Tech war: China’s flagship CPU designer Loongson puts on a brave face amid US sanctions
- Loongson said it is evaluating the advanced 7-nm process from a number of foundries to manufacture its future chips, which include GPUs
- The company launched its home-grown 3A5000 CPU at the end of 2020, which was made on a now-restricted process node of 14-nm
A Chinese chip designer, whose mission has been to reduce the country’s reliance on Intel and AMD, is trying to develop its own general-purpose graphic processing unit (GPU) despite being added to a US trade blacklist.
Loongson Technology Corp, whose founder Hu Weiwu used to cite Mao Zedong to express his aspirations, is evaluating the advanced 7-nanometre process from a number of foundries to manufacture its future chips, according to a response from the company this week to investor questions.
The new chips would include GPUs like those supplied by industry leader Nvidia, which is now restricted from selling its high-end chips to Chinese customers, and central processing units (CPUs), which is a market long-dominated by Intel and AMD.
The Loongson comments come a week after the Beijing-based chip designer, whose Chinese name translates to “dragon chips”, was added by the US Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) to the Entity List, along with 26 other mainland entities. US exporters must apply for special permits from Washington to sell products to companies on the list.
For Shanghai-listed Loongson, however, its stated mission has always been reducing China’s reliance on US technologies. As investors flooded the official inquiry platform run by the Shanghai Stock Exchange with questions on its product development and the impact of US sanctions, Loongson said the latest restrictions will not have any “material impact”, according to publicly-available records.