Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

Recently, there has been a dispute between Godson and Shanghai Core about whether the LoongArch instruction set infringes on the copyright of the MIPS instruction set. The Beijing intellectual property Court ruled that Shanghai SMIC's claim that the Godson instruction set infringed the copyright of the MIPS instruction set and that Loongson Zhongke constituted unfair competition was not tenable, and rejected all the claims of Shanghai SMIC. This is an important victory in the field of independent controllable chip research and development in China.

On the evening of February 7, 2023, Godson Zhongke Technology Co., Ltd. issued a notice of litigation. A total of two cases are involved: one is the lawsuit filed by Godson against Shanghai SMIC that the 3A5000 processor does not infringe upon the copyright of computer software in the MIPS instruction system. The second is Shanghai SMIC's lawsuit against Godson Zhongke LoongArch and 3A5000 processors.

The Beijing intellectual property Court combined the two cases, and Godson submitted an application for withdrawal of case 1 to the Beijing intellectual property Court. In the Civil judgment (2022) No. 1063 of Beijing 73 at the beginning of the Republic of China received on the same day, the Beijing intellectual property Court found that in case 2, Shanghai SMIC's claim that the Loongson instruction set infringed upon the copyright of the MIPS instruction set and that Loongson constituted unfair competition was not tenable, and rejected all of Shanghai SMIC's claims.

It is understood that the dispute between the two originated from the MIPS route that Godson originally chose. Before the emergence of open source RISC-V instructions, there were three main instruction systems in the world: X86, ARM and MIPS, all of which were controlled by European and American companies. It is even more difficult to develop an instruction system independently. Such as Huawei, Godson, etc., have adopted the route of early compatibility with foreign mainstream instruction sets. Huawei chose ARM and Godson chose MIPS.

However, the risk for this model is that once the United States imposes a technical blockade, the owners of these instruction sets originating in the United States will also have to comply with the rules. ARM, for example, has cut off cooperation with Huawei under a US ban. This is a typical neck jam. In this context, the development of independent and controllable instruction set system has become the only choice in China. On the other hand, Longxin Zhongke has completely switched from the early compatible route to independent development.

However, Shanghai SMIC filed a lawsuit against Godson's self-developed LoongArch architecture and 3A5000 processor, arguing that the Godson instruction set infringes on the copyright of the MIPS instruction set. Godson Zhongke made a counterclaim.

It is understood that Shanghai Core Co., Ltd. was founded in 2018, and in 2021, Shanghai Core Co., Ltd. paid all MIPS technology license fees at one time, and obtained the status of exclusive right holder and exclusive operator of MIPS technology in China. The reason is very simple: once Godson switches to full autonomy, it means that there is no need to pay MIPS-compatible patent license fees at all. And this just spent a lot of money to buy out the management rights of MIPS in China, but it is undoubtedly a blow. Therefore, intellectual property disputes between the two sides may also be inevitable.

The victory of Godson Zhongke is undoubtedly an important victory in the field of independent controllable chip research and development in China. Judging from the decades of development of Godson, it was born in the Institute of Computing of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, realized earlier that the key core technology "can not be bought, can not be bought, can not be obtained", and has been put into practice. Domestic CPU from scratch, to the product performance of only 1/20 of foreign counterparts, and then to approach the world's mainstream advanced level, Godson walked for 20 years.

"just like Chinese people can write articles in English, but it is impossible to develop a national cultural system based on English, we must use our own instruction set system to do CPU." Hu Weiwu, chairman of Longxin Zhongke, chose the independent R & D instruction set. In April 2021, Godson launched the autonomous instruction system architecture LoongArch. It has been independently redesigned from the top-level planning of the whole architecture, to the functional definition of each part, to the coding, name and meaning of each instruction in detail, and has full autonomy. At the same time, Godson 3A5000 CPU was successfully developed that year, and its performance is close to the level of mainstream products in the market.

"there are Apple version and Android version of mobile App, but in the future, when people develop computer applications, there will be not only Windows version, but also Longxin version." Hu Weiwu said: it is hoped that Godson will win the reputation of the strongest autonomy, the highest performance and the best ecology as soon as possible. By the time the next generation of products are launched, Godson CPU will leap from "approaching" the performance of international mainstream products to "reaching" the international advanced level.

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