4 ms·

Either you have an extremely broad interpretation of what open source is or you simply ignore all the cases where this didn’t happen or indeed the opposite occu

by qwytw 4y ago

Either you have an extremely broad interpretation of what open source is or you simply ignore all the cases where this didn’t happen or indeed the opposite occurred. Also I'm not quite sure how much of an advantage being open source is for RISC-V. Unless we’re taking about low cost chips with extremely narrow margins the licensing fee a manufacturer needs to pay ARM is insignificant. Even the price for an ARM architectural license is pocket change compared to the cost it would take to design a competitive core if you’re aiming for data-centers. A company like ARM (i.e. willing to license their designs and architecture to anyone for a small fee, it's basically behaving like a non-profit compared to many other tech companies) seems like the best case scenario for the industry. With RISC-V why would a company which designed a high-end CPU core license it to anyone instead of trying to maximize their profit/competitive advantage? With Arm at least there something to fallback to accessible for everyone.

brucehoult 4y ago
What is the price of an ARM architectural license? I don't think any of us know. What does it let you do? Not what Qualcomm thought it did, apparently. No exchanging notes with other holders of an ARM architectural license. Wow. Everyone is strictly on their own -- use ARM's cores, or use their own completely internal design, and nothing else. Assuming ARM wins in court, of course, which is not necessarily going to happen.
- klelatti 4y ago
  Because Qualcomm - of all companies - would never push the envelope of what their licenses allow them to do? This is a firm that got endorsements from 22 other companies for their acquisition of Nuvia but apparently somehow forgot to tell the firm that that are legally obliged to inform.
- kramerger 4y ago
  You are forgetting one very important issue. If you have your own ASIC design and validation teams targeting the latest nodes, the ARM license is not a major cost to you. Heck, it's probably less than what you pay for your simulator or clock tree compiler. And probably worth it given the high quality support you get. And if you are not at that level, do you really need a custom architecture? Can you pull it off with your limited resources?
  - brucehoult 4y ago
    It's not the direct cost of the license that is the big problem with using Arm. It's bullshit you have to deal with, not least the 18 months of time to negotiate the license in the first place. Why don't Arm have a standard license that you download the PDF, tick the box for what you want, with a standard cost, sign it, and mail it in? I don't know, but from all accounts from people who have been there, done that, they don't. As we can see from the current revelation (or at least claim) that despite both Nivia and Qualcomm having "Arm Architectural Licences" they're apparently not allowed to do the thing that was the sole reason for Arm wanting to buy Nuvia i.e. use the core they had designed.
    - kramerger 4y ago
      I feel you are moving the goalposts. Also, in my own experience arm is pretty quick to approve things. But of course if you are "negotiating" things can take more time
2Gkashmiri 4y ago
you are missing forest for the trees. ARM licensing allows USA to enforce their "rule of law" or whatever BS on the rest of the world, "sanctions" is a nice word that gets thrown around a bit.... Tomorrow USA can force ARM to not sell products to countries on their naughty list. They can do that because of sanctions but what about those countries? why should say IRAN or russia not get to enjoy the fruits of open source because foss/open source does not care about such petty things, in the long run. If i build a GPL software/hardware, i don't care if iranians or americans or russians or chinese use it. If i was building proprietary one, then i do care. >With RISC-V why would a company which designed a high-end CPU core license it to anyone instead of trying to maximize their profit/competitive advantage? With Arm at least there something to fallback to accessible for everyone. FOSS ?
- qwytw 4y ago
  > ARM licensing allows USA to enforce their "rule of law" Yes but how does that incentivize western companies to invest into RISC-V? I mean any western company would have to comply with US sanctions if they want to do business with US companies regardless of the architecture they are using. And if they don’t care about any of that they might as well just use ARM anyway without licensing it. It’s not like all the documentation required wasn’t already leaked anyway making it basically equivalent to RISC-V (if you don’t want to play by the (western) rules). In fact it probably make more sense for Iran or Russia to clone ARM/x86 designs because they don’t have enough resources or expertise to create anything even marginally competitive on their own. > If i build a GPL software/hardware, i don't care if iranians or americans or russians or chinese use it. If i was building proprietary one, then i do care. > FOSS ? Unlike in software there seems to be little incentive for companies to opensource their designs. Why would a hardware company which invested millions to design a RISC-V core give it away for free to their competitors? Unless they can monetize it some other way (.e.g like software companies can) there is no incentive for them to do that.
  - snvzz 4y ago
    >Why would a hardware company which invested millions to design a RISC-V core give it away for free to their competitors? I wonder. But it's a fact it's already happened a few times. And the cores aren't even bad[0]. 0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RISC-V#Open_source https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RISC-V#Open_source
dkjaudyeqooe 4y ago
You sound like someone from the 90's dismissing Linux. The bottom line is that ARM represents vendor lock-in and broken market with only one seller. A company can take it upon itself to design a high-end processor for servers and be successful (like Apple did for user machines) but it's certain it won't choose the ARM arch, that would make no sense. Now that the RV arch is established and growing it's inevitable that it will be the arch of choice, because no-one in their right mind is going to tie their hands and donate money to ARM for nothing useful in return. Yes, CPUs are expensive to design, but it's amazing what a free and functioning market can produce. We're about to find out exactly what.
- klelatti 4y ago
  Nuvia chose Arm when RISC-V was available. "Nothing useful in return" isn't correct. There is clearly a lot of Arm IP on offer to licensees - eg see Amazon and Graviton. I get the enthusiasm for RISC-V and its great in many ways but some of the 'boosterism' doesn't do it any favours.
  - dkjaudyeqooe 4y ago
    The Nuvia people had just spent years developing high performance ARM cores (for Apple) and as a small company obviously want a ready market for their designs. By "nothing in return" I mean if you want to design a CPU from scratch, what exactly are you getting from licensing the ARM arch? Software compatibility? That doesn't mean anything for servers where compatibility is largely a recompile away. Of course ARM is a huge supplier of IP and their ability to design processors in not question, but they only supply IP for one arch which they control. If you want to design something different you must get ARM's permission and they have proven to be fickle about that. It's not "boosterism" is a real and hard fact that freedom for the fundamental parts of any class of technology means that a vibrant ecosystem can flourish around it. That's the fundamental difference here and the technical challenges have proven not to be a barrier.
    - klelatti 4y ago
      By all accounts Nuvia got substantial help (and probably quite a bit of IP) from Arm and I imagine that would be the case for any architectural licensee - they weren't just get sent a copy of the ISA spec and left to it! So 'nothing in return' just isn't true.

