5 ms·

Still a step in the right direction.

by swagmoney1606 3y ago

pjmlp 3y ago
A path already trailed by OpenSPARC and PowerPC.
- IshKebab 3y ago
  SPARC is dead and Power was only recently opened (probably in response to RISC-V). Neither of them originated from a neutral source.
  - pjmlp 3y ago
    OpenPOWER Foundation exists since 2013. SPARC is quite alive for Solaris customers, and there are still plenty of them. Regardless, it doesn't change the fact that they were there first. Anyone that thinks basic ISA being open source, will prevent extensions, proprietary boards or boot firmware are fooling themselves. Sure, it may do for a couple of maker community projects, Arduino style, and that is about it.
    - Pet_Ant 3y ago
      > SPARC is quite alive for Solaris customers Fujitsu has announced plans to transition away from SPARC by 2030. Oracle has laid off their staff, after the M8 in 2017. ( https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/SPARC https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/SPARC ) If SPARC isn’t dead, then it’s in palliative care, and not far behind Itanium. Shame because SPARC T series was interesting and I wonder what it would look like today at modern geometries and using chiplets.
      - pjmlp 3y ago
        May be, it is still being sold, and doesn't have anything to do with the point of being there first.
        panick21_ 3y ago
        Again, the Sparc 64Bit that is used today is not open. So not sure why you bring it up.
        pjmlp 3y ago
        Being open one point in time doesn't mean it will stay forever like that, point 1. Point 2, it was there first.
        panick21_ 3y ago
        Again, it wasn't there first with open 64 bit. Only 32 bit was open. And the 64 bit was a major change for Sparc.
- panick21_ 3y ago
  No it isn't. PowerPC was never free. I think you mean OpenPOWER. Again that was just marketing, it wasn't free in anyway. Only the pressure of RISC-V lead to POWER and MIPS becoming more free over time. And even if OpenSPARC had a open spec, but was only for 32bit. The 64 bit version would never become a standard. You need more then air dropping a spec. You need people to continue to push it forward and evolve it. You need to build a community around a standard. Sun simply wasn't interested in doing that, they just made a spec and left it there. OpenSPARC had some success, being used for space by ESA for example. But it didn't get adoption in education. The venders of embedded chips were not interest. But the time was just not ready, the OpenSource ecosystem wasn't ready and the publisher (Sun) didn't care about embedded. The seperation between chip makers and fabs had not fully happened yet. Saying that RISC-V is like POWER is just fundamentally false. Saying RISC-V is like SPARC 32-bit is slightly more correct, but misses a whole lot context that is non-technical. Yes we should give Sun credit for what they did with SPARC. But RISC-V is quite a different thing.
  - pjmlp 3y ago
    Until we get a RISC V computer on Media Markt being sold to average joe/jane, FOSS everything, it is going to be hardly any different.
    - panick21_ 3y ago
      That's just wrong and a simply depressive outlook for life. Saying things are only valuable if its for literally everybody just the wrong outlook. Having the ability to make open end to end things is valuable even if its not in every product. Linux shows up in lots of places where people are not aware and that is a good thing. The same thing will happen with RISC-V. And for people who like open, there will be product for those people. There are companies working on open board devices, laptops, boards and so on. And in the future maybe those could be open chip. The costumers of those products will not care if the PC at Media Market is a propriety computer with Windows on it. Your attitude would basically be that 'its hardly different' when OpenSource started to grow. But it was and is actually different for a lot of people and for the industry.

Still a step in the right direction.

pjmlp 3y ago

A path already trailed by OpenSPARC and PowerPC.

IshKebab 3y ago
SPARC is dead and Power was only recently opened (probably in response to RISC-V). Neither of them originated from a neutral source.
- pjmlp 3y ago
  OpenPOWER Foundation exists since 2013. SPARC is quite alive for Solaris customers, and there are still plenty of them. Regardless, it doesn't change the fact that they were there first. Anyone that thinks basic ISA being open source, will prevent extensions, proprietary boards or boot firmware are fooling themselves. Sure, it may do for a couple of maker community projects, Arduino style, and that is about it.
  - Pet_Ant 3y ago
    > SPARC is quite alive for Solaris customers Fujitsu has announced plans to transition away from SPARC by 2030. Oracle has laid off their staff, after the M8 in 2017. ( https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/SPARC https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/SPARC ) If SPARC isn’t dead, then it’s in palliative care, and not far behind Itanium. Shame because SPARC T series was interesting and I wonder what it would look like today at modern geometries and using chiplets.
    - pjmlp 3y ago
      May be, it is still being sold, and doesn't have anything to do with the point of being there first.
      - panick21_ 3y ago
        Again, the Sparc 64Bit that is used today is not open. So not sure why you bring it up.
        pjmlp 3y ago
        Being open one point in time doesn't mean it will stay forever like that, point 1. Point 2, it was there first.
        panick21_ 3y ago
        Again, it wasn't there first with open 64 bit. Only 32 bit was open. And the 64 bit was a major change for Sparc.
panick21_ 3y ago
No it isn't. PowerPC was never free. I think you mean OpenPOWER. Again that was just marketing, it wasn't free in anyway. Only the pressure of RISC-V lead to POWER and MIPS becoming more free over time. And even if OpenSPARC had a open spec, but was only for 32bit. The 64 bit version would never become a standard. You need more then air dropping a spec. You need people to continue to push it forward and evolve it. You need to build a community around a standard. Sun simply wasn't interested in doing that, they just made a spec and left it there. OpenSPARC had some success, being used for space by ESA for example. But it didn't get adoption in education. The venders of embedded chips were not interest. But the time was just not ready, the OpenSource ecosystem wasn't ready and the publisher (Sun) didn't care about embedded. The seperation between chip makers and fabs had not fully happened yet. Saying that RISC-V is like POWER is just fundamentally false. Saying RISC-V is like SPARC 32-bit is slightly more correct, but misses a whole lot context that is non-technical. Yes we should give Sun credit for what they did with SPARC. But RISC-V is quite a different thing.
- pjmlp 3y ago
  Until we get a RISC V computer on Media Markt being sold to average joe/jane, FOSS everything, it is going to be hardly any different.
  - panick21_ 3y ago
    That's just wrong and a simply depressive outlook for life. Saying things are only valuable if its for literally everybody just the wrong outlook. Having the ability to make open end to end things is valuable even if its not in every product. Linux shows up in lots of places where people are not aware and that is a good thing. The same thing will happen with RISC-V. And for people who like open, there will be product for those people. There are companies working on open board devices, laptops, boards and so on. And in the future maybe those could be open chip. The costumers of those products will not care if the PC at Media Market is a propriety computer with Windows on it. Your attitude would basically be that 'its hardly different' when OpenSource started to grow. But it was and is actually different for a lot of people and for the industry.