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Apple Exploring RISC-V, Hiring RISC-V ‘High Performance’ Programmers
- ChuckNorris89 5y agoBackup Plan in case Nvidia's acquisition of ARM goes through and they start steering it in a direction Apple doesn't like?
- brian_herman 5y agoMaybe they will switch after 15 years of ARM to make developers lives even better and faster.
- evgen 5y agoApple is the one company out there that does not need to care one way or the other what Nvidia does. ARM was created as a joint effort between Acorn, VLSI, and Apple. Apple has a perpetual license and can basically do whatever they want with the architecture for their own products. The strangest thing about this is trying to imagine a use case where Risc-V makes sense but a low-end ARM chip does not...
- philistine 5y agoWhen Apple bought NeXt, they also bought its agnostic attitude towards architectures. macOS compiled on Intel chips for years in secret before they publicly unveiled the transition. I'm pretty sure iOS compiled on Intel since its earliest days, and macOS ran on ARM for close to a decade before the current transition. All that to say that Apple is able and willing to cross-compile for long-term strategic reasons. I don't expect anything particular to come of this for a decade at least; if anything its probably just keeping abreast of developments in the RISC-V ecosystem that could be useful on their own chips.
- mattl 5y agoApple gave everyone a copy of OPENSTEP 4.2 at an event, then released a few developer previews of Rhapsody for Intel hardware. I don’t think it was too shocking that OS X was being built on Intel hardware no matter what the story from Apple is.
- dylan604 5y agoDarwin was available to the public to run on Intel well before the switch over. It just didn't have the Aqua interface.
- ngcc_hk 5y agoMay be they have we do not have details though. But even if they have the original you are nit sure one day you may have a patent or later development that you need. And all architecture has bottleneck. All. One day may hear qm even. If they are not studying they are stupid like Kodak (which basically invent and lead in digital photography). What the real surprise is apple cannot package well something invented somewhere and move the pain point out (like iphone, like low end computing of m1 etc). Apple TV … what a surprise failure. And Copland …
- tambourine_man 5y agoThey still have to pay ARM for each chip they sell, right? Perpetual license doesn’t mean lifetime free use of intelectual property, I guess.
- bognition 5y agoDepends on the terms of the license.
- lallysingh 5y agoMy guess is no, they don't want to disclose that stuff. If they were a founding member, they can just contribute enough cash to avoid it.
- Symmetry 5y agoI've heard references to savings on the per-unit fee as a reason some manufacturers might want to go with an architectural license, so maybe not?
- hajile 5y agoI think they must buy a new license for each new ISA version they want to use. That makes new features a potential risk factor.
- ksec 5y agoBut Apple doesn't need a new ISA version ( ARM v9 ) when it is 99% the same as ARM v8.3 with more mandatory feature set.
- hajile 5y agoIt adds to the security model and (more importantly) adds SVE2. More things are coming down the pipeline too.
- ksec 5y agoSVE2 is not specific to ARMv9. You can have ARMv8 with SVE2. And Apple doesn't need to implement everything ARM develop.
- hajile 5y agoMy understanding from Anandtech's article a few months ago was that SVE is available for ARMv8, but SVE2 was left to ARMv9 to encourage updating. Apple has beaten ARM to production with pretty much every v8 release (though I think neither use most 8.5 or 8.6 features yet).
- bee_rider 5y agoI wonder -- if Nvidia takes ARM in a direction they don't like (doesn't match Apple workloads -- maybe a gaming focus or something), in the very least Apple will stop benefiting from being part of that ecosystem. In that case, they might as well go to Risc-V, right? It is at least hypothetically possible that the community will produce something they find useful, and being on Risc-V would ease integration.
- cwizou 5y agoApple kicked Nvidia out of its product line a long while ago, after Nvidia tried to collect licensing fees on every iPhone sales for their GPU IP. They launched their legal actions with Samsung first, and it backfired spectacularly. [1] I believe there are some higher ups who would not welcome at all a Nvidia takeover of ARM, and that's putting aside potential increases of licensing fees, or other actions. I'm sure they have a plan B in place should that happen. Whether those hiring are it or not, I don't know. [1] : https://www.reuters.com/article/us-nvidia-samsung-elec-idUSKCN0XT1QO https://www.reuters.com/article/us-nvidia-samsung-elec-idUSK...
- trollied 5y agoInteresting. Maybe adding small sub-cores to current dies for other workloads?
