5 ms·

Hopefully the recent acquisition rumors don't spell the end of this healthy competition between x86 and RISC-V. I wonder what we'll see as a result of this par

Hopefully the recent acquisition rumors don't spell the end of this healthy competition between x86 and RISC-V. I wonder what we'll see as a result of this partnership with Intel: SiFive also confirmed that the IFC RISC-V application development platform will use the Performance P550 core on Intel's 7nm Horse Creek platform. Link: https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=SiFive-Performance-P550-P270 https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=SiFive-P...

grlass 5y ago
SiFive are definitely amongst the most interesting players in RISC-V right now. Though there other organisations doing things, e.g. the PULP Platform: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23768080 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23768080 I hope that the acquisition doesn't go through, more competition would be great, and perhaps within a decade a wider commercial RISC-V ecosystem could emerge.
Koshkin 5y ago
There is no "healthy competition between x86 and RISC-V".
- nine_k 5y ago
  Only between RISC-V and ARM?
  - dragontamer 5y ago
    ARM is a collection of many different cores. So yes, RISC-V probably competes well vs ARM-M, but I wouldn't say that RISC-V competes against ARM-A (which is starting to become big enough to compete against x86). Just because ARM-M and ARM-A shares an instruction set doesn't mean that those chips are anything alike. Heck, ARM-M0+ is a completely different chip than ARM-M4. ARM-R is roughly the target of RISC-V. (Realtime cores).
    - monocasa 5y ago
      The core in this article wouldn't be a very good ARM-R core being OoO. It's about the same niche as an A72 AFAICT. So RISCV is already nipping at the heels of the ARM application core space.
      - dragontamer 5y ago
        ARM Cortex R8 is out of order. https://www.arm.com/products/silicon-ip-cpu/cortex-r/cortex-r8 https://www.arm.com/products/silicon-ip-cpu/cortex-r/cortex-...
        monocasa 5y ago
        And AFAIK they didn't really get any takers there either because it didn't really make sense. I think ARM was hoping for a market of large legacy codebases (think cell modems) where the heavy hard realtime work had been migrated to fixed function IP blocks, DSPs, etc. years ago, but the vendor didn't want to spend the time migrating their RTOS to ARM-A from ARM-R for the intermittent, non realtime, but still compute intensive work. You can sort of see how they didn't get any uptake with how the marketing changed pretty heavily with the R82 towards storage vendors instead of 5G. And RISCV doesn't have even the hope of that network effect to bank on. I'd also expect features like per core TCM if this core was targeting ARM-R niches to at least break away from the non determinism of the memory hierarchy (particularly a multi core memory hierarchy!), but I don't see that here.
    - nickik 5y ago
      There are multiple vendors now selling RISC-V products that compete with ARM-A as well. Its not as far alone as the lower end but it defiantly happening as well.
    - brucehoult 5y ago
