The Chinese firm BLX IC Design Corp, Ltd. have announced that they are to start production of a 64-but processor, named the Godson-2. The 32-bit version was clocked at 266 MHz (which was aimed at the embedded market) while the new 64-bit version is clocked at 500 MHz, and both of are predominantly based on the MIPS instruction set.
The chip is aimed at the Chinese server market and could be used by firms such as Legend Group and Dawning Technology, according to SiliconStrategies.com, and it may eventually be used by people abroad as it has could become part of the engine in a distributed grid computing network.
Improvements over Godson-1 consist of a four-issue super-scaler architecture, dynamic branch prediction and a non-blocking cache design which will allow for multiple misses in the memory array. Plans for Godson-3 are already in place, and the senior engineer for the project has told SiliconStrategies.com that "By the end of next year, we hope we can add in multiprocessor support and on-chip secondary cache. If these features are added, the power consumption may be around 10 watts".
News source: SiliconStrategies.com
