6 ms·

New Xen updates on RISC-V

84 points by jandeboevrie 3y ago

snvzz 3y ago
RISC-V ecosystem looks like it will be ready the moment the hardware is. Exciting.
- contrarian1234 3y ago
  The hardware has been around for a while now... You have cheap low level micros like the ESP32-C4 and you have affordable CPUs like Alibaba T-Head, Allwinner D1, StarFive JH7110 Boards are available: https://www.cnx-software.com/2023/05/06/lichee-pi-4a-risc-v-sbc-raspberry-pi-4-th1520-processor/ https://www.cnx-software.com/2023/05/06/lichee-pi-4a-risc-v-... https://www.cnx-software.com/2023/04/02/pine64-star64-sbc-starfive-jh7110-quad-core-risc-v-processor-imagination-gpu/ https://www.cnx-software.com/2023/04/02/pine64-star64-sbc-st... https://www.cnx-software.com/2023/03/14/asus-tinker-v-risc-v-single-board-computer-tinker-board-3-sbc-with-rockchip-rk3568-soc/ https://www.cnx-software.com/2023/03/14/asus-tinker-v-risc-v... Linux distros and essential libraries has been more or less ported. There are some rough edges here and there, but on the whole all the pieces are there (software and hardware).. and yet the uptake has been slow. Turns out, while cool to hear about, most people at the end of the day don't really care about what architecture they're running.
  - baq 3y ago
    Most people care about if it’s on a list of vms to buy on AWS. It took amazon a ~decade to get graviton to something worth using.
    - plam503711 3y ago
      (XCP-ng founder here) I'm more optimistic for RISC-V. For all the devs who worked on it here (at https://vates.tech https://vates.tech), they told me it's very easy to work with since it's close to many Arm design principles. That's why I believe it's important to prepare the platform today for those future machines. I think it's a great opportunity to not only get an alternative both x86 and Arm, but also really opening the choice of the design, letting new players mastering both hardware and software (I have to admit that's something I'm considering for my business at some point).
      - contrarian1234 3y ago
        I think just a lot of the open source community and even ARM itself assumed there would be some inflection point at which point everyone would jump ship to RISC-V. I could be wrong, but at this point it seems more likely to be a gradual change unless there is some key gamechanger piece of hardware like the M1 chip Most of the big moves in the RISC-V space seem to be coming from the low-end and from China. They might have trouble making the jump to a true x64 M1-like competitor given the geopolitics with cutting edge chip manufacturing (TSMC etc.) I think other players are going to have funding issues to take on the big players as the open nature of RISC-V seems to mean it's harder to build an IP moat. I've noticed a lot of the Chinese chips come with stuff like NPUs to set themselves apart and presumably get some lock in on their "platforms". But that's just my naiive impression reading some blogs and looking at releases. (ie. I have no idea what I'm talking about)
        plam503711 3y ago
        I don't think it will be "instant change". I agree on the gradual result, but I think it might be faster than we think. Yes, it also depends on the ecosystem, but I think the world is more ready for ISA diversity than ever.
        ilyt 3y ago
        >I think just a lot of the open source community and even ARM itself assumed there would be some inflection point at which point everyone would jump ship to RISC-V. I could be wrong, but at this point it seems more likely to be a gradual change unless there is some key gamechanger piece of hardware like the M1 chip I don't know why. It's not inherently better than any of the current architectures in meaningful way, just doesn't require license. IIRC royalty per ARM chip was somewhere in single digit percentages which is basically meaningless for everyone but the chip company, or few big companies making super low margin stuff.
        adgjlsfhk1 3y ago
        the expensive part of an arm license isn't the money, it's the fact that you have to deal with it (and be highly reliant on a 3rd party that doesn't share your interests).
    - cbm-vic-20 3y ago
      QEMU is probably the most used, most powerful non-embedded RISC-V platform today. If a customer really wants RISC-V for server applications, it's probably the fastest way to do this today- it seems we're still pretty far from server-grade RISC-V silicon.
      - snvzz 3y ago
        >it seems we're still pretty far from server-grade RISC-V silicon. Ventana Veyron's just that, and meant to ship before 2023 ends.
  - fithisux 3y ago
