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Riding the RISC-V wave
- SemiTom 6y agoInteresting to see where this is gaining traction and where the challenges are https://semiengineering.com/where-risc-v-is-gaining-traction/ https://semiengineering.com/where-risc-v-is-gaining-traction...
- throwaway4good 6y agoOne of the reason for the interest in RISC-V is the US-China tech war and the US long arm banning of China's biggest tech companies access to ARM. However RISC-V is dominated by US companies and even with some parts open source, it will still be subject to sanctions. A true alternative to ARM need to come out of China.
- oytis 6y agoWell, I don't know, maybe the goal of RISC-V is not to make China happy? Just an idea.
- throwaway4good 6y agoYep. And that's why these massive engineering companies that now are forced to find ARM-alternatives are going to go for something else.
- throwaway4good 6y agoThough the foundation did move to Switzerland for sort of this reason: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-china-semiconductors-insight/u-s-based-chip-tech-group-moving-to-switzerland-over-trade-curb-fears-idUSKBN1XZ16L https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-china-semiconductors-... U.S.-based chip-tech group moving to Switzerland over trade curb fears SAN FRANCISCO/WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A U.S.-based foundation overseeing promising semiconductor technology developed with Pentagon support will soon move to Switzerland after several of the group’s foreign members raised concerns about potential U.S. trade curbs.
- dragonelite 6y agoIm pretty sure the Chinese would rather just use ARM and keep on moving along their current trajectory and existing long term plans.
- pjmlp 6y agoOn the other hand the tech war is a warning signal for us to decrease our dependency on US technology and going back to building our own stacks. Ironically these kind of decisions might just give enough boost to Tizen and Harmony to hit hard Android's hegemony.
- angio 6y agoThe European Union is also investing in RISC-V to become independent when it comes to chips [0, 1]. In the presentation they gave at the RISC-V Forum they explicitly mention tech embargo as one of the reasons why they started this project, together with the need for secure cryptographic functions. [0] https://www.european-processor-initiative.eu/ https://www.european-processor-initiative.eu/ [1] https://riscv.org/2019/08/how-the-european-processor-initiative-is-leveraging-risc-v-for-the-future-of-supercomputing/ https://riscv.org/2019/08/how-the-european-processor-initiat...
- jacquesm 6y agoThat's a direct consequence of the Trump administration bungling its international image.
- free_rms 6y agoI'm no fan of Trump but it's worth noting that we tapped Angela Merkel's phone under Nobel Peace Prize Winner President Obama. Better PR is nice but it doesn't change the underlying incentives.
- jacquesm 6y agoSure, but that is not what caused things to happen in 2018/2019 at that level. It is the capricious trade wars with Germany, China, and whoever else that caused this.
- ArkVark 6y agoHave we seen much true tech innovation from China that is not just building on existing US, Taiwanese, Japanese, Korean, European technology and products?
- neltnerb 6y agoI have no doubt that there will be a Chinese developed processor, I don't see why it would be open or why it would preclude risc-v from being used as well. I have no doubt that both would ultimately be cheap and commercially appealing.
- justaguy88 6y agoThere already is one, https://www.nextplatform.com/2020/08/21/alibaba-on-the-bleeding-edge-of-risc-v-with-xt910/ https://www.nextplatform.com/2020/08/21/alibaba-on-the-bleed...
- GoblinSlayer 6y agohttps://www.theregister.com/2019/07/27/alibaba_risc_v_chip/ https://www.theregister.com/2019/07/27/alibaba_risc_v_chip/
- snvzz 6y agoRISC-V is based on Switzerland, not US.
- pjmlp 6y agoI wonder how much wave it is going to be if we start getting RISC-V ISA "distributions".
- rstuart4133 6y agoAbout as successful as Linux I guess, which now powers the vast bulk of all CPU's capable of running it. Having Ubuntu on Desktops, RedHat on some corporate servers, Debian on others, Pine in VM's, raspberian on rpi's, openwrt on routers, Android on mobile phones, yada, yada, yada doesn't seem to have done Linux any damage. Quite the reverse. It's almost certainly a major factor in Linux wiping the floor against Windows. Microsoft doesn't have the manpower to turn Windows into something that address all those niche's. While it's true Microsoft have succesfully defended the desktop for now, they have in the mean time lost the war on every other front.
- varispeed 6y agoAre you sure? Last update to Windows Linux subsystem makes you feel like running Linux natively. It's a huge step and it will only improve.
- jnxx 6y ago> Last update to Windows Linux subsystem makes you feel like running Linux natively. It's a huge step and it will only improve. As long as the system collects and exfiltrates data without me explicitly allowing this, and does OS updates just before somebody wants to give a presentation, it is not the feel of running Linux. The feeling of running Linux is the user being in control of his/her device and his/her data. A 1990 MS DOS installation is closer to that feeling than any recent Windows.
