Their older chips are indeed MIPS based, but the newer ones (including the ones this article is talking about) are using their own LoongArch ISA, which while has a few similarities to MIPS, is not the same.
They’re quite solid chips for basic desktop/office use, and even some very light gaming if paired with a compatible graphics card in my testing. Hopefully Loongson can manage to make a dent in the x86(_64) monopoly in a decade or so :)
Their older chips are indeed MIPS based, but the newer ones (including the ones this article is talking about) are using their own LoongArch ISA, which while has a few similarities to MIPS, is not the same.
Here’s some official LoongArch documentation in English and a very nice blog by WÁNG Xuěruì who is quite involved with the porting of quite a few large projects (the Linux kernel itself, Gentoo, LLVM, Rust, and Go) to LoongArch if you’re interested in reading up about it.
They’re quite solid chips for basic desktop/office use, and even some very light gaming if paired with a compatible graphics card in my testing. Hopefully Loongson can manage to make a dent in the x86(_64) monopoly in a decade or so :)