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Security and trust-wise RISC-V means nothing. RISC-V is just open instruction set. Below the instruction set is microarchitecture. Some have developed low per

Security and trust-wise RISC-V means nothing. RISC-V is just open instruction set. Below the instruction set is microarchitecture. Some have developed low performance free microarchitectures for Risc-V but same applies to other instruction sets also. You can develop open and secure X86 microarchitecture if you want. High performance microarchitecture costs hundreds of millions of dollars to develop. Someone may develop competitive RISC-V CPU someday but it will not have open microarchitecture. AMD and Nvidia are examples of fabless companies who develop and sell proprietary microarchitectures. Thinking that someone develops open platform that competes with them is not realistic. SiFive Coreplex IP is good for microcontrollers and alike and relatively transparent but there are similar microcontroller cores available from ARM with similar transparency.

throwaway613834 9y ago
> You can develop open and secure X86 microarchitecture if you want. Apparently there are patent landmines you have to traverse first.
- monocasa 9y ago
  And those landmines even blew up in Nvidia's face.
- Nokinside 9y ago
  Instruction set can't be patented. Intel tries to patent ways to implement and functions those instructions carry. RISC-V will have less problems with those kind of patents, but it's impossible to design high-end microarchitecture without cross-licensing. I may sound negative, but I'm actually positive about RISC-V in embedded and IoT arena. People just attach too much hype for the architecture.
  - throwaway613834 9y ago
    > Instruction set can't be patented. Intel tries to patent ways to implement and functions those instructions carry. ionno, try telling that to Microsoft. This wasn't welcoming: https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2017/06/intel-fires-warning-shots-at-microsoft-claims-x86-emulation-is-a-patent-minefield/ https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2017/06/intel...
  - verall 9y ago
    > Instruction set can't be pantented This is simply false, as far as Intel is concerned. You can't even emulate x86 (therefore infringing 0 hardware patents) without expected heavy litigation from Intel. AFAIK the actual x86 patents have expired but none of the extensions have (x86-64, SSE, ...)
    - Nokinside 9y ago
      Intel naturally tries to threaten and extend patents as much as they can. But they ISA itself can't be patented. If you look their actual patents, they are all patents on implementation details or attempts to patent functions that instructions do.
      - em3rgent0rdr 9y ago
        > "Intel naturally tries to threaten and extend patents as much as they can. But they ISA itself can't be patented." It is practically impossible to implement these extensions, such as SSE variants, without intel being able to make a case against you. So even if theoretically the ISA can't be patented, for all practical purposes they have the legal power to effectively prohibit a 3rd-party from implementing an x86 core.
    - microcolonel 9y ago
      x86-64 is AMD's IP, not Intel's. The proper name is AMD64.
      - em3rgent0rdr 9y ago
        "AMD64" is simply a Trade Mark. But the problem being discussed is the separate IP issue of patents.
  - bitwize 9y ago
    Intel owns patents on the Itanium ISA and aspects of the x86 ISA. If you still think instruction sets can't be patented, just try challenging Intel about it in court. There will be a smouldering crater left where you once stood once the lawsuits are over with.
solomatov 9y ago
>High performance microarchitecture costs hundreds of millions of dollars to develop. Someone may develop competitive RISC-V CPU someday but it will not have open microarchitecture. AMD and Nvidia are examples of fabless companies who develop and sell proprietary microarchitectures. Thinking that someone develops open platform that competes with them is not realistic. I am sure that they same argument should have worked for OSes 30 years ago. I think it will go the same way as it was with linux but much faster. There're a lot of small and not so small players who aren't able to develop microarchitecture themselves but quite eager to take their part in open source project.
- tfha 9y ago
  I'm not sure that works as well for hardware. Every fab is different. Imagine if you had to rewrite the whole Linux kernel for every CPU on the market. Getting high performance requires tuning carefully to the exact fab, and fabs change and upgrade on like a two year cycle. To the best of my knowledge there's no equivalent to the C language for fabs. You have to port the whole chip every time
  - solomatov 9y ago
    The same argument can be applied to the hardware. We have a lot of different hardware, it's all different, and every pice of hardware needs its own driver. In practice, drivers are created by hardware vendors and often they are open source. Of course, production processes are more complicated than this, but there's a degree of decoupling of the processor together with its architecture from the production process.

