V-Dragon
V-Dragon is an embedded processor that was developed for the Chinese market and for the Linux operating system .
The processor was originally based on a PowerPC 405 Core from IBM . In a joint development, IBM and the Chinese company Culturecom expanded the PowerPC design and added an optional functional unit for the output of Chinese characters . This first version was a 32-bit RISC CPU which has up to 16 kB instruction and 16 kB data cache . The integrated font generator supports over 32,000 characters. The second generation V-Dragon, developed from 2003 onwards, was newly developed by the Chinese company Culturecom Holdings in cooperation with Transmeta and eForce .
This second version, which was largely realized in China and is based on the processor design from Transmeta, is a special milestone for the Chinese, as no licenses have to be paid to western companies. In addition, the development is specially adapted to the requirements of the Asian world, where characters are used in addition to characters and digits. The V-Dragon is equipped with its own font generator which can process up to 55,000 characters with hardware support. This means that much less computing power is required for font display than with graphics cards that work otherwise, which saves resources and energy.
The computing power should be on Pentium 3 level with approx. 400 MHz, the system can max. Address 1 GB RAM . Culturecom offers a motherboard with a simple graphics engine, which offers 4 USB , LAN and 3 PCI as well as an ISA slot - AGP is not available. In China, despite the moderate computing power, you will certainly not have any problems with sales - the Western world, on the other hand, uses such comparatively low-performance systems in the embedded area. In mid-2003, Culturecom Holdings Ltd. Order numbers of over 100,000 pieces.
literature
- Embedded processor with Chinese font management Frugal dragon . In: Market & Technology . No. 33 . Markt + Technik Verlag , 2003, p. H17 .