    These are not good for day to day use like raspberry. It will take a bit but at the end the ISA will matter.
    - contrarian1234 3y ago
      There have been way better options since almost the beginning in terms of design/arch/boarddesign than RPi with their weird VCore monster. Nobody has displaced them in like a decade. I doubt a change of architecture is the final push needed
    - rjsw 3y ago
      I can buy a RISC-V board, I can't buy a Raspberry PI.
      - MrFoof 3y ago
        That is actually starting to change, and per Eben Upton’s very recent interview with Jeff Geerling, should be approaching back to normal for hobbyists in coming months. I’ve checked rpilocator a few times this week to find 4Bs available every single time. Not tons and not everywhere, but they’re starting to have availability again.
    - ilyt 3y ago
      ISA will not matter. Features and how well it works out of the box will. rPi have hundreds of competitors and they still sell by far the most amount of SBCs, because "it just works" with many things supporting it out of the box
  - neilv 3y ago
    The provenance of the ASUS Tinker V units is Taiwan and Japan? I wonder whether they'll embrace open firmware and mainline Linux (including all drivers) for the entire board. That's what I really want from RISC V offerings. (Though I understand the current motivation of many with RISC V is simply to avoid ARM licensing fees, and that having trustworthy and long-term sustainable hardware usually isn't a requirement in IoT.)
    - contrarian1234 3y ago
      Don't hold your breath. They've had a incredibly disappointing track record with Tinkerboards. Taiwan and Japan .. have a horrible record with open source as far as I can tell? I can't think of any counterexamples right now - and they don't have a Silicon-Valley/Shenzhen hacker cultural hubs to push things along externally
    - snvzz 3y ago
      It's based on a bad chip that violates the privileged spec, by having a hardware pinned TLB entry. On a really bad memory location that breaks standard Linux userspace. It will never be able to run standard distributions, only bespoke for the device. Categorically avoid, and hope the next generation Renesas chip is less dumb.
  - arp242 3y ago
    > the uptake has been slow. Turns out, while cool to hear about, most people at the end of the day don't really care about what architecture they're running. Price is a factor. €140 for the Lichee which "nearly catches up with standard ARM board performance like Raspberry Pi 4" (their own words from the AliBaba page) is hard to justify for most, especially since this also comes with less mature ecosystem support. The $90 Pine64 is cheaper but also slower than a RPI4 and Pine64 is a "by enthusiasts, for enthusiasts" type of deal, which means stuff like 30-day warranty (which is a fine, just not a good fit for many uses). There is no price for the Asus one yet, but it's a lot slower than a RPI and judging from their other boards I bet it's going to be a lot more expensive.
    - ilyt 3y ago
      And price's supposed to be reason to move. The whole industry's buzz about RISC-V is pretty much "yay, we don't need to pay ARM for license".
      - adgjlsfhk1 3y ago
        the price will take time and volume. to me risc-v is interesting largely because of how well thought out their vector instruction set is. it really shows the advantage you get when you are the last one to implement a feature and can see how everyone else messed it up.
        ilyt 3y ago
        Well, yeah, but not something someone would buy CPU for unless said CPU with vector extensions is faster or more energy efficient than competition.
        snvzz 3y ago
        Next year will have Tenstorrent's (CEO: Jim Keller) Ascalon, led by Wei-han Lien, who also led the M1 project at Apple, and expected to have similar IPC as projected Zen5 (also TBA 2024) but using significantly less power. It has a range of smaller variants, potentially able to cover a range of products including servers, laptops and smartphones.
  - IshKebab 3y ago
    That doesn't mean the ecosystem is mature though. How many chips support RVA22?
    - brucehoult 3y ago
      Uh, "none", because the ratified version of RVA22 was published on April 2, 2023, less than two months ago? We'll probably see the first boards with SoCs supporting RVA22 in the first half of 2024.
  - jrtc27 3y ago
    The SoC IP used in ASUS's Tinker V deliberately violates the virtual memory spec in a way that affects userspace, rendering certain virtual addresses unusable. This region overlaps with the default base address of position-dependent executables, so those cannot and will not run on it unless rebuilt with a different explicit base address.
