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人民的处理器:拥抱中国国产计算机芯片By Christopher Mims
People’s Processor: Embrace China’s Homegrown Computer Chips
人民的处理器:拥抱中国国产计算机芯片
(翻译:foo)
By Christopher Mims
December 21, 2009
|
10:00 am
|
Wired Jan 2010
Imagine that your nation is entirely dependent on a belligerent and economically unstable foreign country for a precious commodity. Imagine that wit
hout that commodity, your entire society would grind to a halt. Got it? OK, now imagine that your nation is China, the belligerent nation is the US, and the commodity is CPUs.
试想一下你们国家的一种贵重商品完全依赖于一个经济上不稳定的并且好斗外国.试想一下没有了那种商品,你们国家整个社会将陷于停顿. 明白了? 那好,把你的国家想象为中国,好斗的国家是美国,贵重商品是CPU
For China to maintain its blistering pace of growth — about 8 percent over the course of the global financial meltdown — the nation’s leaders know they must transition to a postindustrial economy as rapidly as they transitioned to a free-market economy 30 years ago.
在全球金融崩盘的情况下, 为了维持快速约8%增长,国家领导者们意识到必须象30年前转换成自由市场经济那样快地转换到后工业经济.计算机是做到这一点的关键.国家对计算机的需求庞大.中国人在2008年购买了3千九百六十万台计算机.这一数值只会上升--因为仍有75%的人口根本接触不到互联网.
Computers are key to doing that. The country’s demand for PCs is enormous. The Chinese purchased 39.6 million of them in 2008. And that number is only going to climb — 75 percent of the population still doesn’t have access to the Internet. But the vast majority of PCs sold in China are running central processing units created by the US companies Intel and AMD. This poses a range of problems; perhaps the biggest is that it locks China into paying first-world prices for CPUs. China is also deeply reluctant to build military hardware on top of Western processors. (And if that sounds paranoid, keep in mind that there’s concern in Washington over whether the US military should use American-designed chips that have merely been manufactured overseas.)
但在中国售出的绝大多数的PC运行的中央处理器都是美国的INTEL和AMD制造的--这就带来了一系列问题,也许最大的一个就是锁定中国以发达国家的价格购买CPU.中国也非常不愿意用西方国家的芯片制造军事装备(如果在这点上认为中国想得太多了的话,那末请记住华盛顿也担心那些由美国军方设计的而仅仅在海外生产的芯片的安全问题
Given those issues, it’s not hard to understand why the Chinese government sponsored an ambitious initiative to create a sort of national processor. Work on the Loongson, or Dragon Chip, began in 2001 at the Institute of Computing Technology in Beijing. The goal was to create a chip that would be versatile enough to drive anything from an industrial robot to a supercomputer. One of the first Loongson-powered computers appeared in 2006, an ultracompact desktop PC known as the Fuloong (Lucky Dragon). It was built by the Chinese company Lemote, which soon followed that up with a cheap netbook. And China is now boasting that a third-generation multicore Loongson chip, currently in the prototype stage, will be used to power a petaflop supercomputer.
有了这些问题,就不难理解为什么中国政府资助一项雄心勃勃的计划来生产一种国产芯片, 计算所2001年开始龙芯芯片开发工作,目标是生产一种用途广泛的芯片以便能够用于任何场合--从驱动工业机器人到超级计算机.龙芯驱动的一种计算机2006年面世,这种超便携式台式pc叫做福龙(幸运龙).他由一家中国公司lemote制造,很快又推出了廉价上网本.现在,中国自豪地宣布第三代多核龙芯芯片,现正于原型机状态,将用于驱动千亿级超级计算机.
China’s decision to roll its own processors has gone largely unnoticed in the West. It shouldn’t. The country is incredibly motivated for the project to succeed — it has become a cornerstone of the National High-Tech R&D Program embarked upon in 1986. And we know that the Chinese are very good at leveraging economies of scale. The Loongson chip is going to change more than just computer-ownership rates in the most populous nation on the planet. It’s going to have a profound impact on computers everywhere.
中国决心推出自己的芯片没有引起西方广泛注意.这是不应该的.中国志在必得地要让这一项目成功--它已成为863国家高科技研发计划的重点项目. 我们都知道中国人善于权衡规模经营.龙芯芯片将不仅仅改变这一个星球人口最大国家的计算机拥有率.它将对全球的计算机产生深远影响
人民的处理器:拥抱中国国产计算机芯片
(翻译:foo)
By Christopher Mims
December 21, 2009
|
10:00 am
|
Wired Jan 2010
Imagine that your nation is entirely dependent on a belligerent and economically unstable foreign country for a precious commodity. Imagine that wit
hout that commodity, your entire society would grind to a halt. Got it? OK, now imagine that your nation is China, the belligerent nation is the US, and the commodity is CPUs.
