cheap CPUs may revolutionize China, affordable internet service, low cost internet access

BEIJING - A Hong Kong-based company that began as a comic-book publisher now promises to revolutionize the Chinese personal-computer (PC) market with its new, low-cost, Linux-based, Chinese-language central processing unit (CPU).

Culturecom Holdings Ltd says its new V-Dragon CPU, which retails for only US$15-$30, will reduce the price of PCs and appliances by anywhere from 50-70 percent, mostly by eliminating costly intellectual-property (IP) fees charged by "Wintel" - Microsoft and Intel - for their operating systems and CPUs.

Co-developed by IBM and based on the Midori Linux operating system, the new V-Dragon architecture aims specifically for the Greater China market with an embedded dynamic Chinese character-generating engine, allowing direct use of 32,000 Chinese characters without additional font sets or Chinese language peripherals.

"The V-Dragon is not only the first Chinese CPU, it’s also the first Linux-based CPU," Culturecom senior vice president Benjamin Lau told Asia Times Online. "Midori Linux is a flexible OS [operating system], and it's the only Linux OS whose design team was led by [Linux creator] Linus Torvalds himself," Lau added. Culturecom acquired rights to Midori Linux from the US-base company Transmeta.

Read complete article at: Asia Times Online

Source: Asia Times Online by Kaiser Kuo

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