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What just happened? Chinese semiconductor firm Loongson is making bold claims about its upcoming hardware lineup. At a recent investor briefing, executives hyped the 9A2000 GPU as delivering RTX 2080-class performance and touted "world-leading" CPU designs in the works.
For some context, Loongson is a Chinese fabless chip company grown out of the country's state-sponsored efforts to develop domestic CPUs. Its 3A6000 chip launched in late 2023 is claimed to match AMD's Zen 3 and Intel's Tiger Lake architectures from 2020. While the company has mostly played in the CPU space until now, the GPU offerings represent a new push.
Their current model, the 9A1000, is a pretty tame GPU aimed at budget systems and low-end AI tasks. But the 9A2000 is allegedly taking things to the next level.
According to Loongson's Chairman and General Manager Hu Weiwu, the 9A2000 delivers performance up to 10 times higher than its predecessor. He claimed it should be "comparable to Nvidia RTX 2080," according to ITHome.
The RTX 2080 is getting a bit long in the tooth at this point, having first launched way back in 2018. But it's still a very capable GPU that can run most modern games at respectable settings.
There are some potential hiccups, though. The RTX 2080 rocks full DirectX 12 support, while Hu only committed to "maybe" having DX12 compatibility for the 9A2000. That could put a damper on its gaming ambitions, though Hu did claim it should be able to run the hit game Black Myth: Wukong thanks to its DirectX 11 support.
That said, Loongson has another card to play. At the same briefing, Weiwu also provided a teaser for their next-gen 3B6600 CPU, making some lofty performance claims about its architecture. He touted "significant" changes under the hood that should elevate its single-threaded muscle to "world-leading" levels, according to another ITHome report.
Previous leaks suggest this processor will pack eight LA864 cores clocked at a stout 3GHz, along with integrated LG200 graphics.
As for the launch, Weiwu gave a tentative first half of 2025 target for initial production, with mass availability hopefully following in the second half of next year.
Loongson has typically played more of a supporting role in the CPU arena and is yet to make a dent outside of China. But if this 3B6600 chip can truly hang with the heavyweights of x86 and Arm in per-core performance, it would mark a major step up for the company.