试想一下你们国家的一种贵重商品完全依赖于一个经济上不稳定的并且好斗外国.试想一下没有了那种商品,你们国家整个社会将陷于停顿. 明白了? 那好,把你的国家想象为中国,好斗的国家是美国,贵重商品是CPU
For China to maintain its blistering pace of growth — about 8 percent over the course of the global financial meltdown — the nation’s leaders know they must transition to a postindustrial economy as rapidly as they transitioned to a free-market economy 30 years ago.
在全球金融崩盘的情况下, 为了维持快速约8%增长,国家领导者们意识到必须象30年前转换成自由市场经济那样快地转换到后工业经济.计算机是做到这一点的关键.国家对计算机的需求庞大.中国人在2008年购买了3千九百六十万台计算机.这一数值只会上升--因为仍有75%的人口根本接触不到互联网.
Computers are key to doing that. The country’s demand for PCs is enormous. The Chinese purchased 39.6 million of them in 2008. And that number is only going to climb — 75 percent of the population still doesn’t have access to the Internet. But the vast majority of PCs sold in China are running central processing units created by the US companies Intel and AMD. This poses a range of problems; perhaps the biggest is that it locks China into paying first-world prices for CPUs. China is also deeply reluctant to build military hardware on top of Western processors. (And if that sounds paranoid, keep in mind that there’s concern in Washington over whether the US military should use American-designed chips that have merely been manufactured overseas.)
但在中国售出的绝大多数的PC运行的中央处理器都是美国的INTEL和AMD制造的--这就带来了一系列问题,也许最大的一个就是锁定中国以发达国家的价格购买CPU.中国也非常不愿意用西方国家的芯片制造军事装备(如果在这点上认为中国想得太多了的话,那末请记住华盛顿也担心那些由美国军方设计的而仅仅在海外生产的芯片的安全问题
Given those issues, it’s not hard to understand why the Chinese government sponsored an ambitious initiative to create a sort of national processor. Work on the Loongson, or Dragon Chip, began in 2001 at the Institute of Computing Technology in Beijing. The goal was to create a chip that would be versatile enough to drive anything from an industrial robot to a supercomputer. One of the first Loongson-powered computers appeared in 2006, an ultracompact desktop PC known as the Fuloong (Lucky Dragon). It was built by the Chinese company Lemote, which soon followed that up with a cheap netbook. And China is now boasting that a third-generation multicore Loongson chip, currently in the prototype stage, will be used to power a petaflop supercomputer.
有了这些问题,就不难理解为什么中国政府资助一项雄心勃勃的计划来生产一种国产芯片, 计算所2001年开始龙芯芯片开发工作,目标是生产一种用途广泛的芯片以便能够用于任何场合--从驱动工业机器人到超级计算机.龙芯驱动的一种计算机2006年面世,这种超便携式台式pc叫做福龙(幸运龙).他由一家中国公司lemote制造,很快又推出了廉价上网本.现在,中国自豪地宣布第三代多核龙芯芯片,现正于原型机状态,将用于驱动千亿级超级计算机.
China’s decision to roll its own processors has gone largely unnoticed in the West. It shouldn’t. The country is incredibly motivated for the project to succeed — it has become a cornerstone of the National High-Tech R&D Program embarked upon in 1986. And we know that the Chinese are very good at leveraging economies of scale. The Loongson chip is going to change more than just computer-ownership rates in the most populous nation on the planet. It’s going to have a profound impact on computers everywhere.
中国决心推出自己的芯片没有引起西方广泛注意.这是不应该的.中国志在必得地要让这一项目成功--它已成为863国家高科技研发计划的重点项目. 我们都知道中国人善于权衡规模经营.龙芯芯片将不仅仅改变这一个星球人口最大国家的计算机拥有率.它将对全球的计算机产生深远影响
For starters, it could help usher in an era of true post-Windows PCs. Because the Loongson eschews the standard x86 chip architecture, it can’t run the full version of Microsoft Windows without software emulation. To encourage adoption of the processor, the Institute of Computing Technology is adapting everything from Java to OpenOffice for the Loongson chip and releasing it all under a free software license. Lemote positions its netbook as the only computer in the world with nothing but free software, right down to the BIOS burned into the motherboard chip that tells it how to boot up. It’s for this last reason that Richard “GNU/Linux” Stallman, granddaddy of the free software movement, uses a laptop with a Loongson chip.
