China readies first multicore Godson CPUs

Dylan McGrath, EE Times
(08/27/2008 12:10 PM EDT)
 
Palo Alto, Calif.— Chinese researchers are preparing the first multicore versions of Godson, the country's first homegrown microprocessor, with four- and eight-core designs scheduled to tape out in the coming months. China hopes to build a petaflops high-performance computer based on the Godson-3 in 2010.

The four-core version of the Godson-3 is scheduled to tape out before the end of the year, and tape out of the eight-core version is planned for 2009, according to Zhiwei Xu, deputy directory of the Chinese Academy of Sciences' Institute of Computing Technology, who presented a paper on the Godson-3 architecture at the Hot Chips conference here Tuesday (Aug. 26).