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That's an important advantage: go Arm, and ultimately you'll be dealing with Arm (the IP licensing company), or with a 3rd party which deals with them. Go x86,
by RetroTechie 3y ago
That's an important advantage: go Arm, and ultimately you'll be dealing with Arm (the IP licensing company), or with a 3rd party which deals with them.
Go x86, and you'll end up dealing with Intel, or AMD (okay, there's Via & maybe a few makers of legacy x86 parts).
Go RISC-V, and roll your own or pick from a growing list of vendors, are both valid options. And switch supplier while keeping your toolchain ecosystem.
I'd expect at least that this will spur innovation in the field. Likely increase consumer choice.
More suppliers of [insert product type here] is almost always a good thing.
- pjmlp 3y agoRISC-V is only a basic CPU specification, everything else is vendor specific.
- snvzz 3y agoRISC-V, as of current ratified specifications, is anything but basic: It has feature parity with x86 and ARM. And the specs extend further to non-ISA, such as standardizing boot process and platform.
- pjmlp 3y agoIf we forget about everything else needed to put that paper specification on a real motherboard.
- adgjlsfhk1 3y agoThe important part is from a software perspective, none of that stuff matters much. The benefit of RiscV is you can be sure that your low level software (e.g. an OS or HPC thing that requires hand coded assembly) won't be tied to a specific company's hardware.
- OhMeadhbh 3y agoI read your comment to imply that the ISA is the only thing that matters since that's what defines the software interface and that software is the only thing that matters. If that is what you're saying, I think you're wrong. As to the low level hand coded assembly. There's a fair amount of stuff in the Intel architecture that's not officially published. There are tools (from Intel) like VTune and the Intel C compilers that use non-published interfaces to optimize C or assembly, sometimes significantly. It is true you can write software without them, but many people purchase these Intel tools to make sure their systems run quickly and efficiently. I can't remember if the SiFive U-X4 core equivalents were defined in the open RISC-V specs or as part of SiFive specific interfaces. If the former, then your point is even stronger. If the latter, your point is still valid, though modulo the impact of having relied on a SiFive specific interface.
- pjmlp 3y agoIgnoring extensions and motherboard features used from userspace.
- OhMeadhbh 3y agoOr... like my team did... you can design your own IP that specifically fits your needs.