Will Loongson the last MIPS workstation?
category: offtopic [glöplog]
Last year I have worked in China for 8 months and got 2 Loongson based computer from local enthusiasts, one is Lemote 9S2A(a 2009 model) and another is Lemote-A1310 (a 2014 model).
I have compiled some games and got serval of them running pretty well.
Games I have successful ran:
TyrQuake: https://disenchant.net/tyrquake/
Micropolis: https://github.com/SimHacker/micropolis
SDLPAL: https://archive.codeplex.com/?p=sdlpal
jinyong-legend: https://github.com/ZhanruiLiang/jinyong-legend
Wolf4SDL : https://github.com/AlumiuN/Wolf4SDL/
D2X: http://icculus.org/d2x/
Mini Slug: http://oldschoolprg.x10.mx/projets.php
since the JRE was ported to mipsel, Processing and J2ME emulator, micro emulator is working too.
Here is a video I recorded with Lemote 9S2A playing these games
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gXEGYMM8T5U
I have benchmark that Loongson 2F 800Mhz in 9S2A,it got 23.7fps in 640x480 and 62.2fps in 320x200, quite similar to Pentium II level x86 processors.
I did simar test with Lemote-A1310 which has a eight-core Loongson 3B1500, TryrQuake got 29.5fps in 640x480 and over 100fps in 320x200, and It seems Quake will not get benefit form multi-core
ioQuake3 is runnable with A1310, but only got 7.4fps with default setting, which is unplayable.
In a newer published video on YouTube shows the gaming performance is significantly improved in recent Loongson 3A4000 processor, which is three generation later than 3B1500
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ltzrLuGZIdQ
I have compiled some games and got serval of them running pretty well.
Games I have successful ran:
TyrQuake: https://disenchant.net/tyrquake/
Micropolis: https://github.com/SimHacker/micropolis
SDLPAL: https://archive.codeplex.com/?p=sdlpal
jinyong-legend: https://github.com/ZhanruiLiang/jinyong-legend
Wolf4SDL : https://github.com/AlumiuN/Wolf4SDL/
D2X: http://icculus.org/d2x/
Mini Slug: http://oldschoolprg.x10.mx/projets.php
since the JRE was ported to mipsel, Processing and J2ME emulator, micro emulator is working too.
Here is a video I recorded with Lemote 9S2A playing these games
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gXEGYMM8T5U
I have benchmark that Loongson 2F 800Mhz in 9S2A,it got 23.7fps in 640x480 and 62.2fps in 320x200, quite similar to Pentium II level x86 processors.
I did simar test with Lemote-A1310 which has a eight-core Loongson 3B1500, TryrQuake got 29.5fps in 640x480 and over 100fps in 320x200, and It seems Quake will not get benefit form multi-core
ioQuake3 is runnable with A1310, but only got 7.4fps with default setting, which is unplayable.
In a newer published video on YouTube shows the gaming performance is significantly improved in recent Loongson 3A4000 processor, which is three generation later than 3B1500
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ltzrLuGZIdQ
Although I have a soft spot for MIPS which I discovered while coding on the PS2, I feel that at this point MIPS' future is looking very bleak.
Cool!
