#loongson — Public Fediverse posts

Ongoing #pinxi next #inxi updates. After the #Loongson data and upgrade, I decided to grit my research teeth and dig into #Zhaoxin x86 Via Centaur based CPU. As usual, I had to combine data sources to get the info on each variant. Now pinxi detects Zhaoxin, and gets advanced microarchitecture data for each known model.

Previously this was tossed in with Centaur data, which cut off when zhaoxin split from via (cpuid family 6 > 7). And was wrong too.

It's absurdly hard to find this cpu data.

Amazingly, someone showed up in #codeberg with an #inxi issue about #Loongson CPU support, something I have looked for data on for years. He provided 5 full sys-ci file pairs, which let me crudely emulate the cpu in test mode. Turned out the #MIPS detection failed because as of Loongson 3A5000 they have their own ISA, in other words it's its own type, forked from MIPS. Fixed the detection and many other glitches, added --loongson emulation flag, and now support works better than ever.