Chinese chipmaker Loongson Technology announced on Tuesday that it has taped out its next-generation 3A6000 desktop CPU, which is expected to offer performance comparable to Intel's quad-core Comet Lake processors.

CPU, or central processing unit, is the core of a computer that does most of the computing work.

The company has previously claimed that the new chip, which is based on its own LoongArch architecture, will have a 68 percent improvement in single-core floating-point performance and a 37 percent improvement in single-core fixed-point performance over its predecessor, the 3A5000.

The quad-core 3A6000 supports simultaneous multithreading (SMT), allowing it to process eight threads at the same time. It also features a new memory management unit (MMU) that can handle address translation exceptions directly in hardware, boosting performance.

Loongson said that its chip design is more efficient than its Intel and AMD rivals' and can achieve higher instructions per cycle (IPC).

The 3A6000 CPU is part of Loongson's plan to develop high-performance processors that can meet the domestic demand for computing devices in China, which is facing unfair export restrictions from the U.S. and other countries.

Loongson Technology is one of the few Chinese chipmakers that has developed its own processor architecture, rather than relying on licensed designs from Arm or MIPS. The LoongArch architecture, which was introduced in 2021, is a 64-bit instruction set that combines elements of MIPS and RISC with custom instructions that may help with emulation of other systems. The architecture mainly uses Linux as its operating system, and the company is working on creating Linux-based desktops and applications for its chips.

The company said that its chips are 100 percent self-developed, and that they have significant meaning for China's IT independence and innovation.