Chinese company developed new CPU/GPU unified architecture

[qwerrty]

Published: 18 hours 18 min ago
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ICube Technology launches Harmony Unified Processor Technology

The technology to produce high performance, cost-effective and power-efficient processor tapping the flourishing tablet computer market.

ICube Technology Holdings Limited (“ICube”), a China-based design company with focus on self-developed semiconductor processing chips and core architecture for China’s mobile device market, is pleased to announce its revolutionary breakthrough in mobile computing by unveiling its groundbreaking Harmony Unified Processor Technology.

The Harmony Unified Processor Technology marks a milestone in the semiconductor industry by genuinely integrating two different processor types: a central processing unit (CPU) and a graphics processing unit (GPU), into one unified core. This technology consists of the Multi-Thread Virtual Pipeline parallel computing core, an independent instruction set architecture (ISA), an optimizing compiler and the Agile Switch dynamic load balancer. It brings the most cost efficient and power efficient performance to the mobile computing and mobile communication markets.

To date, the finished silicon for the Harmony Unified Processor Technology has been produced and is ready for packaging. The resulting chip product is targeted to tap into the booming Android-based tablet computer market. Volume shipping is expected by the end of this year.

Existing processors in the market today are all based on decades-old designs, which limit their readiness to take advantage of the latest advancements in semiconductor technology. The Harmony Unified Processor Technology sets a new industry standard of performance by processing up to four threads (tasks) in each core. This contrasts with existing cores in the market that are limited to a single thread per core. This additional parallelism will bring significant performance benefits to mobile computing, thereby providing a desirable solution to Android-based tablet computer manufacturers, according to an iCube Technology report.

Mr. Simon Moy, Chief Technical Officer of ICube, concluded, "Developing our own Intellectual Property (IP) from the ground up has been a key differentiation of ICube from other technology companies in China. This provides us with much greater areas for innovation, enables us to leverage the latest semiconductor trends and lowers the cost of our system-on-a-chip (SOC) products relative to other chipmakers. We are also proud to have attracted and built a world-class development team composed of by Silicon Valley veterans and top engineering talents in China. We are confident that our revolutionary high technology product will be well received by the market and create value to our shareholders."

*ttp://hongkongbusiness.hk/information-technology/more-news/icube-technology-launches-harmony-unified-processor-technology

pics from CDF:

 

[hit410]

too professional!

 

[no_name]

Computer technology is vital to todays defence works.

 

[azfar]

is it 100% local?

 

[Ryan]

65nm production is already 2 generations lagged behind 40/45nm and 28/30nm. besides, only SMIC in china has the production lines that produces CPU and most of equipments in wafer fabrication relies on importation. Though it is a good start to compete in commercial CPU markets, China has a loooooooooong way ahead. Last year, chip import topped oil and gas.

 

[Ryan]

is it 100% local?

I think it can be indigenous. but China still depends on some importation of wafer fab machines.

 

[Aramsogo]

65nm production is already 2 generations lagged behind 40/45nm and 28/30nm. besides, only SMIC in china has the production lines that produces CPU and most of equipments in wafer fabrication relies on importation. Though it is a good start to compete in commercial CPU markets, China has a loooooooooong way ahead. Last year, chip import topped oil and gas.

This is only because the US doesn't permit Applied Materials to sell the latest generation equipment to China. Otherwise, all the Taiwanese fabs would have moved to China by now.

 

[Dazzler]

nice innovation by Chinese, reminded me of AMD Fusion architecture (for PC) combining cpu and gpu on a single chip.

 

[gambit]

This is only because the US doesn't permit Applied Materials to sell the latest generation equipment to China. Otherwise, all the Taiwanese fabs would have moved to China by now.

Bunk...Just like the other fool who interpreted a semicon foundry fab industry to be indicative of China's superiority over the South Koreans and the Japanese, you are now treading into an area you know nothing about. The Wassenaar Agreement does not prevent other countries, including US allies, from selling to China semicon technology smaller than 65nm. If anything, even the US admitted that China hovers anywhere between 1-2 generations behind the US in semicon manufacturing in terms of shrink sizes.

