Chinese CPU manufacturer Loongson is purportedly closing the gap quickly to Western CPU manufacturers regarding raw performance. Fast Technology reports that Longsoon's fourth generation is adopting a "tock-tock-tick" strategy to accelerate innovation.
Over the past several years, Loongson has taken inspiration from Intel, using its widely known tick-tock strategy to innovate on its past three generations of CPUs. The tock refers to architectural innovation, designing a new chip architecture around an existing processing node. The tick represents porting that existing architecture to a new design node. Intel generally does not utilize this design strategy anymore, with its latest Arrow Lake chips functioning on a brand-new architecture and a completely new process node.
However, Loongson has adopted the tick-tock strategy for the past three generations, bringing consistent performance improvements to its chips. That all changes with its fourth-generation chips, however. The Chinese manufacturer has purportedly decided to switch gears, utilizing a new strategy deemed tock-tock2-tick. This method adds a second architectural design optimization "pass" before the design is ported to a smaller node. Effectively, this gives Loongson's designers more time to improve their CPU designs before moving them to a new process node.