6 ms·

Apple brought their chipset in house, using ARM is a base, to control their supply chain, cut costs, and allow for a RISC based architecture (which honestly jus

Apple brought their chipset in house, using ARM is a base, to control their supply chain, cut costs, and allow for a RISC based architecture (which honestly just makes sense now these days). The biggest hinderance to RISC-V adoption will be if ARM remains customizable, cheap (from an IP perspective), and has widespread adoption. Honestly, I'm okay if RISC-V remains somewhat niche, but provides the necessary market pressure to keep non-open competitors honest. There's a meta-benefit to open standards as well.

GoOnThenDoTell 4y ago
ARM committed the sin of suing a really big customer of theirs, so there is likely some exit-seeking all around the industry
- klelatti 4y ago
  I’m not sure what else Arm is supposed to do if it believes that the really big customer has broken their contract with them? I actually think this ought to be a positive for customers who are clearly abiding by the terms of their contracts.
  - GoOnThenDoTell 4y ago
    It doesn’t matter which party is correct, its now added risk that ARM could be the bad actor
    - klelatti 4y ago
      Why if Arm is correct does that add a risk that it's the bad actor? Most firms will have legal departments can look at this case on its merits and decide whether or not Arm is acting in bad faith. If I'm another Arm customer I definitely don't want a competitor playing fast and loose with its Arm contract.
      - smoldesu 4y ago
        > Why if Arm is correct does that add a risk that it's the bad actor? Because nobody wants to fight over the licensing of a product they're shackled to. If you could buy a RISC-V board with software support similar to a Raspberry Pi, ARM's goose would be cooked. Every enthusiast would ditch ARM in a heartbeat for a more open ISA, and ARM licensees would see it as an opportunity to finally wiggle free of ARM's insane license restrictions. All we need is the software support, which should be pretty forthcoming since most projects have already been optimized for RISC. ARM could unseat x86 because both ISAs were encumbered with licenses at the time. Now, ARM is competing with much less restrictive architectures, and all it would take is a FOSS RISC instruction set to ruin their value prop.
        klelatti 4y ago
        > Because nobody wants to fight over the licensing of a product they're shackled to. So when a firm licenses a RISC-V core from SiFive they should be free do whatever they want with that core irrespective of the license terms?
        smoldesu 4y ago
        No, but they have the freedom to design their own core if SiFive threatens them in the way ARM does.
        klelatti 4y ago
        So you believe that firms should abide by contracts but that firms shouldn’t try to enforce the terms of those contracts. I find it odd how Qualcomm is portrayed as though they were innocently minding their own business when they suddenly got sued. They bought Nuvia knowing what was in the two sets of contracts. Also Qualcomm had and still has the ability to design their own Arm cores.
        smoldesu 4y ago
        I'm not talking about Qualcomm, really. I'm talking about companies like Apple, who really only have a cursory attachment to ARM as an ISA. Then there's the hundreds of smaller manufacturers who have zero attachment to ARM and would much rather build hardware on their own terms. Those are ARM's moneymakers, and those are the companies that frankly have the most to gain from using RISC-V. If Qualcomm is a relevant topic regarding ARM's success, then they've arguably already failed.
  - ip26 4y ago
    It’s not obvious who is in the right, and in my armchair opinion it looks like ARM has a slightly weaker argument. IANAL, but all of this makes ARM appear more litigious than egregiously wronged.
BirAdam 4y ago
ARM is already attacking one of their largest licensees, and RISC-V is already in use at Apple. As Apple’s hardware accelerated x86 translation proves, they can proficiently transition to any hardware platform. The ISA really isn’t that important anymore, and I expect Apple to do what makes the most sense regarding price/performance.
- qwytw 4y ago
  Well switching to a new architecture is still probably extremely expensive which would permanently shift price/performance in favor of ARM unless RISC actually provides something unique. Freedom from licensing etc. shouldn't be a problem for Apple unless maybe if they want to sell their chips to 3rd parties which doesn't seem too likely.
SanjayMehta 4y ago
Apple had a job listing last year for something which needed RISC-V knowledge. https://www.tomshardware.com/news/apple-looking-for-risc-v-programmers https://www.tomshardware.com/news/apple-looking-for-risc-v-p...
- qwytw 4y ago
  It's common knowledge their are planning to replace some of their low-end embedded cores with RISC-V ones. RISC-V is probably 5-10 years behind on the upper end though
tormeh 4y ago
Apple has a perpetual ARM license. It's unlikely they'll transition to RISC-V.
- snvzz 4y ago
  I do not know the details of Apple's agreement with ARM. AIUI they are not public. But I do know they have a perpetual free RISC-V license like everybody else.
  - justahuman74 4y ago
    In a long time horizon, it's probably in Apple's interest to migrate away from ARM just so that they have one less company to negotiate with or receive restrictions from
    - klelatti 4y ago
      Apple helped to design Arm v8 they probably have huge influence on the direction of travel of the ISA. Plus they have huge investment in Arm based software and probably get access to all of Arm’s IP (eg big.LITTLE). They will migrate when there is a major performance advantage (as in the past).
  - lizknope 4y ago
    I worked at a semiconductor company that had an ARM architectural license and we implemented our own ARM CPU. We still had to pass ARM compliance tests. I heard from some of the people on the CPU team that Apple did not have to pass those tests because they had an exemption from ARM. Apple was one of the original ARM investors when it was spun off from Acorn in 1990. I think that agreement allows them to do things with ARM like adding custom things that other ARM licensees aren't allowed to do.
    - DiscoDays 4y ago
      > We still had to pass ARM compliance tests. You are making it sound like a burden, but I do not understand why it would be. Surely you are interested in safety checks giving you more confidence that you are positioning yourself to take advantage of the Arm ecosystem (instead of releasing something that is not supportable by compilers and OS experts)?.. Or am I misunderstanding the nature of the compliance tests?
0cf8612b2e1e 4y ago
All it would take is for AWS/Azure to start offering a RISCV Graviton-like system and I suspect we could see development skyrocket.
- fundad 4y ago
  Agree and that would be the result of a lot of development.
- Vt71fcAqt7 4y ago
  I've had the same thought and took it even further. The cloud companies are in the business of managing capital, namely datacenters. They are not in the business of designing µarchs; to the extent that they do (ie. Graviton) it is to lower costs. For this reason I belive it is economically favorable for them to jointly create and fund an open µarch. Note thay they are already doing this through a middleman known as the Intel/AMD monopoly. Also note that a similar thing has happened already with Linux. Collectively throwing a few hundred million at the problem (or buying sifive, for example) could save money in the long run. Although I can't be certain about that. I hope someone pitches this idea to these companies. I think some people at Google may be thinking in this direction being that they are paying for tape out of open hardware at no cost to the developers and are investing in tooling.
  - monocasa 4y ago
    That's what Alibaba is already doing too. They bought T-Head and have been releasing open source RISC-V cores that have been taped out in a move to "commoditize your complement", thus bringing total costs down by making their vendors' markets more competitive.
  - tubs 4y ago
    Graviton isn't a custom uarch though. It's a set of fairly standard cores with all the actual magic being the fabric and and peripherals.
jasonwatkinspdx 4y ago
Apple is in a unique position with a perpetual ARM license, so they don't feel any particular competitive pressure from RISC-V. In fact they're adopting it for microcontrollers and such.

