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> It also goes against a wider industrial trend of moving from ARM to RISCV and other architectures. Is this really already an industry trend? It feels more li

> It also goes against a wider industrial trend of moving from ARM to RISCV and other architectures. Is this really already an industry trend? It feels more like some parties experimenting with the platform, not necessarily with intentions to move to it wholesale at any point in the future. But I'm probably missing stuff, since I'm not following that space well.

easygenes 7y ago
The short answer is that since RISC-V is open source, it's a bypass around all the IP restrictions that are coming from the US-China tradewar and all the Chinese silicon companies want everything to be RISC-V yesterday and it's a strategic priority.
Laforet 7y ago
Western Digital has comitted to go 100% RISC-V in the near future, with Seagate and Samsung not far behind. As far as storage devices are concerned there is definitely a trend.
- benj111 7y ago
  "with Seagate and Samsung not far behind" Reference? I can find one reference to Samsung using Risc v for an IoT thing, and nothing for seagate.
fluffything 7y ago
> Is this really already an industry trend? Probably not, or not yet. > It feels more like some parties experimenting with the platform, not necessarily with intentions to move to it wholesale at any point in the future. Some big players are moving / have moved to it already. Western Digital is already replacing its ARM HDD controllers with RISC-V chips, nvidia is replacing some chips in their GPUs with RISC-V chips, etc. These are all shipping products. If you need a chip to do something relatively simple and low cost, you are probably already better off with RISC-V today than you are with ARM mainly because its cheaper and has no licensing issues. I don't know of any big player doing anything complex with RISC-V yet. There is no bit manipulation ISA, no vector ISA, no encryption ISA, ... and many other things that you would need for a general purpose SoC that's not only cheap but also competitive in performance and TDP with ARM.

easygenes 7y ago

The short answer is that since RISC-V is open source, it's a bypass around all the IP restrictions that are coming from the US-China tradewar and all the Chinese silicon companies want everything to be RISC-V yesterday and it's a strategic priority.

Laforet 7y ago

Western Digital has comitted to go 100% RISC-V in the near future, with Seagate and Samsung not far behind. As far as storage devices are concerned there is definitely a trend.

benj111 7y ago
"with Seagate and Samsung not far behind" Reference? I can find one reference to Samsung using Risc v for an IoT thing, and nothing for seagate.

fluffything 7y ago

> Is this really already an industry trend? Probably not, or not yet. > It feels more like some parties experimenting with the platform, not necessarily with intentions to move to it wholesale at any point in the future. Some big players are moving / have moved to it already. Western Digital is already replacing its ARM HDD controllers with RISC-V chips, nvidia is replacing some chips in their GPUs with RISC-V chips, etc. These are all shipping products. If you need a chip to do something relatively simple and low cost, you are probably already better off with RISC-V today than you are with ARM mainly because its cheaper and has no licensing issues. I don't know of any big player doing anything complex with RISC-V yet. There is no bit manipulation ISA, no vector ISA, no encryption ISA, ... and many other things that you would need for a general purpose SoC that's not only cheap but also competitive in performance and TDP with ARM.