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I don't like the marketing BS from WD, especially the part it is calling itself a company using 1 billion cores a year. Let's be clear - those 1 billion cores r

I don't like the marketing BS from WD, especially the part it is calling itself a company using 1 billion cores a year. Let's be clear - those 1 billion cores run a single type of application - controller firmware. It is not remotely comparable to the rich set of applications run on devices such as smartphones. Why smartphone makers don't call themselves 1 billion core company? Because they have more interesting stuff to say and more exciting products to show.

Symmetry 9y ago
ARM survived from the BBC micro days to its current resurgence thanks to supplying microcontrollers in billions of devices. Those cores aren't sexy but they are important and they result in the sort of economies of scale that let you invade application processor land from below, as ARM did. You can be assured that when ARM marketing material brags about how many cores they licence they mention all the processors in microwaves, etc, too.
- sweden 9y ago
  I think the point is that Western Digital didn't need to make this announcement except for taking advantage of the free marketing force behind the word "RISC-V". Most people don't even know that there are CPUs inside HDD/SDDs/memories and whether these use RISC-V or Arm or x86 won't impact the end consumer at all.
  - Symmetry 9y ago
    I think the announcement was actually very important, though I agree it was prone to misinterpretation. When I first learned about RISC-V I thought "Wow, I really could have used this thing during my thesis" but while it was obviously destined for success in the world of research I was skeptical that it would see any commercial uptake. But with NVidia's and now especially WD's announcements that they're using it in products suddenly it seems much less risky for other companies to incorporate RISC-V designs in their own products. I don't think this is of much practical significance to the average reader of HN but there are people for whom this announcement is very important in a fairly immediate way. And those people are, in turn, very significant to the future of RISC-V.

Symmetry 9y ago

ARM survived from the BBC micro days to its current resurgence thanks to supplying microcontrollers in billions of devices. Those cores aren't sexy but they are important and they result in the sort of economies of scale that let you invade application processor land from below, as ARM did. You can be assured that when ARM marketing material brags about how many cores they licence they mention all the processors in microwaves, etc, too.

sweden 9y ago
I think the point is that Western Digital didn't need to make this announcement except for taking advantage of the free marketing force behind the word "RISC-V". Most people don't even know that there are CPUs inside HDD/SDDs/memories and whether these use RISC-V or Arm or x86 won't impact the end consumer at all.
- Symmetry 9y ago
  I think the announcement was actually very important, though I agree it was prone to misinterpretation. When I first learned about RISC-V I thought "Wow, I really could have used this thing during my thesis" but while it was obviously destined for success in the world of research I was skeptical that it would see any commercial uptake. But with NVidia's and now especially WD's announcements that they're using it in products suddenly it seems much less risky for other companies to incorporate RISC-V designs in their own products. I don't think this is of much practical significance to the average reader of HN but there are people for whom this announcement is very important in a fairly immediate way. And those people are, in turn, very significant to the future of RISC-V.