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Seems like a move to prevent RISC-V from gaining a foothold in the server market. Recently there's a potential for server market upset; with trade wars, Intel s

by pippy 7y ago

Seems like a move to prevent RISC-V from gaining a foothold in the server market. Recently there's a potential for server market upset; with trade wars, Intel struggling with die shrinks, ML and custom silicon demands (see FPGA), and recent x86 security flaws. Large players will be looking at optimizing how their infrastructure is set up. It's a good move on behalf of IBM. But it might be a bit too late. If you were a company with a demand for custom silicon, you'd probably choose RISC-V as they already have experienced companies willing to provide support and services to meet your needs. With POWER your choices will be limited.

justinjlynn 7y ago
> Seems like a move to prevent RISC-V from gaining a foothold in the server market. On it's face, yes - absolutely. IBM had to do it now if it didn't want its lunch entirely eaten out from under it. That said, that's a good thing. I think we'll see both architectures working from opposite sides and moving into each other's markets. It's still very early days for RISC-V and OpenPOWER, so hopefully they'll be able to benefit each other. We've got excellent open friendly hardware for OpenPOWER (Raptor Computing System's Talos/Blackbird and soon, Condor lines) and we're getting there with RISC-V embedded systems and mobiles. At least now on both the high and low end of the performance spectrum we have open alternatives for all needs. Here's to a more open, more diverse future where none of us has to scramble to be everywhere, all the time, all at once.
linuxftw 7y ago
If I was a company with demand for custom silicon, I would just license ARM. For example: look at the dozens (hundreds?) of companies licensing ARM. If I cared about having an open AND mature ISA, I'd pick POWER now. Since both RISC-V and POWER are now free, I'm expecting to see a mix of the best of both.

by pippy 7y ago

justinjlynn 7y ago

> Seems like a move to prevent RISC-V from gaining a foothold in the server market. On it's face, yes - absolutely. IBM had to do it now if it didn't want its lunch entirely eaten out from under it. That said, that's a good thing. I think we'll see both architectures working from opposite sides and moving into each other's markets. It's still very early days for RISC-V and OpenPOWER, so hopefully they'll be able to benefit each other. We've got excellent open friendly hardware for OpenPOWER (Raptor Computing System's Talos/Blackbird and soon, Condor lines) and we're getting there with RISC-V embedded systems and mobiles. At least now on both the high and low end of the performance spectrum we have open alternatives for all needs. Here's to a more open, more diverse future where none of us has to scramble to be everywhere, all the time, all at once.

linuxftw 7y ago

If I was a company with demand for custom silicon, I would just license ARM. For example: look at the dozens (hundreds?) of companies licensing ARM. If I cared about having an open AND mature ISA, I'd pick POWER now. Since both RISC-V and POWER are now free, I'm expecting to see a mix of the best of both.