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A good sign that the RISC-V hype is out of control here is that the top comment on a news story about something good for ARM claims that it is actually bad for

by wk_end 8y ago

A good sign that the RISC-V hype is out of control here is that the top comment on a news story about something good for ARM claims that it is actually bad for ARM and good for RISC-V.

justicezyx 8y ago
No, I see this comment as very relevant. If you think about what happened recently, and Huawei's position as the beacon of China's hihg-tech industry; the fact that they are in Arm and Risc-V suggests the scope of their investment. That is important to indicate the direction they want to go. If you also correlate that with their investment in K8s, you'll see a clear picture how a complete strategy is being laid out. And Huawei understands Open Source is going to be the future for catching up. Now piecing everything together: - If done right, an investment in Arm for short-/middle-term, and long term bet on Risc-V + cluster manager like K8s, will provide a meaningful long-term alternative for cluster computing. - Then again, Huawei has similar investment in the edge computing space for various kind of low-power phone chips.
- dmix 8y ago
  So basically their investment in ARM has cross-over advantage to RISC-V (and likewise?)?
  - justicezyx 8y ago
    What do you mean by crossover?
    - ahartmetz 8y ago
      Presumably that CPU design expertise is transferable between architectures, especially if they are similar.
      - justicezyx 8y ago
        I only know very little on the surface of chip design in general. My impression is yes, expertise are transferrable. Although the key here is cultivating market and hone the operational prowse, those also require time to do.
Dylan16807 8y ago
When the starting point is RISC-V coming from nothing, a company that has strong chip-design capabilities and interest in both is a step closer to parity. News can be good for multiple parties. It's good news for Arm and a potential threat. Editorializing to "actually bad for Arm" is not an accurate reading of the comment.
phkahler 8y ago
...a news story about something good for ARM claims that it is actually bad for ARM and good for RISC-V. Not really. While I was reading the announcement from Huawei it seemed like it was almost as much an announcement from ARM. It also spoke to Huawei being a large supporter of open source and collaborative development. It mentioned several organizations they work with, or are a part of. In light of their open nature, their interest and involvement in RISC-V was notably absent, once again hinting at the announcements importance to ARM. They make it sound like this is one of the highest performing ARM processors out there, and maybe it is. But at that point you have to ask what exactly does ARM bring to the table for Huawei? I contend that at this point it is mostly familiarity and mind-share.
- sliken 8y ago
  Today's CPUs from AMD and Intel are going after the volume cloud market with a range of CPUs with a particular configuration of functional units, cores, PCI-e lanes, memory channels, etc. They both push an eco system of motherboards, compilers, operating systems, libraries, and application tuning. ARM brings (the platform, not just the reference chips) a healthy eco system and allows Huwai to make their own decisions on what the market needs and doesn't automatically give most of the profit to AMD and Intel. Keep in mind that for the first time in several decades Intel and AMD chips doubled in price, power usage, and performance in the last generation. When buying whitebox servers most of the profit is going to AMD or Intel, not supermicro or similar. Part of the problem with competing with the Amazon, Google, and Microsoft clouds is that they more assuredly are getting better CPU prices than you will. If you can make your own CPU So given Linux's maturity and increasing activity with arm on the server side the barrier to entry to competing with Intel and AMD is lowering. This combined with doubling in CPU prices makes AMD and Intel much more of a target than they were 2 years ago.

by wk_end 8y ago

A good sign that the RISC-V hype is out of control here is that the top comment on a news story about something good for ARM claims that it is actually bad for ARM and good for RISC-V.

justicezyx 8y ago

No, I see this comment as very relevant. If you think about what happened recently, and Huawei's position as the beacon of China's hihg-tech industry; the fact that they are in Arm and Risc-V suggests the scope of their investment. That is important to indicate the direction they want to go. If you also correlate that with their investment in K8s, you'll see a clear picture how a complete strategy is being laid out. And Huawei understands Open Source is going to be the future for catching up. Now piecing everything together: - If done right, an investment in Arm for short-/middle-term, and long term bet on Risc-V + cluster manager like K8s, will provide a meaningful long-term alternative for cluster computing. - Then again, Huawei has similar investment in the edge computing space for various kind of low-power phone chips.

dmix 8y ago
So basically their investment in ARM has cross-over advantage to RISC-V (and likewise?)?
- justicezyx 8y ago
  What do you mean by crossover?
  - ahartmetz 8y ago
    Presumably that CPU design expertise is transferable between architectures, especially if they are similar.
    - justicezyx 8y ago
      I only know very little on the surface of chip design in general. My impression is yes, expertise are transferrable. Although the key here is cultivating market and hone the operational prowse, those also require time to do.

Dylan16807 8y ago

When the starting point is RISC-V coming from nothing, a company that has strong chip-design capabilities and interest in both is a step closer to parity. News can be good for multiple parties. It's good news for Arm and a potential threat. Editorializing to "actually bad for Arm" is not an accurate reading of the comment.

phkahler 8y ago

...a news story about something good for ARM claims that it is actually bad for ARM and good for RISC-V. Not really. While I was reading the announcement from Huawei it seemed like it was almost as much an announcement from ARM. It also spoke to Huawei being a large supporter of open source and collaborative development. It mentioned several organizations they work with, or are a part of. In light of their open nature, their interest and involvement in RISC-V was notably absent, once again hinting at the announcements importance to ARM. They make it sound like this is one of the highest performing ARM processors out there, and maybe it is. But at that point you have to ask what exactly does ARM bring to the table for Huawei? I contend that at this point it is mostly familiarity and mind-share.

sliken 8y ago
Today's CPUs from AMD and Intel are going after the volume cloud market with a range of CPUs with a particular configuration of functional units, cores, PCI-e lanes, memory channels, etc. They both push an eco system of motherboards, compilers, operating systems, libraries, and application tuning. ARM brings (the platform, not just the reference chips) a healthy eco system and allows Huwai to make their own decisions on what the market needs and doesn't automatically give most of the profit to AMD and Intel. Keep in mind that for the first time in several decades Intel and AMD chips doubled in price, power usage, and performance in the last generation. When buying whitebox servers most of the profit is going to AMD or Intel, not supermicro or similar. Part of the problem with competing with the Amazon, Google, and Microsoft clouds is that they more assuredly are getting better CPU prices than you will. If you can make your own CPU So given Linux's maturity and increasing activity with arm on the server side the barrier to entry to competing with Intel and AMD is lowering. This combined with doubling in CPU prices makes AMD and Intel much more of a target than they were 2 years ago.