GoOnThenDoTell 4y ago

ARM committed the sin of suing a really big customer of theirs, so there is likely some exit-seeking all around the industry

klelatti 4y ago
I’m not sure what else Arm is supposed to do if it believes that the really big customer has broken their contract with them? I actually think this ought to be a positive for customers who are clearly abiding by the terms of their contracts.
- GoOnThenDoTell 4y ago
  It doesn’t matter which party is correct, its now added risk that ARM could be the bad actor
  - klelatti 4y ago
    Why if Arm is correct does that add a risk that it's the bad actor? Most firms will have legal departments can look at this case on its merits and decide whether or not Arm is acting in bad faith. If I'm another Arm customer I definitely don't want a competitor playing fast and loose with its Arm contract.
    - smoldesu 4y ago
      > Why if Arm is correct does that add a risk that it's the bad actor? Because nobody wants to fight over the licensing of a product they're shackled to. If you could buy a RISC-V board with software support similar to a Raspberry Pi, ARM's goose would be cooked. Every enthusiast would ditch ARM in a heartbeat for a more open ISA, and ARM licensees would see it as an opportunity to finally wiggle free of ARM's insane license restrictions. All we need is the software support, which should be pretty forthcoming since most projects have already been optimized for RISC. ARM could unseat x86 because both ISAs were encumbered with licenses at the time. Now, ARM is competing with much less restrictive architectures, and all it would take is a FOSS RISC instruction set to ruin their value prop.
      - klelatti 4y ago
        > Because nobody wants to fight over the licensing of a product they're shackled to. So when a firm licenses a RISC-V core from SiFive they should be free do whatever they want with that core irrespective of the license terms?
        smoldesu 4y ago
        No, but they have the freedom to design their own core if SiFive threatens them in the way ARM does.
        klelatti 4y ago
        So you believe that firms should abide by contracts but that firms shouldn’t try to enforce the terms of those contracts. I find it odd how Qualcomm is portrayed as though they were innocently minding their own business when they suddenly got sued. They bought Nuvia knowing what was in the two sets of contracts. Also Qualcomm had and still has the ability to design their own Arm cores.
        smoldesu 4y ago
        I'm not talking about Qualcomm, really. I'm talking about companies like Apple, who really only have a cursory attachment to ARM as an ISA. Then there's the hundreds of smaller manufacturers who have zero attachment to ARM and would much rather build hardware on their own terms. Those are ARM's moneymakers, and those are the companies that frankly have the most to gain from using RISC-V. If Qualcomm is a relevant topic regarding ARM's success, then they've arguably already failed.
- ip26 4y ago
  It’s not obvious who is in the right, and in my armchair opinion it looks like ARM has a slightly weaker argument. IANAL, but all of this makes ARM appear more litigious than egregiously wronged.