  - officeplant 3y ago
    It still feels like a broken mess on my Starfive Vision2, but things are improving. I just think I'm not developer brained enough to fix the rough edges. Debians repo's are still missing a lot of riscV ported software but that takes time.
    - snvzz 3y ago
      My experience with VF2 has been great. I love the standard RISC-V boot process. My board runs Arch from NVMe. The weakest link seems to be the GPU driver (Imagination Technologies), as it is proprietary and not very good. We know they are working on a mesa3d driver, but I am not sure it will cover the GPU variant used in the VF2 SoC.
- jgerrish 3y ago
  I've been doing an informal survey of Rust packages for RISC-V. A lot of the basic RT crates are broken. But the SBI integrated crates are top-notch. I wonder what would have happened if the other ecosystems had invested in QEMU development and other boot systems during the chip supply shortage. Or is there just something wrong with them? Sorry, sick question. I don't need to pursue this avenue.
gaudat 3y ago
The cover picture makes me cringe... It is an AI generated picture of a naked server?
- mcdonje 3y ago
  Don't kink shame.
- dale_glass 3y ago
  Definitely: https://xcp-ng.org/blog/content/images/2023/02/riscvdc.jpg https://xcp-ng.org/blog/content/images/2023/02/riscvdc.jpg The broken text makes is very clear. But that's exactly the market I thought AI would eat first. The blog posts need some sort of picture to represent the general idea of a high tech server. Nobody cares which exact thing it is and if it even exists. In many respects a non-existent one may be better, it won't get obviously old. So why pay money for a stock picture where you could have a passable substitute for free?
  - ghaff 3y ago
    There's common wisdom that blog posts need an image, more or less any image. Larger publications probably have stock image contracts. Smaller ones use Creative Commons--maybe honoring non-commercial/non-derivative clauses or not--or just grab anything they can. Generative AI seems tailor-made for need an image, any image. I imagine I'll use it myself.
    - _a_a_a_ 3y ago
      Yeah, just like here in HN. /s I'd prefer not to be treated like an idiot but so many sites are determined to.
  - ilyt 3y ago
    https://xcp-ng.org/blog/content/images/size/w2000/2023/05/riscvbanner3.jpg https://xcp-ng.org/blog/content/images/size/w2000/2023/05/ri... the banner one is worse, just look at those sockets or nailbed radiators
- 3y ago
jamesy0ung 3y ago
I was under the impression Xen was being phased out across the industry and that KVM/QEMU is pretty much default now
- mcdonje 3y ago
  Which industry? There are several products that use xen under the hood, like AWS, Citrix, Qubes, Linode, etc. Why would you install an entire fully fledged OS like Linux to manage a company owned Windows machine that a data analyst uses when you can use a type 1 hypervisor instead?
  - dale_glass 3y ago
    Linode uses Xen? That explains things. At one point I managed to convince KVM to work with Linode-style disks where /dev/vda is the actual filesystem, no partition table, but it took a fair amount of fiddling. I'm not sure why people don't do that more often, it's just a lot more comfortable when you can expand a host's LV as needed, and fsck and mount from the outside without having to deal with the embedded partition table.
    - shinies 3y ago
      Linode migrated to KVM as well. Seems everyone is slowly moving off Xen!
    - ilyt 3y ago
      >At one point I managed to convince KVM to work with Linode-style disks where /dev/vda is the actual filesystem, no partition table, but it took a fair amount of fiddling. Just use LVM
      - dale_glass 3y ago
        No, I mean: On standard KVM, if you make a VM and give it /dev/vgname/fedora, inside you get /dev/vda as your main disk, and then you have this: /dev/vda1: /boot/efi /dev/vda2: /boot /dev/vda3: LVM What I want is this: Host side -> VM side /dev/vgname/fedora-boot -> /dev/vda /dev/vgname/fedora-root -> /dev/vdb /dev/vgname/fedora-swap -> /dev/vdc LVM on the VM side is superfluous when you're the owner of everything. This way I don't have to deal with the whole rigamarole of /dev/vgname/fedora having a partition table inside. I can just resize/snapshot/mount/fsck every partition from the host directly. I just find it odd that this seems like an unusual configuration and that pretty much no distro seems to want to work this way.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

