5 ms·

I've seen quite a few presentations, but never have I seen such a direct approach to showcasing the merit of RISCV. Well done.

artemonster 6y ago
I am really curious about the content of that article. I work closely with different embedded CPU architectures and in most of our multi-expert evalutions of RISC-V (from different suppliers) it could not compete with commercial offerings (avoiding names).
- artemonster 6y ago
  Allright, I've used the incognito "trick" to gain access to that article and I must say that this article is an utter crap written by a person that never seen why and how processors are chosen to be integrated in projects. Comes off as a piece written by a paid pseudo-evangelist. Not going to say that the content is somehow wrong (its not), but its totally irrelevant to the sucess of particular architectures or ISAs in general. jeez.
  - remexre 6y ago
    > Comes off as a piece written by a paid pseudo-evangelist. Yeah, I feel like Medium somehow manages to attract that sort of writing. Bizarrely, I've seen this with some authors who write on both Medium and elsewhere -- their Medium content seems weird in the same way. I wonder if it's just that after enough of that content is there, it's the norm, or whether something about the UI makes it feel more "just jot down your thoughts," while a blogpost makes the same authors draft, research, revise, etc., but it's uncanny.
  - webmobdev 6y ago
    Could you atleast elaborate with specifics?
- ksec 6y ago
  The author has been writing about RISC-V with relation to Apple M1 and basically fanboying about it. It is basically the same as some guy coming in and say Rust will overtake C and C++. And yet the article got interest, since it align with the general public and main stream media view of RSIC-V being the rising star. It is free. It must be better. etc. I could have repeat most of his point with OpenPOWER. ( microWatts [1] ) And for many application there are lot of reason why OpenPOWER are much better than RISC-V. ( Rather unfortunate IBM is loathed by lots of people in the industry ) [1] https://github.com/antonblanchard/microwatt https://github.com/antonblanchard/microwatt
  - kps 6y ago
    I got a similar impression. Discussing addressing modes, > This is probably a more faithful representation of what happens in the x86 code as well. I doubt you can multiply with anything but multiples of 2, since multiplication is a fairly complex operation. For an article comparing instruction sets, ‘I dunno and didn't care enough to spend 30 seconds Googling’ does not inspire confidence.
  - Someone 6y ago
    “since it align with the general public and main stream media view of RSIC-V being the rising star” I don’t think “the general public” even knows what “RISC-V” means. It’s more some specific circles where this is going on. The good thing for those writing such articles is that it’s hard to refute them, as they only discuss the instruction set, not particular designs, and few, if any, people can meaningfully judge how true various claims “this thing my/your favorite CPU does is worth/not worth the transistors. You’ll see it once advanced designs of my favorite CPU exist” are (even more so because feature A may be worth it for a CPU that also does B, but doesn’t do C, and that has a given power budget)
  - socialdemocrat 6y ago
    A number of actors in the industry will disagree with you. Nvidia after careful analysis decided RISC-V was the superior replacement for their general purpose Falcon Chip: https://riscv.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Tue1345pm-NVIDIA-Sijstermans.pdf https://riscv.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Tue1345pm-NVIDI... Dave Ditzel, who is no dummy saw RISC-V as the better choice for the machine learning accelerator Esperanto Technologies is building: https://www.eejournal.com/article/another-risc-v-religious-conversion/ https://www.eejournal.com/article/another-risc-v-religious-c... There are numerous research articles and examples online of companies deciding on RISC-V and their reasons for it. Unless I misunderstand I cannot see how OpenPower matches RISC-V at all. It is a large ISA, which means you don't have the option of making e.g. small specialized co-processors based on the ISA. Nor can you make simple CPUs for the microcontroller market. The RISC-V BOOM has half the silicon area requirement of a comparable ARM Cortex CPU, is OpenPower based chips able to match that? If you already have a large instruction-set I don't quite see the value in an extendable ISA. You cannot keep the ISA lean as micro-architecture best practices change.
- WillSlim95 6y ago
  Interesting point, it depends what were the parameters. When it come to performance/cost compared to ARM processors RISC V was seen as a better choice by most semiconductor companies. Maybe in your experience the criteria might have been different
  - klelatti 6y ago
    > When it come to performance/cost compared to ARM processors RISC V was seen as a better choice by most semiconductor companies. Can you give some evidence to back this assertion up?
    - WillSlim95 6y ago
      Sorry internal numbers at two FPGA companies who were benchmarking which hard-core to choose
      - klelatti 6y ago
        Interesting - thanks!
- miohtama 6y ago
  On purely commercial terms, RISC-V may not compete. But as already stated in other comments, CPUs and chips are getting political.