- TickleSteve 5y agoThey already have an ARM license and the vast majority of ARM processors in existence are Cortex-M class microprocessors (i.e ARM pretty much owns the target market for RISC-V at the moment). This means they're not looking at RISC-V for any technical reason (for which Cortex-Ms generally outperform RISC-V) but rather for strategic reasons (i.e. dependency on ARM/Nvidia).
- londons_explore 5y agoThings you do for strategic reasons you tend to do in a half-arsed way. You know that you're only porting to an architecture to act as a negotiating lever, so you assign a small team of cheap engineers to the task. This doesn't seem to be that.
- marcan_42 5y agoThey already have a ton of those. There are 12 or so coprocessors in the M1, some of them multicore. Most are Apple's own small 64-bit core design (Chinook), but there are 3 or 4 Cortex-M3s too.
- andy_ppp 5y agoApple have proven they can change architecture on a whim now. Would be interesting if an Apple RISC-V gave them 20%+ more performance/better SIMD design/smaller die size? What do people think of the likely reasons, isn’t ARM good enough and then it’s about the actual implementation to deliver the performance. Is RISC-V inherently better?
- mlindner 5y agoRISC-V isn't an architecture you'd want to run a computer on. They'd want to use it for various embedded processors that are either on die or off die. For example adding a RISC-V based co-processor on to an apple silicon chip. Alternatively they could also be doing it as a backstop in case ARM gets bought by NVidia and NVidia tries to shut them out. They can threaten RISC-V against them.
- le-mark 5y ago> RISC-V isn't an architecture you'd want to run a computer on. Why not, too risky? Joking aside can anyone explain why this is the case? Is it the classical risc vs cisc debate?
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- ahartmetz 5y agoThere was an article on HN where someone called RISC-V a bit too RISCy. ARM has instructions that combine things that are commonly combined, which increases code density and requires fewer instruction decoders (as well as possibly instruction combine logic if there are micro/macro-ops) for the same performance.
- phkahler 5y agoRISC-V had better code density than anything a few years back. Cant say how it competes with the latest though. It does have some weird instruction encodings though. They intended it to be fixed 32bit instructions, but then that changed and its let with some odd things because of it. I'd like to see immediate data come after the instruction.
- Angostura 5y agoCouldn’t this simply be an indication that they might be interested in RISC V fir data centre racks?
- tambourine_man 5y agoI don't think Apple cares about data center. They see it as a necessary evil.
- api 5y agoI doubt they'd want to pivot right away from ARM64, but I could see them using RISC-V for embedded and controller chips or for low power devices to extend their ecosystem. Having a RISC-V bench also means they have a backup plan in case something bad happens to the ARM ecosystem.
- eeiac928 5y agoFord or GM sell vehicles with engines taylored to customer needs. Given the volumes of chips Apple ships to the end customer, why can't they offer 6 kinds of chip architecture like the choice in colored metal finish? Why does it have to be one chip's ISA one generation at a time?
- api 5y agoThe big down-side is that they'd end up with really fat binaries and edge case bugs in some apps across architectures. Apple can pivot architectures, but I don't think they do it lightly.
- brucehoult 5y agoModern MacOS and iOS app size is completely dominated by image and other media assets. The code is down in the noise.
- saagarjha 5y agoThis is not true; most popular iOS apps have very large binary sizes.
- erwan577 5y agoIn your colored car analogy all cars use the same fuel. An Apple computer with a different chip arch will use different software. Yes fat binary are a thing but anyway all different archs should be tested separately. This is a real bummer especially for small dev shops.
- tambourine_man 5y agoFor everyone fearing a new transition in 5 years, this could be for a new product line, like the glasses. We were all speculating that the PA Semi acquisition was about faster and cooler PPCs and here we are.
- tonyedgecombe 5y agoMy Apple mouse has an ARM processor as does my Apple keyboard. Even some Apple cables have an embedded ARM processor. If they are paying a per chip or per core royalty to ARM then they might just be looking to avoid those costs.
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- azinman2 5y agoApple was part of the original development of ARM. Thus I don’t think they have to pay anything for it.
- msbarnett 5y agoAFAIK they have a perpetual architectural license dating back to their ownership of ARM, so they don't have to pay to re-up their right to develop their own ARM designs, but the do pay a per-chip royalty.
- selectodude 5y agoBut I would imagine their per-chip royalty to be less than what newer/lower volume customers pay.
- lsllc 5y agoARM (Acorn RISC Machine) was designed & developed by Sophie Wilson at Acorn Computers: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARM_architecture#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARM_architecture#History Apple/VLSI didn't get involved until the late 80's / ARM6 (1992) timeframe as they were interested in using it for the Newton -- at the same time Acorn was declining due to UK schools adopting PCs and they spun ARM off in 1990 as a separate company, ARM Holdings (Advanced RISC Machine).
