There’s the two behemoth architectures, x86 and ARM, and we probably all own one or more devices using each. Then there’s the eternally up-and-coming RISC-V, which, so far, seems to be having a lot of trouble outgrowing its experimental, developmental stage. There’s a fourth, though, which is but a footnote in the west, but might be more popular in its country of origin, China: LoongArch (I’m ignoring IBM’s POWER, since there hasn’t been any new consumer hardware in that space for a long, long time).
Wesley Moore got his hands on a mini PC built around the Loongson 3A6000 processor, and investigated what it’s like to run Linux on it. He opted for Chimera Linux, which supports LoongArch, and the installation process feels more like Linux on x86 than Linux on ARM, which often requires dedicated builds and isn’t standardised. Sadly, Wayland had issues on the machine, but X.org worked just fine, and it seems virtually all Chimera Linux packages are supported for a pretty standard desktop Linux experience.
Performance of this chip is rather mid, at best.
The Loongson-3A6000 is not particularly fast or efficient. At idle it consumes about 27W and under load it goes up to 65W.
[…]So, overall it’s not a particularly efficient machine, and while the performance is nothing special it does seem readily usable. Browsing JS heavy web applications like Mattermost and Mastodon runs fine. Subjectively it feels faster than all the Raspberry Pi systems I’ve used (up to a Pi 400).
↫ Wesley Moore
I’ve been fascinated by LoongArch for years, and am waiting to pounce on the right offer for LoongArch’s fastest processor, the 3C6000, which comes in dual-socket configurations for a maximum total of 128 cores and 256 threads. The 3C6000 should be considerably faster than the low-end 3A6000 in the mini PC covered by this article. I’m a sucker for weird architectures, and it doesn’t get much weirder than LoongArch.
I live in Thailand for almost 20 years now, which is right on the edge between China and the US. I do find LoongArch fascinating. Not that I care much about the technical details, I just need a fast, cheap, robust and efficient computer.
My fascination comes from the competition of the political views and systems: The West has been spelled doomed and dead for years in many TikTok videos. Here the decadent and degenerated West, there the disciplined and sophisticated Chinese people who just had a period of bad luck.
In the car sector, it almost looks like TikTok is right and my next car will likely be a BYD. (We have BYD stores now everywhere and Solarpower is cheap. Almost no Mazdas left.)
But on things like LoongArch it shows how far away they still are. And maybe, our Western chaos and liberalism is indeed the creativity, that sparks the 1 bright idea out of 99 stupid attempts, that can maintain a lead. Maybe there is some ingenuity that can only flourish in a free society, but not enforced by military discipline.
I genuinely hope for that..
And fuck Trump, who works so hard to destroy that hope and makes China look appealing.