China's newly upgraded generic 64-bit CPU chip, dubbed Longxin IIE, was accredited by experts on Wednesday, marking a major step forward in the country's ambitions to control its own intellectual property rights in microprocessors.

Longxin IIE, developed by the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), is a chip the size of two thumbs with 47 million transistors and a power consumption ranging from three to eight watts, said Li Guojie, director of the Institute of Computer Technology under the CAS.

"Its calculations capacity is twice as fast as the previous version," Li said, adding that China possesses the full intellectual property rights for it.

Its highest frequency can reach 1.0 GHz and the peak speed can go up to 4 billion calculations per second under a dual accuracy check, he explained.

It proves that China is capable of furrowing its own path amid the fierce competition for the development of general-purpose CPU chips, although many patents have been achieved in other countries, Li said.

Experts believe that Longxin IIE, an equivalent of the Intel Pentium 4 processor, is only next to those produced in the United States and Japan.

Mass production of the Longxin IIE chips has begun and they will be on the market by the end of this year.

The CAS has devoted its efforts to improving the Longxin II series - Longxin IIB, Longxin IIC, Longxin IIE - ever since it successfully developed Longxin I in 2002. It is also working on adding multi-processor support to a future Longxin III.

Source: Xinhua