- varispeed 6y agoUnfortunately that is true. I am not optimistic that it will change, but it is miles better than Apple in this regard. Community should put more pressure on Microsoft to change these anti-patterns.
- masta 6y agoWith Nvidia buying ARM, RISC-V might get a big push and investments from parties who preferred the independence of the former ARM Ltd.
- ernst_klim 6y agoLet's hope so. Although Nvidia could go full-blown openARM initiative, which could effectively kill RISK-V.
- coronadisaster 6y agonvidia and open aren't compatible
- dathinab 6y agoI expected Nvidia to first continue running ARM like it does now and then slowly push ARM+Nvidea chips whileeven more slowly hindering ARM+other GPU chips. The end goal would be to make ARM+other GPU technical viable but non copetive so that most customers will have to buy ARM+Nvidea to be competive leading to a hard to touch quasi monopoly of Nvidea for android phones (maybe except cheap ones) and and embedded ML. Oh and at some point they probably would restrict new "custom silicon" contacts to prevent something like Apple silicon from happening again.
- tw04 6y agoI guess call me skeptical. ARM+Nvidia GPU (Tegra) already runs absolute circles around everything besides Apple. They didn't need to acquire ARM to make a chip that's still superior to just about everything else on the market 5 years later. I'm willing to bet this is entirely around controlling their own future, not changing the way ARM is licensed. With Intel at least acting like they're going to REALLY try to enter the GPU space at this point, Nvidia needed to acquire AMD or ARM to solidify their position. AMD was probably the preferred path but divesting of the GPU business would've been difficult if not impossible with all the embedded graphics chips they've put onto the market. Plus I would imagine the IP pollution potential would open them up to lawsuits from whoever acquired the GPU assets. And if Intel were to be the acquirer (seems like the most likely suitor) - they'd actually have to be seriously concerned about their GPU leadership.
- phkahler 6y ago>> “Often people say, ‘Open source, it’s free.’ But it’s not free,” says Dominic Rizzo... It's Free as in freedom, not price. Think of it as unencumbered. Risc-v is not open source like software, there are some open sorce implementations though.
- pbronez 6y agoThis quote was my favorite part of the article, because it applies to the whole Open Source concept. It's amazing to me, but there are still business folks who think "Let's release this as open source so other people will do the maintenance for free." Here's the full quote from the article: > “Often people say, ‘Open source, it’s free.’ But it’s not free,” says Dominic Rizzo, project lead at Google and project director for OpenTitan. “This is why we find the most successful open-source projects are ones where people have a long-term vested interest and are working together in a collaborative fashion. This contrasts to the style of open source where people developed something and kicked it over the wall as open source.”
- rhn_mk1 6y agoWhat is not open source about RISC-V? As far as I can tell, there's the matter of using a trademark, and the control of the project is not given to the community. But the specifications themselves seem free as in freedom (CC-BY-4.0): https://riscv.org/technical/specifications/ https://riscv.org/technical/specifications/
- dependenttypes 6y ago> and the control of the project is not given to the community. They also have private mailing lists, but I agree, it is certainly FOSS.
- hajile 6y agoNot reinventing the wheel also helps. Billions are spent every year to design things that have already been designed, but aren't free to use.
- imtringued 6y ago
- distantskeptic 6y agoI'm skeptical about RISC-V or any other open CPU design providing the quality of commercial designs. Testing and verification is not free. ARM tests their designs with millions of hours of simulation of heavy multithreaded workload, and chip implementors would have done the same with the actual silicon. Licensing costs of commercial ARM chips are a drop in the bucket compared to this necessary expense to ensure reliability.
- payne92 6y agoWe've gone down this path with virtually every other bit of computing technology: operating systems, databases, etc. Open always wins....given enough time. No single company can compete with a collective open ecosystem at scale.
- beefhash 6y agoOpen always wins, but that doesn't necessarily mean that it'll be qualitatively better, which is what your parent comment seems to hint at.
- wmf 6y agoCertainly university-grade hardware isn't commercial-quality but just as most Linux development is now done by paid professionals we are starting to see production cores like SweRV that happen to also be open source.
- tlamponi 6y agoOpen does not shuts out commercial and enterprise companies. Providers of RISC-V HW or Designs, like Alibaba, SiFive or Western Digital, do lots of testing too. It would be like saying that Linux does not provides the quality of commercial closed OS (kernel), this is just wrong in multiple ways: 1. Linux is also sold as base of some commercial OS (e.g., RHEL, SUSE) 2. Lots of commercial companies revenue depends directly or indirectly on it, so there's a massive testing effort. In it's sum it so massive that I cannot believe that it's matched by any closed commercial kernel (no actual numbers here, sorry, this is really just personal ball parking). The same can happen to RISC-V, the combined testing effort can easily outnumber the one of ARM in the future. So while yes, testing and verification is not free, it is just not an argument at all against any open CPU design, be it openPOWER, RISC-V, open MIPS, ... Rather, it speaks again for openness as combined test effort will be hard to be matched by a single closed player.