Loongson Shows New 3C6000 Server CPUs for Chinese Market, with up to 64 Cores
Loongson has just put out its new 3C6000 line of server CPUs aimed at the server market in China. These new chips, made over a year ago, aim to make things better for local buyers with up to 64 cores in some setups.
Other New Loongson Chip Sets
Next to their top 3C6000 line, Loongson has also started selling the 2K3000 and 3B6000M chip sets. These both use the LA364E CPU design, have up to 8 cores and can go as fast as 2.5 GHz. They also have a better LG200 iGPU (better than the old LG100), which gives 256 GFLOPs of FP32 power and an extra 8 TOPS of INT8 speed. These CPUs are made for use in industry, kiosks, and mobile units.
The Main Thing: 3C6000 Server Chips
The big news is the Loongson 3C6000 line, made with Loongson's 4th Gen CPU stuff and LA664 cores. You can get this series in three main set-ups that use a chiplet layout and are linked by Loongson's Dragonchain tech:
- "S" Series: A single chiplet with 16 cores.
- "D" Series: Two chiplets, making 32 cores.
- "Q" Series: Four chiplets, giving up to 64 cores.
The speeds for these CPUs go from 2.0 GHz to 2.2 GHz.
Main Details of the 3C6000 Series:
- Cache: Every core gets 64 KB L1i, 64 KB L1d, and 256 KB L2 cache. There's also 32 MB L3 cache shared per chiplet.
- Memory Controller: The "S" set-up has a four-way DDR4-3200 control, while the "D" and "Q" set-ups have an eight-way DDR4-3200 control.
- Multi-Socket Help: The "D" and "Q" set-ups can join in multi-socket plans with up to 4-socket layouts.
- PCIe Lanes: The "S" series has up to 64 PCIe Gen4 lanes. The "D" and "Q" series have 128 PCIe Gen4 lanes.
- TDP: The "S" series uses 100-120 Watts TDPs, while the "D" and "Q" series use between 180-300W.
First Looks at How They Do
Loongson has shared early numbers comparing their 3C6000 series to Intel's 3rd Gen Xeon "Ice Lake-SP" chips. In tests, the 16 core Loongson LS3C6000/S (2.2 GHz) did better in integer tasks than the 16 core Intel Xeon Silver 4314 (2.4 GHz) but was a bit slower in floating-point tasks.
The gap gets smaller with the 32-core chips. The 64-core Loongson model (2.1 GHz) shows similar results to Intel's Xeon Platinum 8380 (2.3 GHz).
Market Spot and What to Look For
The big pluses for Loongson's 3C6000 server CPUs look to be their price and being easy to find in China's home market. More numbers and real tests are expected in the weeks after this release.
More performance details can be found in my Drive(CN).