84 points by jandeboevrie 3y ago

snvzz 3y ago

RISC-V ecosystem looks like it will be ready the moment the hardware is. Exciting.

contrarian1234 3y ago
The hardware has been around for a while now... You have cheap low level micros like the ESP32-C4 and you have affordable CPUs like Alibaba T-Head, Allwinner D1, StarFive JH7110 Boards are available: https://www.cnx-software.com/2023/05/06/lichee-pi-4a-risc-v-sbc-raspberry-pi-4-th1520-processor/ https://www.cnx-software.com/2023/05/06/lichee-pi-4a-risc-v-... https://www.cnx-software.com/2023/04/02/pine64-star64-sbc-starfive-jh7110-quad-core-risc-v-processor-imagination-gpu/ https://www.cnx-software.com/2023/04/02/pine64-star64-sbc-st... https://www.cnx-software.com/2023/03/14/asus-tinker-v-risc-v-single-board-computer-tinker-board-3-sbc-with-rockchip-rk3568-soc/ https://www.cnx-software.com/2023/03/14/asus-tinker-v-risc-v... Linux distros and essential libraries has been more or less ported. There are some rough edges here and there, but on the whole all the pieces are there (software and hardware).. and yet the uptake has been slow. Turns out, while cool to hear about, most people at the end of the day don't really care about what architecture they're running.
- baq 3y ago
  Most people care about if it’s on a list of vms to buy on AWS. It took amazon a ~decade to get graviton to something worth using.
  - plam503711 3y ago
    (XCP-ng founder here) I'm more optimistic for RISC-V. For all the devs who worked on it here (at https://vates.tech https://vates.tech), they told me it's very easy to work with since it's close to many Arm design principles. That's why I believe it's important to prepare the platform today for those future machines. I think it's a great opportunity to not only get an alternative both x86 and Arm, but also really opening the choice of the design, letting new players mastering both hardware and software (I have to admit that's something I'm considering for my business at some point).
    - contrarian1234 3y ago
      I think just a lot of the open source community and even ARM itself assumed there would be some inflection point at which point everyone would jump ship to RISC-V. I could be wrong, but at this point it seems more likely to be a gradual change unless there is some key gamechanger piece of hardware like the M1 chip Most of the big moves in the RISC-V space seem to be coming from the low-end and from China. They might have trouble making the jump to a true x64 M1-like competitor given the geopolitics with cutting edge chip manufacturing (TSMC etc.) I think other players are going to have funding issues to take on the big players as the open nature of RISC-V seems to mean it's harder to build an IP moat. I've noticed a lot of the Chinese chips come with stuff like NPUs to set themselves apart and presumably get some lock in on their "platforms". But that's just my naiive impression reading some blogs and looking at releases. (ie. I have no idea what I'm talking about)
      - plam503711 3y ago
        I don't think it will be "instant change". I agree on the gradual result, but I think it might be faster than we think. Yes, it also depends on the ecosystem, but I think the world is more ready for ISA diversity than ever.
      - ilyt 3y ago
        >I think just a lot of the open source community and even ARM itself assumed there would be some inflection point at which point everyone would jump ship to RISC-V. I could be wrong, but at this point it seems more likely to be a gradual change unless there is some key gamechanger piece of hardware like the M1 chip I don't know why. It's not inherently better than any of the current architectures in meaningful way, just doesn't require license. IIRC royalty per ARM chip was somewhere in single digit percentages which is basically meaningless for everyone but the chip company, or few big companies making super low margin stuff.
        adgjlsfhk1 3y ago
        the expensive part of an arm license isn't the money, it's the fact that you have to deal with it (and be highly reliant on a 3rd party that doesn't share your interests).
  - cbm-vic-20 3y ago
    QEMU is probably the most used, most powerful non-embedded RISC-V platform today. If a customer really wants RISC-V for server applications, it's probably the fastest way to do this today- it seems we're still pretty far from server-grade RISC-V silicon.
    - snvzz 3y ago
      >it seems we're still pretty far from server-grade RISC-V silicon. Ventana Veyron's just that, and meant to ship before 2023 ends.
- fithisux 3y ago
  These are not good for day to day use like raspberry. It will take a bit but at the end the ISA will matter.
  - contrarian1234 3y ago
    There have been way better options since almost the beginning in terms of design/arch/boarddesign than RPi with their weird VCore monster. Nobody has displaced them in like a decade. I doubt a change of architecture is the final push needed
  - rjsw 3y ago
    I can buy a RISC-V board, I can't buy a Raspberry PI.
    - MrFoof 3y ago
