LoongArch™

A Proprietary Instruction Set Architecture with Great Compatibility—LoongArch

Modernity: Incorporating advanced features of recently developed ISA technologies to improve performance and energy efficiency.

Compatibility: Integrating the main features of X86, ARM, and other ISAs to enable efficient binary translation.

Configurability: Comprising a compulsory infrastructure and several optional extensions such as binary translation, virtualization, and vector instructions.

Extensibility: Sufficient instruction encoding spaces remained for the continuous extension of LoongArch in the future.

LoongArch is an instruction set architecture (ISA) introduced by Loongson Technology in 2020, based on the company's twenty years of experience in CPU development and ecosystem construction. The ISA consists of a compulsory infrastructure and several optional extensions, such as vector instructions, virtualization, and binary translation, and incorporates nearly 2,000 instructions.

LoongArch features independent development, modern technology, and great compatibility.

This ISA has been fully redesigned, from its top-level planning to the functions of each part and to the coding, naming, and definition of each instruction.

It discards parts of traditional ISA technologies that are outdated and incompatible with current software and hardware and embraces advanced technologies that prevail in the ISA design in recent years. Compared to the previous ISA, LoongArch makes it easier to design high-performance hardware with low power consumption. In terms of software, it facilitates compiler optimization and the development of operating systems and virtual machines.

When designing LoongArch, Loongson's team attaches great importance to its compatibility with the main applications from internationally popular ISAs. Furthermore, the team leverages its considerable technical experience in binary translation to enable the architecture to efficiently translate the mainstream ISAs in the world. Since 2020, all CPU products developed by Loongson Technology have been based on LoongArch.

LoongArch has received extensive recognition and support from the international open-source community, and is becoming a top-level open-source ecosystem alongside X86 and ARM. LoongArch has now obtained an ELF machine number (258) from the GNU organization, and received support from audio and video software communities (such as Linux, Binutils, GDB, .NET, GCC, LLVM, Go, Chromium/V8, Mozilla's SpiderMonkey, FFmpeg, libyuv, libvpx, OpenH264, and SRS), UEFI (including UEFI specification and ACPI specification), and domestic open-source communities (such as OpenAnolis and openEuler).

An instruction set architecture is the starting point of a software ecosystem. Only by independently developing an ISA can we overcome the limitations on the development of software ecosystems. The launch of LoongArch is a significant result of Loongson Technology's long-term commitment to independent research and development, marking a major technological leap of the company towards comprehensive ecosystem construction.

Embrace Independent Innovation and Master Core Technologies in Processor Cores and Related IP Core Design

CPU: LA664, LA464, LA364, LA264, LA132

GPU: LG100

High-speed Interfaces: HT3, HT1, PCIe3.0, PCIe4.0

On-chip Bus Interconnection: AXI, AHB, APB; XBAR, RING, BUS

Memory Controllers: DDR4, DDR3, DDR2, SDRAM, SRAM

Various Interfaces:

Storage Interfaces: SPI, SDIO, NAND Flash, NOR Flash

Audio/Video Interfaces: HDA, AC97, I2S, CAMERA, LCD, HDMI

Network Interfaces: TSN

Industrial Interfaces: UART, I2C, PWM, CAN, LIO, LPC, TSensor, VPWM, RTC, ACPI, ADC; PPC, PCM, OC; JBIG, LSU

Mastery of 2D/3D GPU Technology

Self-developed Bridge Chip Solutions: 7A1000, 7A2000

Multiple Custom Modules: Register files of various specifications, PLL, DDR2/3/4-PHY, HT-PHY, PCIe-PHY, etc.