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Alibaba Cloud gets more of Android working on RISC-V silicon
- Phurist 4y agox86 is dead, long live ...
- srott 4y agox64?
- xvilka 4y agoLooking forward to RISC-V machines in Travis CI or other services.
- wmertens 4y agoThis is so cool - I'd like an open source CPU in my next phone please! (Of course, I would also like it to be fast, so that will probably not happen in the next 5 years) The article doesn't say if their port is also open source. There's a blog post here but I don't see any patches. https://riscv.org/blog/2021/11/how-alibaba-is-porting-risc-v-to-the-android-os-guoyin-chen-alibaba/ https://riscv.org/blog/2021/11/how-alibaba-is-porting-risc-v...
- Narishma 4y ago> I'd like an open source CPU in my next phone please! Just because it's RISC-V doesn't mean the CPU is open source.
- usrn 4y agoYeah. It's not licensed under the GPL or anything like that. I'm not sure it's as good as people seem to think.
- monocasa 4y agoAliBaba has been open sourcing their designs though. AFAIK, this work is mainly against their XuanTie C910 cores that have the source published here: https://github.com/T-head-Semi/openc910 https://github.com/T-head-Semi/openc910
- yjftsjthsd-h 4y agoNot all RISC-V ends up open, but it has better odds than anything else.
- shakna 4y agoI think this [0] is their Android port. You'll also find four RISC-V cores under that account that Alibaba open sourced near the end of last year. [0] https://github.com/T-head-Semi/riscv-aosp https://github.com/T-head-Semi/riscv-aosp
- jasoneckert 4y agoA large organization like Alibaba spending the effort to get Android running on their own RISC-V platform seems like a clear sign that we're on the cusp of seeing RISC-V development and adoption snowball in the next few years.
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 4y agoI sure hope so. I think we may be on the cusp of a renaissance in the CPU space. Intel UCIe, RISC-V, ARM, etc, have all been quite exciting lately. I'm an optimist so I imagine buying made to order CPUs from Intel or TSMC where you can pick and choose features and chiplets that can come from any number of companies.
- not2b 4y agoThe problem with your "mix and match" idea is that it's hugely expense to create masks for chip design, even for chips that simple compositions of predesigned cores, memory, and interconnect, and that expense only pays off because the one mask is used to fabricate anywhere from tens of thousands to millions of chips. A custom choice just for you would be very pricy. We already live in a world where chip designers pick and choose cores and components from any number of companies: processors we all know about, but things like USB3, HDMI, Bluetooth, and many others are often licensed from third parties. But for the numbers to work you've got to make lots of chips to handle the fixed costs.
- monocasa 4y agoDoes anyone have a decent break down of the cost of masks? I've never really gotten a good sense of what's actually COGS of the actual mask set, and how much is NRE costs that's subject to disruption if chip making is commoditized as we get further up the s-curve that is Moore's Law.
- not2b 4y agoWhile it isn't directly applicable, here's a decent analysis of the costs of doing a custom ASIC to replace generic components, should provide an idea. https://www.electronicdesign.com/technologies/embedded-revolution/article/21808278/ensilica-the-economics-of-asics-at-what-point-does-a-custom-soc-become-viable https://www.electronicdesign.com/technologies/embedded-revol...
- fithisux 4y agoAnd a set of GPU instructions are on the horizon. Yay!
- humanwhosits 4y agoThis is a pretty big deal for all the other companies working on RISC-V too, raises all the boats
- yjftsjthsd-h 4y agoMostly, I'm surprised that Google isn't the one leading the charge here. Although it's kind of cool from an ecosystem perspective to see somebody else moving things forward.
- humanwhosits 4y agoThey might be worried that it would fragment their app store, as plenty of apps use native ARM code
- yjftsjthsd-h 4y agoAndroid used to support MIPS and x86_64 - in fact I think it still supports the latter. Of course, that might just mean that Google is painfully aware of how annoying that is to handle:)
- caleb-allen 4y agoIs Google using ARM for their custom TPU systems? Perhaps they have some sort of non-compete agreement with ARM
- akmittal 4y agoRelated: India govt planning to launch RISC-V processor by 2023 https://swarajyamag.com/tech/modi-govt-launches-digital-india-risc-v-programme-for-microprocessors-to-achieve-commercial-silicon-design-wins-by-2023-end https://swarajyamag.com/tech/modi-govt-launches-digital-indi...
- whatever1 4y agoThat's great! Let's also spend our brightest egineering resources to make open source EUV lithography hardware and ship it off to Winnie.
- Zenst 4y agoWith Espressif shifting towards a RISC-V focus, it sure does look like a the market is opening up nicely. Though does seem that any ARM sale/IPO may well need to happen sooner or later as this will surely start making dents.
- snvzz 4y agoRegarding Espressif, parent is probably talking about this[0]. For a while, some ESP32 have been using RISC-V cores. Sometimes as secondary processors, sometimes as the primary one. In the future, they seem set on completely shifting to RISC-V, which I find sensible. 0. https://www.hackster.io/news/espressif-s-teo-swee-ann-confirms-a-shift-to-risc-v-by-default-unless-we-have-some-special-needs-5e365d49bcc5 https://www.hackster.io/news/espressif-s-teo-swee-ann-confir...
- Zenst 4y agoYes, thank you, did try finding the source of were I read that and ended up failing. Thank you for digging out that article.