by qwytw 4y ago

brucehoult 4y ago

What is the price of an ARM architectural license? I don't think any of us know. What does it let you do? Not what Qualcomm thought it did, apparently. No exchanging notes with other holders of an ARM architectural license. Wow. Everyone is strictly on their own -- use ARM's cores, or use their own completely internal design, and nothing else. Assuming ARM wins in court, of course, which is not necessarily going to happen.

klelatti 4y ago
Because Qualcomm - of all companies - would never push the envelope of what their licenses allow them to do? This is a firm that got endorsements from 22 other companies for their acquisition of Nuvia but apparently somehow forgot to tell the firm that that are legally obliged to inform.
kramerger 4y ago
You are forgetting one very important issue. If you have your own ASIC design and validation teams targeting the latest nodes, the ARM license is not a major cost to you. Heck, it's probably less than what you pay for your simulator or clock tree compiler. And probably worth it given the high quality support you get. And if you are not at that level, do you really need a custom architecture? Can you pull it off with your limited resources?
- brucehoult 4y ago
  It's not the direct cost of the license that is the big problem with using Arm. It's bullshit you have to deal with, not least the 18 months of time to negotiate the license in the first place. Why don't Arm have a standard license that you download the PDF, tick the box for what you want, with a standard cost, sign it, and mail it in? I don't know, but from all accounts from people who have been there, done that, they don't. As we can see from the current revelation (or at least claim) that despite both Nivia and Qualcomm having "Arm Architectural Licences" they're apparently not allowed to do the thing that was the sole reason for Arm wanting to buy Nuvia i.e. use the core they had designed.
  - kramerger 4y ago
    I feel you are moving the goalposts. Also, in my own experience arm is pretty quick to approve things. But of course if you are "negotiating" things can take more time

