Comment by EricRiese
4 days ago
> The development of the first Loongson chip was started in 2001. The aim of the Godson project was to develop "high performance general-purpose microprocessors in China", and to become technologically self-sufficient as part of the Made in China 2025 plan.
-Wikipedia
Right on time
Loongson (the company) have been around since 2001.
Loongarch (the ISA that debian is now supporting) has only been around since 2021. Previously Loongson used MIPS and another ISA known as LoongISA.
> Loongson used MIPS
Stallman actually daily drove a Loongson MIPS-based notebook for a while.
I thought they pivoted to RISC-V
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RISC-V#Strategic_background
Nah it's much easier to move fast if you don't rely on a committee.
I think it depends on your skillset and goals. If you want to run other peoples' software and compilers and whatnot, it doesn't hurt to implement to an existing spec. If you're going to write your own or need a lot of mods, may as well roll your own architecture.
1 reply →
Well, that's what you get when you can do nation-state planning with an event horizon measured in decades, practically infinite cash and with the ruthlessness to engage in corporate espionage plus the total elimination of political campaigning (because you're the CCP, the only gang in town).
In contrast, Western corporate execs have an event horizon between "next quarterly reports" and "vesting/bonus period", additionally in any sufficiently large organizations you will have fiefdom fights that are counterproductive to the company at large, and Western politicians can only think to "next important election", so basically a few months as well because there is always an election going on in some state or local division.
We have gotten societally incompatible with not just coming up with new ideas, but with maintaining what we already have. It's like in 1984 - we can't even think of such timeframes any more.
And no, I'm not calling for a dictatorship. I'm rather calling for dissolution of the stock market for speculation, and for consolidating elections to once every four years so that politicians have time to cool down from the constant campaign hype pressure.
> for consolidating elections to once every four years so that politicians have time to cool down from the constant campaign hype pressure.
You talk about "western" politicians, but this point feels like it only really applies to the US with its ridiculous two-year cycle.
And a general election process that lasts from January to November of every fourth year, and an executive hobbled until the January after that because, goodness knows why, you get to remain in power for weeks after someone else has taken the mandate to govern.
2 replies →
> You talk about "western" politicians, but this point feels like it only really applies to the US with its ridiculous two-year cycle.
I'm German, it's even worse here because we have 16 states plus the EU elections and that means you have about three to five distinct elections in any given year. And with the exception of the small states no one gives a fuck about (sorry Saarland), each and every single of the state elections is seen as a sign for federal politics.
A 4-years cycle is also nowhere near enough for any long term project. This is the cost of democracy where you have to give people short term wins in order to win an election.
Infrastructure projects can take decades. The country’s budget is a 0 sum game. Developing something expensive will lead to cuts or shortages somewhere else and those people suffering will make you pay in the next election because they won’t care about the greater good from 20 years from now.
Your opponents will exploit any perceived failure and use it against you. And they will equally take your victories and sell them as their own if your long term project happens to bear fruit on their term. So everyone focuses on what looks good inside a term of a few years to sell in the next election.
1 reply →
> In contrast, Western corporate execs have an event horizon between "next quarterly reports" and "vesting/bonus period",
The big tech companies ran without profit for a long time. People worried a lot about that but they did it anyway.
High interest rates in general are a strong deterrent from investing with that kind of time horizon. The risk free rate of return has skyrocketed, and investors no longer have to turn to risky gambles to make a return. The same thing happened in Canada when housing was propped up by the government in ‘08, leading to real estate sucking all of the money out of the economy. The US is in this position now because of how allergic all politicians have become to using taxes for the purpose of cooling down the economy. The only feasible campaigns are full inflationary spending, all the time, and the only difference is who the money goes to. The stupid electorate who vote for candy for dinner instead of eating vegetables are equally to blame.