对于初学者,它将有助于引导他们进入真正的后windows pc 时代.因为回避了标准的x86构架,如果没有模拟器的话就不能运行所有的MS确windows. 为了推广芯片,计算所为龙芯采用了从java 到openOffice并且以自由软件授权形式发布. lemote把它的上网本定位于世界上唯一的完全运行自由软件的计算机包括烧入主板的BIOS.正是由于后一个原因,自由软件的"GNU/Linux"
Richard Stallman 使用龙芯笔记本
Loongson could also reshape the global PC business. “Compared to Intel and IBM, we are still in the cradle,” concedes Weiwu Hu, chief architect of the Loongson. But he also notes that China’s enormous domestic demand isn’t the only potential market for his CPU. “I think many other poor countries, such as those in Africa, need low-cost solutions,” he says. Cheap Chinese processors could corner emerging markets in the developing world (and be a perk for the nation’s allies and trade partners).
龙芯也可能改变全球计算机产业格局."跟intel 和IBM 相比,我们还处于起步阶段"龙芯总构架师胡伟武说.但他也提到中国巨大的国内市场需求不是唯一的. "我想许多贫穷国家,象非洲,需要低成本的解决方案" 廉价的中国产处理器可以在新兴发展中国家市场占一席之地.
And that’s just the beginning. “These chips have implications for space exploration, intelligence gathering, industrialization, encryption, and international commerce,” says Tom Halfhill, a senior analyst for Microprocessor Report.
但这仅仅是开始,"这一系列芯片潜在用于宇宙开发,情报搜集,工业化,加密,国际贸易" Tom Halfhill如此评论到,他是<> 高级分析专家
Will Loongson-based PCs make inroads with average consumers in the West? You can already order a Lemote netbook online. It isn’t any cheaper or better than other entry-level netbooks, and reviews from geeky hardware enthusiast sites are less than enthusiastic. But these crude first-generation products hark back to another wave of boxy, underpowered consumer goods that were initially regarded as mere curiosities in the West. They were called Toyotas.
西方国家的普通消费者能得到龙芯电脑吗? 你可以在网上订购.它不比其它入门级的上网本便宜或更好,硬件爱好者的评论还谈不上热情.但是这些原始的第一代产品让我们回想起另外一种小小的,不甚了了的消费产品,刚开始时也被西方认为只不过是些小玩意儿----- 它的名字叫丰田
Christopher Mims (christopher.mims @gmail.com) wrote about new drilling technologies in issue 17.09.
对于初学者,它将有助于引导他们进入真正的后windows pc 时代.因为回避了标准的x86构架,如果没有模拟器的话就不能运行所有的MS确windows. 为了推广芯片,计算所为龙芯采用了从java 到openOffice并且以自由软件授权形式发布. lemote把它的上网本定位于世界上唯一的完全运行自由软件的计算机包括烧入主板的BIOS.正是由于后一个原因,自由软件的"GNU/Linux"
Richard Stallman 使用龙芯笔记本
Loongson could also reshape the global PC business. “Compared to Intel and IBM, we are still in the cradle,” concedes Weiwu Hu, chief architect of the Loongson. But he also notes that China’s enormous domestic demand isn’t the only potential market for his CPU. “I think many other poor countries, such as those in Africa, need low-cost solutions,” he says. Cheap Chinese processors could corner emerging markets in the developing world (and be a perk for the nation’s allies and trade partners).
龙芯也可能改变全球计算机产业格局."跟intel 和IBM 相比,我们还处于起步阶段"龙芯总构架师胡伟武说.但他也提到中国巨大的国内市场需求不是唯一的. "我想许多贫穷国家,象非洲,需要低成本的解决方案" 廉价的中国产处理器可以在新兴发展中国家市场占一席之地.
And that’s just the beginning. “These chips have implications for space exploration, intelligence gathering, industrialization, encryption, and international commerce,” says Tom Halfhill, a senior analyst for Microprocessor Report.
但这仅仅是开始,"这一系列芯片潜在用于宇宙开发,情报搜集,工业化,加密,国际贸易" Tom Halfhill如此评论到,他是<
Will Loongson-based PCs make inroads with average consumers in the West? You can already order a Lemote netbook online. It isn’t any cheaper or better than other entry-level netbooks, and reviews from geeky hardware enthusiast sites are less than enthusiastic. But these crude first-generation products hark back to another wave of boxy, underpowered consumer goods that were initially regarded as mere curiosities in the West. They were called Toyotas.
西方国家的普通消费者能得到龙芯电脑吗? 你可以在网上订购.它不比其它入门级的上网本便宜或更好,硬件爱好者的评论还谈不上热情.但是这些原始的第一代产品让我们回想起另外一种小小的,不甚了了的消费产品,刚开始时也被西方认为只不过是些小玩意儿----- 它的名字叫丰田
Christopher Mims (christopher.mims @gmail.com) wrote about new drilling technologies in issue 17.09.
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