5 ms·

I'm really excited, to the point of distraction by the RISC-V ISA. Some people say that there's nothing new in it, but to my mind, they're missing the point :

I'm really excited, to the point of distraction by the RISC-V ISA. Some people say that there's nothing new in it, but to my mind, they're missing the point : the Berkeley Four took what couldn't be appropriated for profit, and built a statement about what computing is... They revealed the Wizard of Oz to everyone, so that anyone with some computing background can build a processor, freely. And now this freed wizard is working his magic, and will change the computing landscape irrevocably.

SavantIdiot 5y ago
You do realize that RISC-V processors aren't free right? Making an open source ISA is no small feat, but all they really did was help save some megacorporations a little extra money. Perhaps it will lead to a processor startup, but follow that to its logical conclusion: it takes a huge, profitable company to sustain processor delivery for years. There's a very good reason why only a handful of companies make the top 6 CPU architectures. There's still Synopsys ARC, Renesas, Atmel, PIC just to name a few of RISC-V competitors. In reality, the Berkeley Four just made a handful of semi companies richer. WDC, NXP, NVIDIA, Microchip, etc. don't have to pay Arm for IP if they use RISC-V. Did that really help anything? Meh.
- 3arn0wl 5y ago
  Sure, RISC-V designs can be open or not... And of course there's always the cost of fabbing. There're already designs freely available to use though, either as they are, or to build upon. And there are also now many other companies designing using the ISA; decentralising the production of chips. But - over and above the revolutionary economics of it - it's being recognised as a good ISA, and RISC-V cores are already being incorporated into consumer electronics.
- 3arn0wl 5y ago
  Actually... What they did, ten years ago, was build a much better Computer Engineering course!
- CyberRabbi 5y ago
  You could argue that the availability of Linux saved countless megacorporations from having to pay Microsoft, IBM, or Sun. Yet the availability of Linux has been a boon to people across the board. While I agree there is something not right about cutting into ARM’s profits for the benefit of megacorporations, I think that a royalty-free ISA might genuinely be good for civilization despite that in the same way Linux is. It’s tough though, I’m still not fully sold on that opinion.
  - SavantIdiot 5y ago
    I hear what you are saying, and that is a good point, and I do agree with the: "Why isn't there an open ISA?" I think the key difference with an OS like Linux and an ISA like RISC-V is that Linux helped literally millions of smart, curious kids get exposed to Unix and tinkering in a OS that wasn't a locked down behemoth: Windows. It changed lives. I don't think it is an exaggeration to overstate the democrization Linux had. However, I don't see RISC-V touching the world in an analogous way. No kid is gonna tinker with an ISA and fab a CPU. Maybe they will stick it on an FPGA? But it seems less accessible. Plus RISC-V's biggest propopent, Patterson, isn't really giving the world anything like Linus Torvald did. Linus busted his butt (and still does!) whereas Patterson flies around getting big speaker fees to pump up RISC-V while delegating. Just seems a bit... off? Or its just me.
    - CyberRabbi 5y ago
      You raise good points. Linus is a one in a million person... At the same time I do think kids, hobbiests, small startups, and people who can’t afford expensive computers will make use of RISCV on commoditized programmable logic chips like FPGAs. Look at projects like MiSTer, simply not something that was available for hobbiests and free culture advocates 20 years ago. I can see a similar development happening in the computer space. Actually I’m surprised homebrew computers architected around an FPGA haven’t yet become more popular. Maybe as the popularity of RISCV grows we’ll see more of that. Would be great to see a project that implements a risc-v based computer on a de10-nano board as a starting point.
      - 5y ago
GrumpyYoungMan 5y ago
> "...so that anyone with some computing background can build a processor, freely." They could already do that. I designed and laid out in silicon a 32 bit processor as part of my undergraduate studies in computer engineering.
- offtop5 5y ago
  Can I run Linux on it ? I almost feel like being able to completely rebuilt computer technology from raw materials should be encased in a book somewhere. Hypothetically if we dropped you and 100 other engineers in the woods with metal working equipment could you get something resembling a computer working in 5 years ? Or in this post-apocalyptic landscape would it be more practical to dig in landfills for old GameCubes to retrofit
  - analognoise 5y ago
    Yes. OpenSPARC has been free/available since 2005. There are a multitude of others of similar vintage that can also boot Linux. It's a solution looking for a problem that doesn't exist.
  - 3arn0wl 5y ago
    On RISC-V? Yes... Well sort of. There are people working on ports of Fedora, Debian and OpenSuse (I think) and I've seen some version of BSD working on SiFive's boards. Debian is said to be 95% complete. Ubuntu have also announced that they're working on a port, and SkiffOS is said to be ready to run on RISC-V too. There was also a demo of AOSP working on 3 XuanTie 910 cores a few weeks ago. Of course, then you need apps to be ported over, and that might take longer.

