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People get excited because "it's open source". Except it's really not as only the instruction set is "open source" and even that doesn't really mean much as int
by Steltek 4y ago
People get excited because "it's open source". Except it's really not as only the instruction set is "open source" and even that doesn't really mean much as interfaces have dubious copyright protection. Still, it promises a cheaper alternative to ARM because of the theoretical reduced licensing costs from the trademark name.
The other salient is political: ARM, x86, etc are Western aligned while RISC-V is attractively nonaligned. ARM's government mandated Chinese subsidiary went rogue against ARM itself which endangers the use of ARM chips in China. RISC-V hedges against this risk for China.
- HopenHeyHi 4y agoI don't care about licensing costs just the final total cost. And I absolutely don't care that it is "politically nonaligned", bah. I care because David Patterson is a badass who was right about everything. :)
- viraptor 4y ago> And I absolutely don't care that it is "politically nonaligned", bah. You don't until you do. Like all the corps which need to replace the Huawei tech unexpectedly.
- HopenHeyHi 4y ago[flagged]
- abeyer 4y ago> because "it's open source". Except it's really not as only the instruction set is "open source" There are multiple cores available under permissive licenses all the way through to ASIC or FPGA implementation. There is also quite a bit of academic research happening now, which may not be formally open source but is shared and published. > even that doesn't really mean much as interfaces have dubious copyright protection There's a big difference between "given a license to use this" and "might not get sued, or at least might win if we do, if we use this without permission."