2Gkashmiri 4y ago

you are missing forest for the trees. ARM licensing allows USA to enforce their "rule of law" or whatever BS on the rest of the world, "sanctions" is a nice word that gets thrown around a bit.... Tomorrow USA can force ARM to not sell products to countries on their naughty list. They can do that because of sanctions but what about those countries? why should say IRAN or russia not get to enjoy the fruits of open source because foss/open source does not care about such petty things, in the long run. If i build a GPL software/hardware, i don't care if iranians or americans or russians or chinese use it. If i was building proprietary one, then i do care. >With RISC-V why would a company which designed a high-end CPU core license it to anyone instead of trying to maximize their profit/competitive advantage? With Arm at least there something to fallback to accessible for everyone. FOSS ?

qwytw 4y ago
> ARM licensing allows USA to enforce their "rule of law" Yes but how does that incentivize western companies to invest into RISC-V? I mean any western company would have to comply with US sanctions if they want to do business with US companies regardless of the architecture they are using. And if they don’t care about any of that they might as well just use ARM anyway without licensing it. It’s not like all the documentation required wasn’t already leaked anyway making it basically equivalent to RISC-V (if you don’t want to play by the (western) rules). In fact it probably make more sense for Iran or Russia to clone ARM/x86 designs because they don’t have enough resources or expertise to create anything even marginally competitive on their own. > If i build a GPL software/hardware, i don't care if iranians or americans or russians or chinese use it. If i was building proprietary one, then i do care. > FOSS ? Unlike in software there seems to be little incentive for companies to opensource their designs. Why would a hardware company which invested millions to design a RISC-V core give it away for free to their competitors? Unless they can monetize it some other way (.e.g like software companies can) there is no incentive for them to do that.
- snvzz 4y ago
  >Why would a hardware company which invested millions to design a RISC-V core give it away for free to their competitors? I wonder. But it's a fact it's already happened a few times. And the cores aren't even bad[0]. 0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RISC-V#Open_source https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RISC-V#Open_source

dkjaudyeqooe 4y ago

You sound like someone from the 90's dismissing Linux. The bottom line is that ARM represents vendor lock-in and broken market with only one seller. A company can take it upon itself to design a high-end processor for servers and be successful (like Apple did for user machines) but it's certain it won't choose the ARM arch, that would make no sense. Now that the RV arch is established and growing it's inevitable that it will be the arch of choice, because no-one in their right mind is going to tie their hands and donate money to ARM for nothing useful in return. Yes, CPUs are expensive to design, but it's amazing what a free and functioning market can produce. We're about to find out exactly what.

klelatti 4y ago
Nuvia chose Arm when RISC-V was available. "Nothing useful in return" isn't correct. There is clearly a lot of Arm IP on offer to licensees - eg see Amazon and Graviton. I get the enthusiasm for RISC-V and its great in many ways but some of the 'boosterism' doesn't do it any favours.
- dkjaudyeqooe 4y ago
  The Nuvia people had just spent years developing high performance ARM cores (for Apple) and as a small company obviously want a ready market for their designs. By "nothing in return" I mean if you want to design a CPU from scratch, what exactly are you getting from licensing the ARM arch? Software compatibility? That doesn't mean anything for servers where compatibility is largely a recompile away. Of course ARM is a huge supplier of IP and their ability to design processors in not question, but they only supply IP for one arch which they control. If you want to design something different you must get ARM's permission and they have proven to be fickle about that. It's not "boosterism" is a real and hard fact that freedom for the fundamental parts of any class of technology means that a vibrant ecosystem can flourish around it. That's the fundamental difference here and the technical challenges have proven not to be a barrier.
  - klelatti 4y ago
    By all accounts Nuvia got substantial help (and probably quite a bit of IP) from Arm and I imagine that would be the case for any architectural licensee - they weren't just get sent a copy of the ISA spec and left to it! So 'nothing in return' just isn't true.