next-generation 6000 series chips, which would have a completely new microarchitecture and offer IPC comparable to AMD’s Zen 3 CPUs. According to the manufacturer, their 3A6000 CPUs are to be regarded as a Tick and will have a whole new architecture that has been improved from the existing GS464V to the new LA664 design.

Loongson has seen a 68% increase in single-core (floating-point) performance and a 37% increase in single-core (fixed-point) performance thanks to this new architecture.

The business used the SPEC CPU 06 results for the AMD Zen 3 and Intel 11th Gen (Tiger Lake) CPUs as a point of reference. The IPC of the Loongson 3A6000 CPUs will be comparable to that of the AMD Zen 3 and Intel Tiger Lake CPUs, which is a significant improvement for a Chinese-made domestic chip. Given that Zen 4 recently launched and China is already catching up to the previous generation, having Zen 3-level IPC is also quite respectable.

The Chinese CPU startup is targeting both AMD Ryzen and EPYC CPUs based on the Zen 3 core architecture and will use the same process as the existing chips, but it hasn’t specified what architecture or clock speeds one might anticipate.

Loongson plans to release the first 16-core 3C6000 chips in early 2023, followed by 32-core models in mid-2023, and the 7000 lines, which provide up to 64 cores, a few months later in 2024.

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