      The SiFive P550 is described as competing against the ARM Cortex A75 application processor, which was announced four years and one month ago. Previous SiFive cores compete against the A72 (announced but not yet shipping that I know of) and A55/A53 (shipping in the BeagleV "StarLight" beta and HiFive Unmatched and probably unannounced embedded applications). In the four years since the A75 ARM has announced the A76, A77, A78, and A710 as annual incremental improvements (the most recent of which are not available in products yet), plus in a new higher-end line the Cortex-X1 and X2. So ARM is not standing still, but SiFive is catching them at approximately two years of ARM progress every year i.e. closing the gap by one year per year.
- creddit 5y ago
  Yeah, I really can't imagine how one would class it as healthy let alone even a serious competition. x86 and ARM, however, are starting to have a real battle with ARM owning mobile, making headwinds into laptops and desktops at Apple and multiple vendors producing meaningful server chips.
  - deelowe 5y ago
    ARM is making headwinds into server as well now.
    - monocasa 5y ago
      It's hard to tell apples->apples when you can't buy the leading edge ARM servers outright AFAIK. There's a good argument that it's in the hyperscalers' best interest to discount ARM usage to even below their breakeven to put negotiating pressure on their x86 core suppliers as long as they balance the costs well enough.
  - JensensStapler 5y ago
    Merchant ARM server is mostly dead unfortunately. Hyperscalers like AWS are making their own SoCs in house however. Amazona acquired Annapurna labs for that purpose. Personally I see there being more market overlap between ARM and the P550 core however. Samsung, Qualcomm, Renesas are all planning to bring RISC-V cores to market. With performance between A75 and A76, I could see the P550 being a pretty major disruptor. We already know some RISC-V chips are gaining traction in embedded, IoT, RF, micro-controllers, etc. Automotive looks like the next big market for RISC-V to me.
    - foobarbazetc 5y ago
      Ah, this isn’t true. Ampere is very competitive and Oracle have made huge investments into that platform, with Cloudflare etc looking at it very seriously as well. Arm on servers is just getting started.
  - 1-6 5y ago
    With RISC-V and SiFive, companies are able to build their own optimizations and make them MORE proprietary. I'll cringe if VLC will come with various versions: x86, M1, IntelRISC-V, QualcommARM, SamsungARM, SamsungRISC-V etc.
- trevortheblack 5y ago
  There was no "healthy competition between msn and google". There was no "healthy competition between Blockbuster and Netflix". There was no "healthy competition between Barnes & Noble and Amazon". Lack of competition today does not belie there never being competition. I would argue that anti-trust should be taken against killing/buying your competition when it's still in the womb, see Instagram-v-Facebook, WhatsApp-v-Facebook, InstagramStories-v-snapchat
brucehoult 5y ago
It's ridiculous to compare RISC-V against x86 as serious competitors in the same market. Shipping RISC-V chips are currently about 25 years behind x86 in microarchitecture (similar to Pentium) and 20 years behind in performance due to using more modern process nodes and higher MHz. Similarly, shipping RISC-V chips are currently six years behind ARM's A53. The P550 closes the gap to ARM to 4 years, and to Intel probably about 12-15 years with P550 and A15 both most similar to Core 2 in the Intel line-up. That's a highly-usable level of performance, especially when paired with more modern RAM, SSD, and GPUs than were available in Core 2 systems.
- brucehoult 5y ago
  I'm genuinely puzzled as to whether this absolutely factual comment was downvoted by RISC-V haters or RISC-V fanboys lol.

