China is a well-known manufacturer of semiconductor chips, and as we know that the country is spending heavily on increasing the production of silicon manufactured in the company. Established in mainland china, we have Loongson Technology, one of a few well-known CPU designers from mainland China. And the company is still not on the U.S. blocklist, and therefore potential investors can invest in the company without major risks.
According to the latest sources, Loongson Tech has filed for an IPO on Shanghai’s STAR Market in a bid to raise money and fund the development of its future CPUs and GPUs. Reports indicate that the company plans to raise 3.5 billion yuan ($544 million) to replenish its working capital and increase its R&D spending on its next-generation CPUs and GPUs.
From the financial reports, it was found that Loongson earned 1.1 billion yuan in operating revenue, which was two times more than in the previous year. However, the company’s profit also went downhill in 2020, and it dropped to 72 million yuan from 193 million in 2019.
We have seen the LoongArch architecture, the company’s very own architecture, which was powering the company’s processors. The company’s quad-core 3A5000 CPU for client PCs and 16-core 3C5000 CPU for multi-processor servers are the first chips to use the new architecture.
However, even if the company is receiving most of the support from its country, China, on the other hand, cannot rely on hardware from companies like AMD, Intel, or Nvidia. This has made it more challenging for the country to develop its platform for exascale supercomputers.
Sources also report that, even though Loongson is a privately-owned company, the government of mainland china supports it through subsidies and tax breaks. And the company’s PC CPUs are also purchased by the government since 2018.