If China cannot design and/or manufacture above the 20s nm scalings, it is because Chinese semicon industry lack the experience, not in laboratory, but in large scale manufacturing. The semicon industry know the truth.

 

[Dazzler]

LONDON – ICube Corp., a two-year old fabless startup out of Shenzhen, China, backed by a publicly listed holding company in Hong Kong, is going after the Android mobile computing market using its own architecture of multicore processor.

The company claims its Harmony Unified Processor architecture is the first ever developed to handle both logic and graphics processing in a single core and in each of multiple processing pipelines.

ICube Corp., now a subsidiary of the recently renamed ICube Technology Holdings Ltd., has received 65-nm silicon of the first instantiation of Harmony, the dual-core IC1, back from its foundry supplier. The company is aiming at a 2012 roll out of samples and volume production.

Any attempt to introduce a novel instruction set architecture to compete against the broadly-supported ARM, x86 from Intel and others, is likely to be treated with skepticism by many. Objections are likely to be on commercial as much as on technical grounds. However, ICube claims that starting with a blank sheet of paper and specifically targeting the needs of mobile devices, has given it power-efficiency and cost-efficiency advantages over the established architectures. It also claims that with the advent of Android the barriers to entry for a new architecture are much lower than they once were.

The executive credentials of the company suggest that it could at least have a chance of success. Chief technology officer Simon Moy has 20 years' experience having spent several years as a principal engineer with Nvidia Corp. where he worked on the hardware design of the vertex shaders and stream processors in several generations of GPUs. Prior to that Moy worked at Silicon Graphics, IBM and LSI Logic.

Chief scientist Fred Chow's expertise is on the compiler side where he has 30 years experience, having worked as principal engineer at MIPS, chief scientist at Silicon Graphics and director of compiler engineering at PathScale Inc.

"Developing our own intellectual property from the ground up has been a key differentiation of ICube from other technology companies in China," said Moy, in a statement. "This provides us with much greater areas for innovation, enables us to leverage the latest semiconductor trends and lowers the cost of our system-on-a-chip products relative to other chipmakers. We are also proud to have attracted and built a world-class development team composed of by Silicon Valley veterans and top engineering talents in China. We are confident that our revolutionary high technology product will be well received by the market and create value to our shareholders."


China startup rolls 'unified' Android processor

 

[Aramsogo]

Gambit,
Okay, so Costa Rica and Malaysia has mfg tech China can't acquire?? C'mon. It has everything to do with forbidden tech transfer.

 

[ao333]

65nm production is already 2 generations lagged behind 40/45nm and 28/30nm. besides, only SMIC in china has the production lines that produces CPU and most of equipments in wafer fabrication relies on importation. Though it is a good start to compete in commercial CPU markets, China has a loooooooooong way ahead. Last year, chip import topped oil and gas.

Chip topped Oil; wow...

In any case, SMIC does not have the foundries to produce processors with peformance greater than the i486. The Longsong series are fabbed by European-owned machines likely manufactured in either the United States or Japan.

 

[tanlixiang28776]

Chip topped Oil; wow...

In any case, SMIC does not have the foundries to produce processors with peformance greater than the i486. The Longsong series are fabbed by European-owned machines likely manufactured in either the United States or Japan.

wow how about you take your i486 and shove it where the sun don't shine you retard.

 

[gambit]

Gambit,
Okay, so Costa Rica and Malaysia has mfg tech China can't acquire?? C'mon. It has everything to do with forbidden tech transfer.

I have always encouraged people to use keyword searches to verify what I said. People here know that well enough that I do not need to repeat myself. So check up on 'Wassenaar Agreement' and study it for a while.

 

[Ryan]

Chip topped Oil; wow...

In any case, SMIC does not have the foundries to produce processors with peformance greater than the i486. The Longsong series are fabbed by European-owned machines likely manufactured in either the United States or Japan.

Yeah, it is one of the China's technology soft underbelly. Hopefully that China can emulate the leading players one day.