throwaway613834 9y ago

> You can develop open and secure X86 microarchitecture if you want. Apparently there are patent landmines you have to traverse first.

monocasa 9y ago
And those landmines even blew up in Nvidia's face.
Nokinside 9y ago
Instruction set can't be patented. Intel tries to patent ways to implement and functions those instructions carry. RISC-V will have less problems with those kind of patents, but it's impossible to design high-end microarchitecture without cross-licensing. I may sound negative, but I'm actually positive about RISC-V in embedded and IoT arena. People just attach too much hype for the architecture.
- throwaway613834 9y ago
  > Instruction set can't be patented. Intel tries to patent ways to implement and functions those instructions carry. ionno, try telling that to Microsoft. This wasn't welcoming: https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2017/06/intel-fires-warning-shots-at-microsoft-claims-x86-emulation-is-a-patent-minefield/ https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2017/06/intel...
- verall 9y ago
  > Instruction set can't be pantented This is simply false, as far as Intel is concerned. You can't even emulate x86 (therefore infringing 0 hardware patents) without expected heavy litigation from Intel. AFAIK the actual x86 patents have expired but none of the extensions have (x86-64, SSE, ...)
  - Nokinside 9y ago
    Intel naturally tries to threaten and extend patents as much as they can. But they ISA itself can't be patented. If you look their actual patents, they are all patents on implementation details or attempts to patent functions that instructions do.
    - em3rgent0rdr 9y ago
      > "Intel naturally tries to threaten and extend patents as much as they can. But they ISA itself can't be patented." It is practically impossible to implement these extensions, such as SSE variants, without intel being able to make a case against you. So even if theoretically the ISA can't be patented, for all practical purposes they have the legal power to effectively prohibit a 3rd-party from implementing an x86 core.
  - microcolonel 9y ago
    x86-64 is AMD's IP, not Intel's. The proper name is AMD64.
    - em3rgent0rdr 9y ago
      "AMD64" is simply a Trade Mark. But the problem being discussed is the separate IP issue of patents.
- bitwize 9y ago
  Intel owns patents on the Itanium ISA and aspects of the x86 ISA. If you still think instruction sets can't be patented, just try challenging Intel about it in court. There will be a smouldering crater left where you once stood once the lawsuits are over with.

solomatov 9y ago

>High performance microarchitecture costs hundreds of millions of dollars to develop. Someone may develop competitive RISC-V CPU someday but it will not have open microarchitecture. AMD and Nvidia are examples of fabless companies who develop and sell proprietary microarchitectures. Thinking that someone develops open platform that competes with them is not realistic. I am sure that they same argument should have worked for OSes 30 years ago. I think it will go the same way as it was with linux but much faster. There're a lot of small and not so small players who aren't able to develop microarchitecture themselves but quite eager to take their part in open source project.

tfha 9y ago
I'm not sure that works as well for hardware. Every fab is different. Imagine if you had to rewrite the whole Linux kernel for every CPU on the market. Getting high performance requires tuning carefully to the exact fab, and fabs change and upgrade on like a two year cycle. To the best of my knowledge there's no equivalent to the C language for fabs. You have to port the whole chip every time
- solomatov 9y ago
  The same argument can be applied to the hardware. We have a lot of different hardware, it's all different, and every pice of hardware needs its own driver. In practice, drivers are created by hardware vendors and often they are open source. Of course, production processes are more complicated than this, but there's a degree of decoupling of the processor together with its architecture from the production process.