      That is actually starting to change, and per Eben Upton’s very recent interview with Jeff Geerling, should be approaching back to normal for hobbyists in coming months. I’ve checked rpilocator a few times this week to find 4Bs available every single time. Not tons and not everywhere, but they’re starting to have availability again.
  - ilyt 3y ago
    ISA will not matter. Features and how well it works out of the box will. rPi have hundreds of competitors and they still sell by far the most amount of SBCs, because "it just works" with many things supporting it out of the box
- neilv 3y ago
  The provenance of the ASUS Tinker V units is Taiwan and Japan? I wonder whether they'll embrace open firmware and mainline Linux (including all drivers) for the entire board. That's what I really want from RISC V offerings. (Though I understand the current motivation of many with RISC V is simply to avoid ARM licensing fees, and that having trustworthy and long-term sustainable hardware usually isn't a requirement in IoT.)
  - contrarian1234 3y ago
    Don't hold your breath. They've had a incredibly disappointing track record with Tinkerboards. Taiwan and Japan .. have a horrible record with open source as far as I can tell? I can't think of any counterexamples right now - and they don't have a Silicon-Valley/Shenzhen hacker cultural hubs to push things along externally
  - snvzz 3y ago
    It's based on a bad chip that violates the privileged spec, by having a hardware pinned TLB entry. On a really bad memory location that breaks standard Linux userspace. It will never be able to run standard distributions, only bespoke for the device. Categorically avoid, and hope the next generation Renesas chip is less dumb.
- arp242 3y ago
  > the uptake has been slow. Turns out, while cool to hear about, most people at the end of the day don't really care about what architecture they're running. Price is a factor. €140 for the Lichee which "nearly catches up with standard ARM board performance like Raspberry Pi 4" (their own words from the AliBaba page) is hard to justify for most, especially since this also comes with less mature ecosystem support. The $90 Pine64 is cheaper but also slower than a RPI4 and Pine64 is a "by enthusiasts, for enthusiasts" type of deal, which means stuff like 30-day warranty (which is a fine, just not a good fit for many uses). There is no price for the Asus one yet, but it's a lot slower than a RPI and judging from their other boards I bet it's going to be a lot more expensive.
  - ilyt 3y ago
    And price's supposed to be reason to move. The whole industry's buzz about RISC-V is pretty much "yay, we don't need to pay ARM for license".
    - adgjlsfhk1 3y ago
      the price will take time and volume. to me risc-v is interesting largely because of how well thought out their vector instruction set is. it really shows the advantage you get when you are the last one to implement a feature and can see how everyone else messed it up.
      - ilyt 3y ago
        Well, yeah, but not something someone would buy CPU for unless said CPU with vector extensions is faster or more energy efficient than competition.
        snvzz 3y ago
        Next year will have Tenstorrent's (CEO: Jim Keller) Ascalon, led by Wei-han Lien, who also led the M1 project at Apple, and expected to have similar IPC as projected Zen5 (also TBA 2024) but using significantly less power. It has a range of smaller variants, potentially able to cover a range of products including servers, laptops and smartphones.
- IshKebab 3y ago
  That doesn't mean the ecosystem is mature though. How many chips support RVA22?
  - brucehoult 3y ago
    Uh, "none", because the ratified version of RVA22 was published on April 2, 2023, less than two months ago? We'll probably see the first boards with SoCs supporting RVA22 in the first half of 2024.
- jrtc27 3y ago
  The SoC IP used in ASUS's Tinker V deliberately violates the virtual memory spec in a way that affects userspace, rendering certain virtual addresses unusable. This region overlaps with the default base address of position-dependent executables, so those cannot and will not run on it unless rebuilt with a different explicit base address.
- officeplant 3y ago
  It still feels like a broken mess on my Starfive Vision2, but things are improving. I just think I'm not developer brained enough to fix the rough edges. Debians repo's are still missing a lot of riscV ported software but that takes time.
  - snvzz 3y ago
    My experience with VF2 has been great. I love the standard RISC-V boot process. My board runs Arch from NVMe. The weakest link seems to be the GPU driver (Imagination Technologies), as it is proprietary and not very good. We know they are working on a mesa3d driver, but I am not sure it will cover the GPU variant used in the VF2 SoC.
jgerrish 3y ago
I've been doing an informal survey of Rust packages for RISC-V. A lot of the basic RT crates are broken. But the SBI integrated crates are top-notch. I wonder what would have happened if the other ecosystems had invested in QEMU development and other boot systems during the chip supply shortage. Or is there just something wrong with them? Sorry, sick question. I don't need to pursue this avenue.

