China Linux PCs: full details and pictures
By Gareth Powell
On January 20 we told the world that China is about to put on sale its own computers running with its own processor and Linux. We told the exact truth.
Wu Shaogang, a manager from manufacturer Lemote Technology said the first batch of 80 computers powered by home-grown Chinese CPUs are undergoing user tests. This means the home-made chip, Godson II E, is out of the lab and moving into at least a small commercial operation followed by the big time.
Lemote, which is based in Changshu in China’s Jiangsu Province, hopes to get a thousand PCs out on to the market in China before the Chinese New Year. The PCs will use Linux, have a 40-gigabyte hard drive and 256 megs of memory. Price in China will be RMB1,599 ($200) to which you have to add a monitor and a keyboard. Probably come in at around $250 in the first instance.
Thirty computers actually went out on test on January 1.
A user had signed a non-disclosure agreement about the test machine but he said, ‘There is no difference with other brands of PC in common functions such as listening to music, watching movies and surfing the Internet.’ Another 1,000 Lemote computers will be sent before 2007 Chinese Spring Festival which is on February 18. Some of them to personal users.
This is a small computer — think MiniMac — and comes standard with 256 meg of ram, a 40 gig hard disk, COM interfaces, audio input and output interfaces, one PS2 and four USB interfaces.
Lemote said users who have received Lemote computers are giving feedback but there is not instance, as yet, of the computer breaking down. Zhang Fuxin, general manager of Lemote intelligently said, ‘Problems are inevitable as the products are still being tested.’
So it really exists.
A public demonstration has been given on the PC running with Linux. During this 10-minute demonstration the new PC booted in less than one minute into the Linux graphical user interface. Then followed, on the computer, a slide show and a demonstration of word processing. The PC is only about the size of ‘an ordinary telephone’ — a quote from a viewer — and a flat screen rests neatly on the top.
It also appears to have a TV output which can work in the C’s standard configuration. (One comment thought this was a good idea. Lemote had already thought of it.)
The progress on the Godson chip had been well and widely recorded and the Ministry of Science and Technology responded to questions from journalists in Nanjing about the low-cost computer project running with the Godson chip.
Yes, early last year the chip did have some technical problems and debugging extended the time of release. In April 2006, the enhanced Godson-2 chip was released to extensive testing. This chip has now gone into production, is now in its final form. As one Comment (the Comments so far have pretty much all been better than the article) said the Godson is a modern RISC design implementing 64-bit MIPS-like instruction set (minus some MIPS patented instructions), four-way superscalar out-of-order execution pipeline, with dynamic branch prediction and non-blocking cache.
The latest Godson 2E appears to be implemented on a 90 nm process, running at 1Gz with performance comparable to a Pentium 4, while only consuming 3-5 watts.
The Linux community in Shanghai was given a Godson PC prototype and they ran Linux on it as 64-bit operating system. That is the Godson PC 1000 which is now being released in small quantities. Then it will be pushed out after the Chinese New Year with the main sales target being the government and schools.
So what is the problem?
No one wanted the news released. It appears to have been a major clanger on someone’s part.
China Youth Daily ran this on Sina Tech (it is a Chinese site and unless you read Chinese gets you nowhere) and all hell broke lose. It was not authorized. The site was firmly asked to remove the story. As of this writing this has not happened.
There is serious upset at Lemote and Godson that the news has leaked. They are as annoyed as Steve Jobs would be in a similar situation. Still it has happened. And we have photographs of the machine which you see above. Probably the first English language site to do so.
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January 22nd, 2007
The exterior of the box seems quite unattractive. However, it is compact. There appears to be one expansion slot available, wonder if it’s PCI or PCIe.
The actual CPU in the Lemote box seems to be running only at 666Mhz (testers reporting P4 1.5Gz level performance). However, with the 90 nm process technology it shouldn’t be too hard to ramp that up to 1Gz.
Persoanlly, I’d wait for the next iteration of Godson (now called Loongson), with multiple cores, on-die L2 cache, on-die memory controller, and SIMD instructions.
January 22nd, 2007
Hi
You are perfectly correct. The new chip is Loongson and, at a guess, this will be the one that will become available to the public. It does exist, it is being tested, it will probably be the one we see.
January 23rd, 2007
Looks like you were scooped by a few months:
http://techiesfordev.blogspot.com/2006/09/ultra-cheap-pc-from-where-else-china.html
Also, over a year ago. This article addresses the blatant MIPS R10000 rip-off aspects:
http://www.infoworld.com/article/05/08/01/HNgodson2_1.html
Seems some are lusting for novel innovation so much they can’t see past the obvious reverse engineering; technology ‘re-appropriated’ from foreign fabs built in country; and China’s children learning to driving on technological roads built long-ago by overseas adults. Absolutely fine, but try following your Japanese neighbors lead and INNOVATE not IMITATE.
Guarantee: no Loongon will ever be legally exported to America.
Second guarantee: they will dance around the chip being 95% compatible with MIPS architecture for legal reasons apparent to those with at least a remedial intellect.
January 23rd, 2007
This is news to you ?
Most of the PCs in America are made in China anyways - if not anything else.
Inagine if China cut us off how long we would last.
It is only a name badge change.
June 16th, 2007
It was only a question of time.
Yet Linux is used quietly and without notice in many household appliances and cell phones.
Oneword without notice .
August 28th, 2008
Lemote computers run a free as in freedom operating system called GNU or GNU/Linux.
If you talk about Linux then you’re talking only about the kernel and not about the entire operating system.
Here are some informations about the history of the GNU/Linux operating system invented and developed by Richard Stallman during 1983.
Linux Torbalds wrote only the Linux kernel during 1991. Linus never created an os and he never wanted to do so.
http://www.gnu.org/gnu/linux-and-gnu.html
http://www.gnu.org/gnu/gnu-linux-faq.html
Please help us correcting this widespread mistake!
Pass the word and correct this article.
Thank you very much.