artemonster 6y ago

I am really curious about the content of that article. I work closely with different embedded CPU architectures and in most of our multi-expert evalutions of RISC-V (from different suppliers) it could not compete with commercial offerings (avoiding names).

artemonster 6y ago
Allright, I've used the incognito "trick" to gain access to that article and I must say that this article is an utter crap written by a person that never seen why and how processors are chosen to be integrated in projects. Comes off as a piece written by a paid pseudo-evangelist. Not going to say that the content is somehow wrong (its not), but its totally irrelevant to the sucess of particular architectures or ISAs in general. jeez.
- remexre 6y ago
  > Comes off as a piece written by a paid pseudo-evangelist. Yeah, I feel like Medium somehow manages to attract that sort of writing. Bizarrely, I've seen this with some authors who write on both Medium and elsewhere -- their Medium content seems weird in the same way. I wonder if it's just that after enough of that content is there, it's the norm, or whether something about the UI makes it feel more "just jot down your thoughts," while a blogpost makes the same authors draft, research, revise, etc., but it's uncanny.
- webmobdev 6y ago
  Could you atleast elaborate with specifics?
ksec 6y ago
The author has been writing about RISC-V with relation to Apple M1 and basically fanboying about it. It is basically the same as some guy coming in and say Rust will overtake C and C++. And yet the article got interest, since it align with the general public and main stream media view of RSIC-V being the rising star. It is free. It must be better. etc. I could have repeat most of his point with OpenPOWER. ( microWatts [1] ) And for many application there are lot of reason why OpenPOWER are much better than RISC-V. ( Rather unfortunate IBM is loathed by lots of people in the industry ) [1] https://github.com/antonblanchard/microwatt https://github.com/antonblanchard/microwatt
- kps 6y ago
  I got a similar impression. Discussing addressing modes, > This is probably a more faithful representation of what happens in the x86 code as well. I doubt you can multiply with anything but multiples of 2, since multiplication is a fairly complex operation. For an article comparing instruction sets, ‘I dunno and didn't care enough to spend 30 seconds Googling’ does not inspire confidence.
- Someone 6y ago
  “since it align with the general public and main stream media view of RSIC-V being the rising star” I don’t think “the general public” even knows what “RISC-V” means. It’s more some specific circles where this is going on. The good thing for those writing such articles is that it’s hard to refute them, as they only discuss the instruction set, not particular designs, and few, if any, people can meaningfully judge how true various claims “this thing my/your favorite CPU does is worth/not worth the transistors. You’ll see it once advanced designs of my favorite CPU exist” are (even more so because feature A may be worth it for a CPU that also does B, but doesn’t do C, and that has a given power budget)
- socialdemocrat 6y ago
  A number of actors in the industry will disagree with you. Nvidia after careful analysis decided RISC-V was the superior replacement for their general purpose Falcon Chip: https://riscv.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Tue1345pm-NVIDIA-Sijstermans.pdf https://riscv.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Tue1345pm-NVIDI... Dave Ditzel, who is no dummy saw RISC-V as the better choice for the machine learning accelerator Esperanto Technologies is building: https://www.eejournal.com/article/another-risc-v-religious-conversion/ https://www.eejournal.com/article/another-risc-v-religious-c... There are numerous research articles and examples online of companies deciding on RISC-V and their reasons for it. Unless I misunderstand I cannot see how OpenPower matches RISC-V at all. It is a large ISA, which means you don't have the option of making e.g. small specialized co-processors based on the ISA. Nor can you make simple CPUs for the microcontroller market. The RISC-V BOOM has half the silicon area requirement of a comparable ARM Cortex CPU, is OpenPower based chips able to match that? If you already have a large instruction-set I don't quite see the value in an extendable ISA. You cannot keep the ISA lean as micro-architecture best practices change.
WillSlim95 6y ago
Interesting point, it depends what were the parameters. When it come to performance/cost compared to ARM processors RISC V was seen as a better choice by most semiconductor companies. Maybe in your experience the criteria might have been different
- klelatti 6y ago
  > When it come to performance/cost compared to ARM processors RISC V was seen as a better choice by most semiconductor companies. Can you give some evidence to back this assertion up?
  - WillSlim95 6y ago
    Sorry internal numbers at two FPGA companies who were benchmarking which hard-core to choose
    - klelatti 6y ago
      Interesting - thanks!
miohtama 6y ago
On purely commercial terms, RISC-V may not compete. But as already stated in other comments, CPUs and chips are getting political.