- Grustaf 5y agoMaybe they can hire back Chris Lattner…
- amelius 5y agoOr perhaps the RISC-V part is bait and they are just trying to hire more CPU designers.
- traceroute66 5y agoIts no secret that Apple are one of the biggest players when it comes to in-house R&D in the IT world. So if you were them, would you not put some resources into keeping on top of potentially useful processors such as RISC-V so you have something up your sleeve if you need it for a project ?
- dylan604 5y agoJust like they had a skunk works team whose job was to ensure OS X could be compiled to a different processor than what was currently in use. That's why the switch from PowerPC to Intel was able to be done as quickly as it was. Apple funded a team whose work might never have been needed. It would seem the same thing was in place for Intel->ARM as well. So it totally makes sense this is being done.
- zenron 5y agoWell, honestly, Apple already did the hard work years ago when they created OS X itself based on NextStep and used a derivative Mach microkernel. Now, Apple ofc has pushed a lot on top of that but that is platform specific so they call it a hybrid kernel but this is the true legacy of Steve Jobs. This allowed them to have a pretty tight product line using similar OSs with different user spaces and those needs. It isn't revolutionary on a technical front, that is what all that work was working towards at the colleges that developed them. But it was in fact forward thinking from a product and pricing perspective that a company would make a bold move and incorporate that when we had a lot of PC companies sticking to one arch ride or die style at the time.
- dylan604 5y agoI wonder how much Intel appreciates that MS show closely tied Windows to their chips?
- eyelidlessness 5y agoI wouldn’t be surprised if they still maintain a fork that runs on PPC as insurance. OS X/macOS has had multi-ISA support internally since it was just a codename project. And likely always will.
- rcarmo 5y agoI wouldn’t be surprised if this turns out to be for better noise cancellation in AirPods (or something like that). Apple is certain to be using RISC-V somewhere in the sea of ancillary components to any of its platforms…
- klelatti 5y agoThe wording seems to point to the flexibility of the RISC-V ecosystem being the attraction here. I've never believed that Apple could do what they want with the Arm ISA because they were a founding shareholder - they will be bound by a license agreement in the same way that other licensees are. RISC-V gives them the opportunity to add interesting ISA extensions for particular computational workloads. Edit: Whoever downvoted please tell me why I'm wrong on this - genuinely interested if there is evidence to the contrary!
- Symmetry 5y agoWhen we talk about cores on a device we usually think of the application processors that'll be running our own code. But any modern SoC will have tons of other cores. Things like controlling voltage and clock speed, the security enclave, the baseband processor, Apple's matrix co-processor. Since these only run Apple's code switching over the ISA can be done with relatively little fuss compared to the x86/ARM transition. And since each of these is essentially only running a very limited range of firmware they can benefit far more from a extensible, customizable, "only pay for what you use" ISA than the application processor would. I'd also expect Apple to be making their own private extensions for their specific use cases.
- deepGem 5y agoLet me predict Chris Lattner's return to Apple via the Sifive acquisition https://www.linkedin.com/in/chris-lattner-5664498a/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/chris-lattner-5664498a/
- ksec 5y agoI guess more than half ( if not all ) of the comments here haven't actually read the article? It is very specific > Apple is currently looking for experienced programmers with detailed knowledge of the RISC-V Instruction Set Architecture (ISA) and Arm's Neon vector ISA for its Vector and Numerics Group (VaNG) within its Core Operating Systems group. Apple's VaNG is responsible for developing and improving various embedded subsystems running on iOS, macOS, watchOS, and tvOS. The Job description even goes on to the task. >The programmer will work in a team that’s “implementing innovative RISC-V solutions and state of the art routines. This is to support the necessary computation for such things as machine learning, vision algorithms, signal and video processing,” the job description says. This is specific to RISC-V Vector Extension. And specific to certain type of workload.
- 908B64B197 5y agoDid I just read that the A/M SoCs are getting an RISC-V co-processor?
- silasb 5y agoI wonder if Telsa's Dojo computer [1] has anything to do with this? [1]:https://electrek.co/2021/08/20/tesla-dojo-supercomputer-worlds-new-most-powerful-ai-training-machine/ https://electrek.co/2021/08/20/tesla-dojo-supercomputer-worl...
- pajko 5y agoApple should have bought Imagination Technologies back then when it owned MIPS.
- sydthrowaway 5y agoVery interesting. Could be a hedge against ARM.