gaudat 3y ago

The cover picture makes me cringe... It is an AI generated picture of a naked server?

mcdonje 3y ago
Don't kink shame.
dale_glass 3y ago
Definitely: https://xcp-ng.org/blog/content/images/2023/02/riscvdc.jpg https://xcp-ng.org/blog/content/images/2023/02/riscvdc.jpg The broken text makes is very clear. But that's exactly the market I thought AI would eat first. The blog posts need some sort of picture to represent the general idea of a high tech server. Nobody cares which exact thing it is and if it even exists. In many respects a non-existent one may be better, it won't get obviously old. So why pay money for a stock picture where you could have a passable substitute for free?
- ghaff 3y ago
  There's common wisdom that blog posts need an image, more or less any image. Larger publications probably have stock image contracts. Smaller ones use Creative Commons--maybe honoring non-commercial/non-derivative clauses or not--or just grab anything they can. Generative AI seems tailor-made for need an image, any image. I imagine I'll use it myself.
  - _a_a_a_ 3y ago
    Yeah, just like here in HN. /s I'd prefer not to be treated like an idiot but so many sites are determined to.
- ilyt 3y ago
  https://xcp-ng.org/blog/content/images/size/w2000/2023/05/riscvbanner3.jpg https://xcp-ng.org/blog/content/images/size/w2000/2023/05/ri... the banner one is worse, just look at those sockets or nailbed radiators
3y ago

jamesy0ung 3y ago

I was under the impression Xen was being phased out across the industry and that KVM/QEMU is pretty much default now

mcdonje 3y ago
Which industry? There are several products that use xen under the hood, like AWS, Citrix, Qubes, Linode, etc. Why would you install an entire fully fledged OS like Linux to manage a company owned Windows machine that a data analyst uses when you can use a type 1 hypervisor instead?
- dale_glass 3y ago
  Linode uses Xen? That explains things. At one point I managed to convince KVM to work with Linode-style disks where /dev/vda is the actual filesystem, no partition table, but it took a fair amount of fiddling. I'm not sure why people don't do that more often, it's just a lot more comfortable when you can expand a host's LV as needed, and fsck and mount from the outside without having to deal with the embedded partition table.
  - shinies 3y ago
    Linode migrated to KVM as well. Seems everyone is slowly moving off Xen!
  - ilyt 3y ago
    >At one point I managed to convince KVM to work with Linode-style disks where /dev/vda is the actual filesystem, no partition table, but it took a fair amount of fiddling. Just use LVM
    - dale_glass 3y ago
      No, I mean: On standard KVM, if you make a VM and give it /dev/vgname/fedora, inside you get /dev/vda as your main disk, and then you have this: /dev/vda1: /boot/efi /dev/vda2: /boot /dev/vda3: LVM What I want is this: Host side -> VM side /dev/vgname/fedora-boot -> /dev/vda /dev/vgname/fedora-root -> /dev/vdb /dev/vgname/fedora-swap -> /dev/vdc LVM on the VM side is superfluous when you're the owner of everything. This way I don't have to deal with the whole rigamarole of /dev/vgname/fedora having a partition table inside. I can just resize/snapshot/mount/fsck every partition from the host directly. I just find it odd that this seems like an unusual configuration and that pretty much no distro seems to want to work this way.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]