SavantIdiot 5y ago

You do realize that RISC-V processors aren't free right? Making an open source ISA is no small feat, but all they really did was help save some megacorporations a little extra money. Perhaps it will lead to a processor startup, but follow that to its logical conclusion: it takes a huge, profitable company to sustain processor delivery for years. There's a very good reason why only a handful of companies make the top 6 CPU architectures. There's still Synopsys ARC, Renesas, Atmel, PIC just to name a few of RISC-V competitors. In reality, the Berkeley Four just made a handful of semi companies richer. WDC, NXP, NVIDIA, Microchip, etc. don't have to pay Arm for IP if they use RISC-V. Did that really help anything? Meh.

3arn0wl 5y ago
Sure, RISC-V designs can be open or not... And of course there's always the cost of fabbing. There're already designs freely available to use though, either as they are, or to build upon. And there are also now many other companies designing using the ISA; decentralising the production of chips. But - over and above the revolutionary economics of it - it's being recognised as a good ISA, and RISC-V cores are already being incorporated into consumer electronics.
3arn0wl 5y ago
Actually... What they did, ten years ago, was build a much better Computer Engineering course!
CyberRabbi 5y ago
You could argue that the availability of Linux saved countless megacorporations from having to pay Microsoft, IBM, or Sun. Yet the availability of Linux has been a boon to people across the board. While I agree there is something not right about cutting into ARM’s profits for the benefit of megacorporations, I think that a royalty-free ISA might genuinely be good for civilization despite that in the same way Linux is. It’s tough though, I’m still not fully sold on that opinion.
- SavantIdiot 5y ago
  I hear what you are saying, and that is a good point, and I do agree with the: "Why isn't there an open ISA?" I think the key difference with an OS like Linux and an ISA like RISC-V is that Linux helped literally millions of smart, curious kids get exposed to Unix and tinkering in a OS that wasn't a locked down behemoth: Windows. It changed lives. I don't think it is an exaggeration to overstate the democrization Linux had. However, I don't see RISC-V touching the world in an analogous way. No kid is gonna tinker with an ISA and fab a CPU. Maybe they will stick it on an FPGA? But it seems less accessible. Plus RISC-V's biggest propopent, Patterson, isn't really giving the world anything like Linus Torvald did. Linus busted his butt (and still does!) whereas Patterson flies around getting big speaker fees to pump up RISC-V while delegating. Just seems a bit... off? Or its just me.
  - CyberRabbi 5y ago
    You raise good points. Linus is a one in a million person... At the same time I do think kids, hobbiests, small startups, and people who can’t afford expensive computers will make use of RISCV on commoditized programmable logic chips like FPGAs. Look at projects like MiSTer, simply not something that was available for hobbiests and free culture advocates 20 years ago. I can see a similar development happening in the computer space. Actually I’m surprised homebrew computers architected around an FPGA haven’t yet become more popular. Maybe as the popularity of RISCV grows we’ll see more of that. Would be great to see a project that implements a risc-v based computer on a de10-nano board as a starting point.
    - 5y ago

GrumpyYoungMan 5y ago

> "...so that anyone with some computing background can build a processor, freely." They could already do that. I designed and laid out in silicon a 32 bit processor as part of my undergraduate studies in computer engineering.

offtop5 5y ago
Can I run Linux on it ? I almost feel like being able to completely rebuilt computer technology from raw materials should be encased in a book somewhere. Hypothetically if we dropped you and 100 other engineers in the woods with metal working equipment could you get something resembling a computer working in 5 years ? Or in this post-apocalyptic landscape would it be more practical to dig in landfills for old GameCubes to retrofit
- analognoise 5y ago
  Yes. OpenSPARC has been free/available since 2005. There are a multitude of others of similar vintage that can also boot Linux. It's a solution looking for a problem that doesn't exist.
- 3arn0wl 5y ago
  On RISC-V? Yes... Well sort of. There are people working on ports of Fedora, Debian and OpenSuse (I think) and I've seen some version of BSD working on SiFive's boards. Debian is said to be 95% complete. Ubuntu have also announced that they're working on a port, and SkiffOS is said to be ready to run on RISC-V too. There was also a demo of AOSP working on 3 XuanTie 910 cores a few weeks ago. Of course, then you need apps to be ported over, and that might take longer.