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> 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. P
by 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 agoAnd 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 agothe 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 agoWell, 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 agoNext 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.
- lelanthran 3y agoEconomies of scale. If a shift happens it would start gradually until a tipping point, then everyone will move so fast it will make your head spin. Looking at how open source has eaten the proprietary software vendors, I imagine RISC V to follow the same path.
- qwytw 3y ago> Looking at how open source has eaten the proprietary software vendors It has but mainly only in areas where adopting it allows cutting costs and is not the end product itself. Not sure why/how could that work for chips. Why would you give out your core designs for free to anyone?
- photonbeam 3y agoWhy would you give away your software source code free to anyone? (See rocketchip) Lots of riscv implementations are closed source though
- snvzz 3y ago>(See rocketchip) Also see XuanTie C910, open-source yet competitive with Cortex-A73, been available for years. Meanwhile, Eben Upton has been falsely claiming that no such cores are available for licensing. A Raspberry Pi 5 could already be out with RISC-V and higher specs than pi4/pi400 if he hadn't ignored C910 or otherwise licensed any of the many competitive cores in the market that have been license-able for years now.
- qwytw 3y ago> Lots of riscv implementations are closed source though Exactly. Which potentially can make it worse than ARM, making it impossible for new players to enter the market at some point. Catching up would require massive investment and you can't just buy a competitive design of the shelf (looking at ARMs business model licensing your designs to other is just not a good deal and they are effectively still a monopoly in certain segments)
- 3y ago