5 ms·
No, it's simply that RISC-V is relatively new, we've seen a bunch of small slower cores come out first, they're easier and quicker to design, the bigger faster
by Taniwha 5y ago
No, it's simply that RISC-V is relatively new, we've seen a bunch of small slower cores come out first, they're easier and quicker to design, the bigger faster ones are coming they just take more time to design
- zozbot234 5y agoBigger and faster cores are also expected to include extensions that are yet to be standardized, so waiting is absolutely the right move. There are draft architectures (including multiple versions of the openly-available Berkeley Out of Order Machine "BOOM") that are expected to have quite compelling results once fabbed.
- brucehoult 5y agoThe most important of those extensions will all be ratified as part of the RVA22 profile before the end of the year -- including Vector, Bitmanip, Cache control, Scalar crypto, and I think possibly pointer masking (a big big security thing). A number of companies will already have chips designed and ready to go using draft versions of those extensions. Any minor changes during the public review period will be able to be incorporated very quickly, with chips taping out possibly before New Year. The time to hire programmers to write the software is well before you have chips sitting in the warehouse (or sold in products), not after.
- brucehoult 5y agoI don't know if you noticed, but ARM also only makes relatively small and slow cores. Apple made something called the "M1" which uses ARM's instruction set but isn't small and slow. If Apple turned the M1 team to making a RISC-V core, it would perform just as well.