MINIMALIST / SHRINKAGE MOVEMENT IN COMPUTING, No. 6 of 8 ... Chinese Govt Targets Intel, Windows

This series of articles is based on the philosophy of the architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe as expressed in his motto "Less is more." This is not just an expediency to get through an economic depression, it is the way out of the current Global Financial Crisis (GFC). Sooner or later, all of us, from President Obama on down, are going to have to consider this. Computers are a good place to start.

Don't you wonder why the mainstream media (MSM) fail to report things like this and so you need guys like me?

According to a recent article at http://www.pcworld.com/article/163685/top_engineer_gives_vision_for_chinese_chips.html , the head of China's computing institute says he hopes that, by 2020, half the computer products sold in China will use Chinese-made chips similar to the ones in the Alpha 400, Razorbook, Elonex, and Hi-Vision minilaptops covered by this blog.

The engineer says China hopes to undercut Intel by making a 1-to-2-Gz Loongson/Godson processor for $20, or about half of what Intel and AMD charge for x86 of that speed. This of course would be about twice as fast as the Loongson 2f chips in the Alpha 400, etc.

The Loongson chips use a MIPS core rather than x86 and so do not run Microsoft Windows.

Last month the government of Jiangsu province bought 150,000 Loongson-based computers for schools. These would presumably be similar to, or identical with, the Alpha 400.

Below is an excerpt, but the article is well worth going to for a full reading.

Quoting ...

"Top Engineer Gives Vision for Chinese Chips"

"We should not continue to follow Intel's road of always pushing up, pushing and upgrading," he said. "I think a 2GHz Pentium 4 is already enough for most office and other purposes."

"Godson's government-backed development team will aim to cut the chips' energy costs rather than boosting their power and will eventually offer a chipset based on a 1 GHz to 2GHz processor for less than $20, said Hu Weiwu of China's Institute of Computing Technology in an interview."

"Godson will not compete with Intel and AMD for the x86 market since its chips have a MIPS core that does not support Windows. Its creators see the chip as an alternative that could be widely marketed on systems running Linux."

"Hu hopes Godson or other China-developed CPUs will power as many as half of the products sold in the country by 2020 and crack the markets in other developing countries as well."