1) http://www.loongson.cn/news_info.php?id=259
Recently, ICT has launched the Loongson-3B six-core desktop solution.
Loongson-3B is a six-core high-performance general-purpose MIPS processor
using 32nm manufacturing process, which is working at frequency of 1.2 GHz.
http://www.loongson.cn/uploadfile/201404/20140411035647203.jpg
Technical specifications:
* standard Mini-ITX motherboard with Loongson-3B CPU
* ATI RS780E [AMD 780E] southbridge with 128MB integrated graphics
* ATI SBx00 Azalia on-board audio
* up to 16 GB DDR3 memory
* Intel 82574L gigabit network interface
* PCI, PCIe, SATA, USB and other peripheral interfaces
* thanks to good scalability, could be additionally equipped with discrete
graphics AMD HD6770 and SSD drive
Leaked benchmark test results:
http://openbenchmarking.org/result/1404098-SO-3B1W2703307
This desktop solution is using an optimized version of Fedora 13, with a lot
of software available, such as WPS office suite. Manufacturer states that the
user experience has been significantly improved, if to compare with
Loongson-3A predecessor, and is aimed on government/military users, and for
everyone else who cares a lot about privacy.
This looks like an excellent candidate to become an open hardware.
But, whats about GPU blobs?
The development of Loongson is conducted by ICT - Institute of Computing
Technology , which is backed by Chinese government. And, in the middle of
2012, NVIDIA lost a huge GPU order from them, due to _closed-source blob_ :
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=MTEyNTE
It gives us hope that Chinese government and AMD have reached an agreement,
the result of which is 100% open-source graphics solution
From leaked benchmark test results, I could see that:
* display driver is open-source radeon 6.14.99
* OpenGL runs with the help of open-source Mesa 9.2.5 and Gallium 0.4
2) http://www.loongson.cn/news_info.php?id=260
http://www.loongson.cn/uploadfile/201404/20140411034220232.jpg
This "OpenLoong" board, based on Loongson-1C cpu, could be used for the same
purposes as Raspberry Pi and Arduino, while providing higher performance than
them. Could be used as board for MiniPC / DIY netbook, as well as for small
home file/printer server. Future versions would have more powerful CPU from
Loongson-3 family