BirAdam 4y ago

ARM is already attacking one of their largest licensees, and RISC-V is already in use at Apple. As Apple’s hardware accelerated x86 translation proves, they can proficiently transition to any hardware platform. The ISA really isn’t that important anymore, and I expect Apple to do what makes the most sense regarding price/performance.

qwytw 4y ago
Well switching to a new architecture is still probably extremely expensive which would permanently shift price/performance in favor of ARM unless RISC actually provides something unique. Freedom from licensing etc. shouldn't be a problem for Apple unless maybe if they want to sell their chips to 3rd parties which doesn't seem too likely.

SanjayMehta 4y ago

Apple had a job listing last year for something which needed RISC-V knowledge. https://www.tomshardware.com/news/apple-looking-for-risc-v-programmers https://www.tomshardware.com/news/apple-looking-for-risc-v-p...

qwytw 4y ago
It's common knowledge their are planning to replace some of their low-end embedded cores with RISC-V ones. RISC-V is probably 5-10 years behind on the upper end though

tormeh 4y ago

Apple has a perpetual ARM license. It's unlikely they'll transition to RISC-V.

snvzz 4y ago
I do not know the details of Apple's agreement with ARM. AIUI they are not public. But I do know they have a perpetual free RISC-V license like everybody else.
- justahuman74 4y ago
  In a long time horizon, it's probably in Apple's interest to migrate away from ARM just so that they have one less company to negotiate with or receive restrictions from
  - klelatti 4y ago
    Apple helped to design Arm v8 they probably have huge influence on the direction of travel of the ISA. Plus they have huge investment in Arm based software and probably get access to all of Arm’s IP (eg big.LITTLE). They will migrate when there is a major performance advantage (as in the past).
- lizknope 4y ago
  I worked at a semiconductor company that had an ARM architectural license and we implemented our own ARM CPU. We still had to pass ARM compliance tests. I heard from some of the people on the CPU team that Apple did not have to pass those tests because they had an exemption from ARM. Apple was one of the original ARM investors when it was spun off from Acorn in 1990. I think that agreement allows them to do things with ARM like adding custom things that other ARM licensees aren't allowed to do.
  - DiscoDays 4y ago
    > We still had to pass ARM compliance tests. You are making it sound like a burden, but I do not understand why it would be. Surely you are interested in safety checks giving you more confidence that you are positioning yourself to take advantage of the Arm ecosystem (instead of releasing something that is not supportable by compilers and OS experts)?.. Or am I misunderstanding the nature of the compliance tests?

0cf8612b2e1e 4y ago

All it would take is for AWS/Azure to start offering a RISCV Graviton-like system and I suspect we could see development skyrocket.

fundad 4y ago
Agree and that would be the result of a lot of development.
Vt71fcAqt7 4y ago
I've had the same thought and took it even further. The cloud companies are in the business of managing capital, namely datacenters. They are not in the business of designing µarchs; to the extent that they do (ie. Graviton) it is to lower costs. For this reason I belive it is economically favorable for them to jointly create and fund an open µarch. Note thay they are already doing this through a middleman known as the Intel/AMD monopoly. Also note that a similar thing has happened already with Linux. Collectively throwing a few hundred million at the problem (or buying sifive, for example) could save money in the long run. Although I can't be certain about that. I hope someone pitches this idea to these companies. I think some people at Google may be thinking in this direction being that they are paying for tape out of open hardware at no cost to the developers and are investing in tooling.
- monocasa 4y ago
  That's what Alibaba is already doing too. They bought T-Head and have been releasing open source RISC-V cores that have been taped out in a move to "commoditize your complement", thus bringing total costs down by making their vendors' markets more competitive.
- tubs 4y ago
  Graviton isn't a custom uarch though. It's a set of fairly standard cores with all the actual magic being the fabric and and peripherals.

jasonwatkinspdx 4y ago

Apple is in a unique position with a perpetual ARM license, so they don't feel any particular competitive pressure from RISC-V. In fact they're adopting it for microcontrollers and such.