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As others have pointed out the ISA has nothing to do with this. Intel could start building RISC-V CPUs with ME type technology tomorrow. Sure you're open to bu

• smoldesu 5y ago
  > As others have pointed out the ISA has nothing to do with this. Intel could start building RISC-V CPUs with ME type technology tomorrow. From a purely technical standpoint, I agree (and wouldn't put it past Intel either). My argument is that having an open ISA makes it easier for manufacturers to compete with each other, which in turn makes it harder for interested parties to pin down every CPU manufacturer and punch holes in their individual designs. > Sure you're open to buy RISC-V CPUs from China but how are you going to be certain that they have no backdoors? Pragmatically, you can't. My point though was more that open ISAs give us options to buy hardware that doesn't get designed domestically, which is the main enabler for companies like AMD, Intel and Apple, and moreover, the government. If one chip is confirmed to be vulnerable in some way, you'll have legitimate competitors to choose from.
  • klelatti 5y ago
    You're conflating so many different factors here: openness of architecture, diversity of design / manufacturing, market needs in different sectors etc - all of which influence what features are built into CPUs / SoCs. There seems to be a bit of a consistent thread running through lots of discussions that RISC-V because its 'open' magically solves all sorts of problems - it does have some advantages - but it doesn't solve these issues any more than Arm does (and Arm already has massive diversity of supply and billions of CPUs shipped without ME type issues).