The Chinese government has banned exports of Loongson processors, which use proprietary LoongArch architecture, to Russia, reports the Russian newspaper Kommersant.
The reason for the ban was that this technology was deemed strategically important by the Chinese authorities since it is used in the defense industry. Russian electronics manufacturers have already tested these Chinese processors in case the shipments of American Intel and AMD processors are blocked.
Kommersant notes that now it is officially impossible to import these chips.
Loongson was founded in 2002 by the Chinese Academy of Sciences to develop an alternative to American Intel and AMD processors. In 2021, the corporation introduced the Loongson Instruction Set Architecture (LoongArch), compatible with programs written for the Intel (X86) and AMD (ARM) architecture.