5 ms·

I don't really know what you mean by “more accomplished people than Keller” but I sure do share your overview. My point was more that economies of scale happen

by K0SM0S 7y ago

I don't really know what you mean by “more accomplished people than Keller” but I sure do share your overview. My point was more that economies of scale happen with killer products (e.g. how CISC won over RISC back in the 90's, it wasn't about tech but about product, and as you say it falls down to sales and marketing). Somehow a guy like Jim got involved in some of the best scalers out there (AMD's x64, Apple's A chips, Tesla's self-driving AI, AMD's Zen, now something at Intel with 3D stacking most likely, and next...?) Here's to RISC-V, anyhow!

kick 7y ago
I don't really know what you mean by “more accomplished people than Keller” but I sure do share your overview. Look at the SiFive team for starters. Anyway, here's to RISC-V!
0xcde4c3db 7y ago
To me, David Patterson is the most obvious person who might qualify for that description. He (co-)wrote the book on computer architecture and how it relates to performance (Computer Architecture: A Quantitative Approach) and led development of RISC-I and RISC-II ("RISC-V" is a reference to this lineage; I believe other projects not officially bearing the "RISC" name were counted as III and IV).
- dnautics 7y ago
  Patterson also worked on TPUv1 (iirc) and that wasn't so hot.
- K0SM0S 7y ago
  He's a giant, no question about it. I just hope the people involved in RISC-V are collectively able, as an industry, to deliver the kind of fabrication process backbone funded by great products 'agressively' marketed that saw the victory of pretty much all standards — CPU instruction sets very much included. A combination of very applied engineering + shrewd business mindset.
  - 0xcde4c3db 7y ago
    I think RISC-V is going to win for fundamentally the same reason that ARM won: it removes obstacles between product teams and processor cores. ARM didn't win by having the best instruction set design or the most advanced architecture, it won because licensing it was less of a hassle than licensing a different core/ISA. It's like ARM had a "buy now" button where everyone else had "contact sales" buttons. But extending that metaphor, RISC-V is "you don't need to click a button; it's already on your porch". I assume that RISC-V still has a gap (relative to ARM) between the ISA/HDL levels and getting to an actual tape-out. But I think SiFive et. al. can tackle it.
    - hakfoo 7y ago
      I think there were a couple reasons ARM won: * ARM wasn't directly in the manufacturing business. This meant they weren't a supply chokepoint when demand scaled by a factor of thousands. Just take the IP core and fab it yourself! * They triangulated the market unexpectedly well. There was a definite gap in the market between "performance at any cost" big architectures (x86/Itanium/Power/PA-RISC/SPARC) and "Draws no current, but gets winded running the clock for a VCR" (6502/Z80/68HC11/Atmel/PIC) little ones. For a long time, this was filled by on an ad-hoc basis-- one-off designs for game consoles, set-top boxes, and ahead-of-their-time smart appliances. Most of these were closed, single-vendor, no-interoperability systems where "ease of integration" and "off the shelf tools" didn't really matter, so we had all sorts of bit players. It took the arrival of full-power handheld devices with third-party software support (PDAs and then smartphones) for a large demand to appear, and ARM was ready with a product line that fit the space well. Compare the alternative, a world where we had had x86-based Windows CE devices and eventually iPhones. Intel/AMD/VIA would have been scrambling to put together the diversity of custom designs these devices cried out for. It would have required a massive respin of their architectures (look how hard it was to get Atom into a phone-ready state, and even then it did poorly) and then backlogged their foundries.

by K0SM0S 7y ago

kick 7y ago

I don't really know what you mean by “more accomplished people than Keller” but I sure do share your overview. Look at the SiFive team for starters. Anyway, here's to RISC-V!

0xcde4c3db 7y ago

To me, David Patterson is the most obvious person who might qualify for that description. He (co-)wrote the book on computer architecture and how it relates to performance (Computer Architecture: A Quantitative Approach) and led development of RISC-I and RISC-II ("RISC-V" is a reference to this lineage; I believe other projects not officially bearing the "RISC" name were counted as III and IV).

dnautics 7y ago
Patterson also worked on TPUv1 (iirc) and that wasn't so hot.
K0SM0S 7y ago
He's a giant, no question about it. I just hope the people involved in RISC-V are collectively able, as an industry, to deliver the kind of fabrication process backbone funded by great products 'agressively' marketed that saw the victory of pretty much all standards — CPU instruction sets very much included. A combination of very applied engineering + shrewd business mindset.
- 0xcde4c3db 7y ago
  I think RISC-V is going to win for fundamentally the same reason that ARM won: it removes obstacles between product teams and processor cores. ARM didn't win by having the best instruction set design or the most advanced architecture, it won because licensing it was less of a hassle than licensing a different core/ISA. It's like ARM had a "buy now" button where everyone else had "contact sales" buttons. But extending that metaphor, RISC-V is "you don't need to click a button; it's already on your porch". I assume that RISC-V still has a gap (relative to ARM) between the ISA/HDL levels and getting to an actual tape-out. But I think SiFive et. al. can tackle it.
  - hakfoo 7y ago
    I think there were a couple reasons ARM won: * ARM wasn't directly in the manufacturing business. This meant they weren't a supply chokepoint when demand scaled by a factor of thousands. Just take the IP core and fab it yourself! * They triangulated the market unexpectedly well. There was a definite gap in the market between "performance at any cost" big architectures (x86/Itanium/Power/PA-RISC/SPARC) and "Draws no current, but gets winded running the clock for a VCR" (6502/Z80/68HC11/Atmel/PIC) little ones. For a long time, this was filled by on an ad-hoc basis-- one-off designs for game consoles, set-top boxes, and ahead-of-their-time smart appliances. Most of these were closed, single-vendor, no-interoperability systems where "ease of integration" and "off the shelf tools" didn't really matter, so we had all sorts of bit players. It took the arrival of full-power handheld devices with third-party software support (PDAs and then smartphones) for a large demand to appear, and ARM was ready with a product line that fit the space well. Compare the alternative, a world where we had had x86-based Windows CE devices and eventually iPhones. Intel/AMD/VIA would have been scrambling to put together the diversity of custom designs these devices cried out for. It would have required a massive respin of their architectures (look how hard it was to get Atom into a phone-ready state, and even then it did poorly) and then backlogged their foundries.