(Presidentialwire.com)- The 19FortyFive reports that this week saw yet another setback for the Kremlin’s war efforts as Beijing reportedly forbade the export of microprocessors with military-grade specifications.
Most Western companies have already left the country due to sanctions after Russia invaded Ukraine in February, forcing Moscow to find new suppliers for vital electronic components.
Loongson (Dragon Chip), a family of general-purpose, MIPS-architecture-compatible microprocessors made in China by the fabless company Loongson Technology, has been considered for adoption.
Also referred to as Godson processors, these were created to lessen China’s reliance on foreign technology. Beijing has worked to become self-sufficient in semiconductors, particularly for use in military technology.
According to rumors, Loongson has stated that the performance of the 3A6000 CPU will be comparable to that of the AMD Ryzen 5000 and the Intel 11th-Gen Core CPUs. According to recent simulation test results, the 3A6000 will outperform the 3A5000 in terms of single-core fixed-point performance by 37% and single-core floating-point performance by 68%.
The 3A6000 is a significant step forward for China, which has relied on imports, even though it would still lag behind the most recent x86 processors from AMD and Intel.
The United States has a growing list of export restrictions, including a ban on semiconductor equipment that could be used to produce logic chips with a 16nm process or smaller, DRAM chips at 18nm or smaller, and NAND flash with 128 or more layers, according to MirageNews.com. This is why China prioritizes building up its own domestic microprocessor industry.
China is unlikely to try to export the Loongson CPUs because of their significantly lower performance compared to AMD and Intel. In fact, it’s possible that Russia was the only prospective buyer.
According to a Russian Ministry of Digital Development source quoted by Kommersant, Beijing has prohibited the export of Loongson processors due to their strategic value to China’s military.
Moscow will now be forced to devise a different solution from the Loongson processors, which the Russian military industry had been testing and intended to use in place of Intel and AMD processors.
Russia has been forced to repair its military hardware using computer chips for household appliances.
