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Baikal T1 MIPS Processor – The Last of the Mohicans?
- microcolonel 8y agoI'd be excited to see Baikal have a RISC-V design, though perhaps they have agreements or other constraints which prevent that, or it still doesn't look like a good deal to them. I guess for now it's probably mainly that licensing a complete solution in the RISC-V space raises more questions than licensing from Imagination, and if ARM were cheaper and more efficient at negotiating contracts then possibly ARM as well. Always up for more vendors stabbing at this stuff, especially if it means more companies have the incentives to consider investing in fabs. Having to choose between a U.S.-centric hardware trust model and a China-centric one seems a little bit lame.
- ulzeraj 8y agoI always thought the modern Baikal initiative to be fueled by the Russian government in an attempt to attain independence from potentially backdoored western products specially after all the PRISM scandal. If RISC-V is a good step in that direction I don’t see why not.
- userbinator 8y agoI wouldn't be surprised if they chose RISC-V --- it is basically a MIPS clone with some small differences, perhaps one of the biggest being its lack of licensing costs.
- microcolonel 8y agoI will say that I don't think it's quite fair to call it "a MIPS clone with some small differences". I'm currently trying to port a JIT backend from MIPS to RISC-V and it is rather involved. If you're just translating some assembly functions piecemeal, maybe it looks very similar, but the differences around the size of immediates can completely change your strategy for layout.
- baybal2 8y agoThey basically made T1 to blackmail arm into licensing them arm cores and peripheral ip.