Loongson is another GPU designer in China. roll out A new chipset with built-in graphics capabilities for quad-core 3A5000 and 16-core 3C5000 processors. The new iGPU has features comparable to the 2004-2005 graphics chips, but provides sufficient performance for office workloads.
Loongson’s 7A2000 bridge chip (also known as the chipset) integrates an OpenGL 2.1 / OpenGL ES 2.0 compliant GPU operating from 400 MHz to 500 MHz and has two HDMI connections (or HDMI and D-Sub / VGA connections).
Based on Loongson’s data, the GPU received 300 FPS for the 2004-2005 benchmark GLMark 2 and 1,800 FPS for the 1999-2000 performance test program Glxgears. Unfortunately, the manufacturer has not disclosed the operating system or method used. I have summarized the benchmarks. In addition, it’s worth noting that the GPU doesn’t even support basic DirectX functionality, so it can’t support Windows 7.
iGPU is said to be in-house designed, but it’s not surprising because both Arm and Imagination have cheap GPU IP blocks that offer a much more sophisticated feature set. However, developing a low-end in-house GPU can make a lot of sense for Loongson.
The 7A2000 chipset is designed for Loongson’s 3 series processors that use the proprietary LoongArch architecture, so you need an operating system and software that supports this architecture. Instead of rewriting third-party drivers for Loongson’s platform, it may be easier to design a low-end GPU and develop the driver in-house. After all, Loongson’s customers are organizations run by various governments and local governments, and even if they are years behind their equivalents designed in Europe and the United States, they will benefit greatly from IP developed by China. I consider it to be.
Other features of the 7A2000 core logic include PCIe 3.0, SATA 6 Gbps, USB 3.0, GbE PHY, UART, and even GPIO if you want to connect something fancy to a Loongson-based platform.
Another notable improvement in the 7A2000 mentioned by Loongson is that the CPU and chipset are connected using the 3.2 GT / s HyperTransport 3.1 32-bit interface. This has increased PCIe bandwidth by 2.4x and improved SATA read / write performance. 82% / 97% compared to the previous generation Loongson 7A1000 chipset.
According to Loongson, multiple motherboard manufacturers and ODMs have already developed a number of boards with quad-core 3A5000 processors with 7A2000 chipsets and 16-core 3C5000 / 3C5000L CPUs with 7A2000 chipsets.
