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Can anyone ellaborate on how this compares to say ARM, intel etc?
by urlwolf 9y ago
Can anyone ellaborate on how this compares to say ARM, intel etc?
- ttul 9y agoIt’s an open source design.
- wklm 9y agois it an fpga?
- nine_k 9y agoNo, as far as I can tell, it's an actual RISC-V ASIC; it has 5 cores on a 28nm die. I'm afraid the amount of FPGA required for 4 beefier cores + 1 simpler core + 2 MB coherent L1 cache could cost more than $999, but I may be wrong.
- tyingq 9y agoI get the difference between FPGA and ASIC. But... What's the difference between a CPU core on an ASIC and a normal CPU core?
- q3k 9y agoYou seem to be confused about the terminology. A typical CPU core is an ASIC. An ASIC (application specific integrated circuit) is exactly what it says on the tin - an integrated circuit designed to perform one function - in this case, executing machine code. Most of the chips you see inside electronics are ASICs (everything from operational amplifiers to ethernet PHYs and CPUs).
- tyingq 9y agoI don't usually see the two terms used together, because of the "application specific" vs "general purpose" thing. So I thought there might be something I was missing.
- nine_k 9y agoFPGA is more "general purpose" because you can reconfigure it for almost any purpose. A CPU, compared to it, is more "application-specific", though not as specific as e.g. an ASIC for handling crypro. I probably added too much contrast into my original comment.
- dmytroi 9y agoIt is not AFAIK, this chip contains E51 and U54 cores, E51 from what I seen (when prices were public) costs $595000. --- Upd: some news articles still mention launch prices [0] - [0] https://www.eetasia.com/news/article/chinese-start-up-sells-try-and-buy-si-ip-online https://www.eetasia.com/news/article/chinese-start-up-sells-...
- nickpsecurity 9y agoTo put that into perspective, reports I read put MIPS at $700-900k with ARM starting at $1+ million. Buyers of those get their ecosystem of existing tools, OS's, libraries, etc. RISC-V doesn't have much of an ecosystem yet. However, if FOSS software covers application requirements, then a SOC using the RISC-V chip saves a lot of money upfront. Even more down the line since SiFive doesn't charge royalties. (Edited to change part about royalties after reading article more closely.)
- baobrien 9y agoFrom what I understand, the RTL of these cores and a good chunk of the stuff around them is open [1]. The cores themselves are basically all specialized Rocket cores. What you're paying for is probably the ready-to-fab routed cores in whatever CAD format and support. [1] https://github.com/sifive/freedom https://github.com/sifive/freedom
- garmaine 9y agoThey charge for the peripheral IP and system design. The actual computation core architectures are freely available on GitHub under open source license.
- walkingolof 9y agoRISC-V is a open specification (actually a couple of them) backed by a the RISC-V foudnation, which "anyone" can use to implement a design on their own. So they are closer to what ARM is, which licenses IP for others to implement.