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ARM royalties 1.0% - 2.0% of the chip cost and negotiable. Higher the volume, smaller the royalty. Foundry pays extra 0.5% for the physical IP package. When so

ARM royalties 1.0% - 2.0% of the chip cost and negotiable. Higher the volume, smaller the royalty. Foundry pays extra 0.5% for the physical IP package. When somebody decides to invest into large volume laptop/desktop/server microarchitecture to compete with Intel and AMD, nothing prevents them from adding their own proprietary ISA extensions. RISC-V allows classic embrace and extend tactics. RISC-V for Microsoft surface and RISC-V for Google Chrome may not be fully compatible with each other and RISC-V AWS cloud processors.

nickik 8y ago
Most open software that is not vender provided will run on RISC-V. Meaning no matter if Google or Microsoft, that stuff will work. It want use their proprietary extensions but often I don't really care about that and if they pay for developing or updating all open source software so it runs on their extension then that's fine also.
est31 8y ago
Embrace & extend are a big danger indeed. We might be headed into an era where there aren't a few well-understood proprietary ISAs but instead there are lots of badly understood proprietary ISAs that base on some open source core.
- pjc50 8y ago
  Ah, yes. "Know how every ARM system boots slightly differently with different peripherals? How about we encode this wacky incompatibility into the instruction set too?"
microcolonel 8y ago
> RISC-V for Microsoft surface and RISC-V for Google Chrome may not be fully compatible with each other and RISC-V AWS cloud processors. It is up to software distributors to decide whether it's worthwhile to use those extensions; provided they are even allowed to run their own software on the thing to begin with (which was not the case with Surface RT anyway, extended ISA or not). > When somebody decides to invest into large volume laptop/desktop/server microarchitecture to compete with Intel and AMD, nothing prevents them from adding their own proprietary ISA extensions. Nothing prevents AMD and Intel from doing this either, and they do it all the time! You just don't notice because they agreed privately to cross-license the extensions. And at the end of the day, the parts of the platform that you'd use for a standard operating system (notwithstanding new tagged memory or other exotic architectures, which I'd argue are a good, innovative form of incompatibility) are fully standardized already on RISC-V. If Microsoft wants to make their next version of NT on RISC-V rely on Qualcomm-proprietary instructions, that's their prerogative.
- int_19h 8y ago
  > provided they are even allowed to run their own software on the thing to begin with (which was not the case with Surface RT anyway, extended ISA or not). Surface RT allowed Windows Store apps, including native ones.
  - cyphar 8y ago
    I think you're agreeing with GP -- it only allowed software signed by Microsoft (in other words, you couldn't run your own software or operating system unless Microsoft said so). In this hypothetical proprietary RISV-V scenario, you might not even be able to run unsigned code on the device and so nobody is going to bother supporting its weird instruction set.
baybal2 8y ago
> RISC-V allows classic embrace and extend tactics. RISC-V for Microsoft surface and RISC-V for Google Chrome may not be fully compatible with each other and RISC-V AWS cloud processors. The zoo of endianness, and extensions support did not do anything to ARM's rise.
- pertymcpert 8y ago
  Endianness is not the same, it's a standard part of the architecture. And the extensions could be tested for based on ISA version. Most of ARM's history is non-divergent.

nickik 8y ago

Most open software that is not vender provided will run on RISC-V. Meaning no matter if Google or Microsoft, that stuff will work. It want use their proprietary extensions but often I don't really care about that and if they pay for developing or updating all open source software so it runs on their extension then that's fine also.

est31 8y ago

Embrace & extend are a big danger indeed. We might be headed into an era where there aren't a few well-understood proprietary ISAs but instead there are lots of badly understood proprietary ISAs that base on some open source core.

pjc50 8y ago
Ah, yes. "Know how every ARM system boots slightly differently with different peripherals? How about we encode this wacky incompatibility into the instruction set too?"

microcolonel 8y ago

> RISC-V for Microsoft surface and RISC-V for Google Chrome may not be fully compatible with each other and RISC-V AWS cloud processors. It is up to software distributors to decide whether it's worthwhile to use those extensions; provided they are even allowed to run their own software on the thing to begin with (which was not the case with Surface RT anyway, extended ISA or not). > When somebody decides to invest into large volume laptop/desktop/server microarchitecture to compete with Intel and AMD, nothing prevents them from adding their own proprietary ISA extensions. Nothing prevents AMD and Intel from doing this either, and they do it all the time! You just don't notice because they agreed privately to cross-license the extensions. And at the end of the day, the parts of the platform that you'd use for a standard operating system (notwithstanding new tagged memory or other exotic architectures, which I'd argue are a good, innovative form of incompatibility) are fully standardized already on RISC-V. If Microsoft wants to make their next version of NT on RISC-V rely on Qualcomm-proprietary instructions, that's their prerogative.

int_19h 8y ago
> provided they are even allowed to run their own software on the thing to begin with (which was not the case with Surface RT anyway, extended ISA or not). Surface RT allowed Windows Store apps, including native ones.
- cyphar 8y ago
  I think you're agreeing with GP -- it only allowed software signed by Microsoft (in other words, you couldn't run your own software or operating system unless Microsoft said so). In this hypothetical proprietary RISV-V scenario, you might not even be able to run unsigned code on the device and so nobody is going to bother supporting its weird instruction set.

baybal2 8y ago

> RISC-V allows classic embrace and extend tactics. RISC-V for Microsoft surface and RISC-V for Google Chrome may not be fully compatible with each other and RISC-V AWS cloud processors. The zoo of endianness, and extensions support did not do anything to ARM's rise.

pertymcpert 8y ago
Endianness is not the same, it's a standard part of the architecture. And the extensions could be tested for based on ISA version. Most of ARM's history is non-divergent.