Depending on the structure of the constituent systems, the Loongson 3A5000 consists of two main operating modes.
Single-chip mode: The system contains only 1 chip of Loongson 3A5000, which is a symmetric multiprocessor system (SMP).
Multi-chip interconnect mode: The system contains 2, 4, or 16 chips of the Loongson 3A5000 interconnected through HT ports to form a non-uniform access multiprocessor system (CC-NUMA).