grlass 5y ago

SiFive are definitely amongst the most interesting players in RISC-V right now. Though there other organisations doing things, e.g. the PULP Platform: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23768080 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23768080 I hope that the acquisition doesn't go through, more competition would be great, and perhaps within a decade a wider commercial RISC-V ecosystem could emerge.

Koshkin 5y ago

There is no "healthy competition between x86 and RISC-V".

nine_k 5y ago
Only between RISC-V and ARM?
- dragontamer 5y ago
  ARM is a collection of many different cores. So yes, RISC-V probably competes well vs ARM-M, but I wouldn't say that RISC-V competes against ARM-A (which is starting to become big enough to compete against x86). Just because ARM-M and ARM-A shares an instruction set doesn't mean that those chips are anything alike. Heck, ARM-M0+ is a completely different chip than ARM-M4. ARM-R is roughly the target of RISC-V. (Realtime cores).
  - monocasa 5y ago
    The core in this article wouldn't be a very good ARM-R core being OoO. It's about the same niche as an A72 AFAICT. So RISCV is already nipping at the heels of the ARM application core space.
    - dragontamer 5y ago
      ARM Cortex R8 is out of order. https://www.arm.com/products/silicon-ip-cpu/cortex-r/cortex-r8 https://www.arm.com/products/silicon-ip-cpu/cortex-r/cortex-...
      - monocasa 5y ago
        And AFAIK they didn't really get any takers there either because it didn't really make sense. I think ARM was hoping for a market of large legacy codebases (think cell modems) where the heavy hard realtime work had been migrated to fixed function IP blocks, DSPs, etc. years ago, but the vendor didn't want to spend the time migrating their RTOS to ARM-A from ARM-R for the intermittent, non realtime, but still compute intensive work. You can sort of see how they didn't get any uptake with how the marketing changed pretty heavily with the R82 towards storage vendors instead of 5G. And RISCV doesn't have even the hope of that network effect to bank on. I'd also expect features like per core TCM if this core was targeting ARM-R niches to at least break away from the non determinism of the memory hierarchy (particularly a multi core memory hierarchy!), but I don't see that here.
  - nickik 5y ago
    There are multiple vendors now selling RISC-V products that compete with ARM-A as well. Its not as far alone as the lower end but it defiantly happening as well.
  - brucehoult 5y ago
    The SiFive P550 is described as competing against the ARM Cortex A75 application processor, which was announced four years and one month ago. Previous SiFive cores compete against the A72 (announced but not yet shipping that I know of) and A55/A53 (shipping in the BeagleV "StarLight" beta and HiFive Unmatched and probably unannounced embedded applications). In the four years since the A75 ARM has announced the A76, A77, A78, and A710 as annual incremental improvements (the most recent of which are not available in products yet), plus in a new higher-end line the Cortex-X1 and X2. So ARM is not standing still, but SiFive is catching them at approximately two years of ARM progress every year i.e. closing the gap by one year per year.
creddit 5y ago
Yeah, I really can't imagine how one would class it as healthy let alone even a serious competition. x86 and ARM, however, are starting to have a real battle with ARM owning mobile, making headwinds into laptops and desktops at Apple and multiple vendors producing meaningful server chips.
- deelowe 5y ago
  ARM is making headwinds into server as well now.
  - monocasa 5y ago
    It's hard to tell apples->apples when you can't buy the leading edge ARM servers outright AFAIK. There's a good argument that it's in the hyperscalers' best interest to discount ARM usage to even below their breakeven to put negotiating pressure on their x86 core suppliers as long as they balance the costs well enough.
- JensensStapler 5y ago
  Merchant ARM server is mostly dead unfortunately. Hyperscalers like AWS are making their own SoCs in house however. Amazona acquired Annapurna labs for that purpose. Personally I see there being more market overlap between ARM and the P550 core however. Samsung, Qualcomm, Renesas are all planning to bring RISC-V cores to market. With performance between A75 and A76, I could see the P550 being a pretty major disruptor. We already know some RISC-V chips are gaining traction in embedded, IoT, RF, micro-controllers, etc. Automotive looks like the next big market for RISC-V to me.
  - foobarbazetc 5y ago
    Ah, this isn’t true. Ampere is very competitive and Oracle have made huge investments into that platform, with Cloudflare etc looking at it very seriously as well. Arm on servers is just getting started.
- 1-6 5y ago
  With RISC-V and SiFive, companies are able to build their own optimizations and make them MORE proprietary. I'll cringe if VLC will come with various versions: x86, M1, IntelRISC-V, QualcommARM, SamsungARM, SamsungRISC-V etc.
trevortheblack 5y ago
There was no "healthy competition between msn and google". There was no "healthy competition between Blockbuster and Netflix". There was no "healthy competition between Barnes & Noble and Amazon". Lack of competition today does not belie there never being competition. I would argue that anti-trust should be taken against killing/buying your competition when it's still in the womb, see Instagram-v-Facebook, WhatsApp-v-Facebook, InstagramStories-v-snapchat

brucehoult 5y ago

It's ridiculous to compare RISC-V against x86 as serious competitors in the same market. Shipping RISC-V chips are currently about 25 years behind x86 in microarchitecture (similar to Pentium) and 20 years behind in performance due to using more modern process nodes and higher MHz. Similarly, shipping RISC-V chips are currently six years behind ARM's A53. The P550 closes the gap to ARM to 4 years, and to Intel probably about 12-15 years with P550 and A15 both most similar to Core 2 in the Intel line-up. That's a highly-usable level of performance, especially when paired with more modern RAM, SSD, and GPUs than were available in Core 2 systems.

brucehoult 5y ago
I'm genuinely puzzled as to whether this absolutely factual comment was downvoted by RISC-V haters or RISC-V fanboys lol.