8 ms·

Wasn’t RISC-V developed in the US? And the first company to produce chips with this ISA, SiFive is US based too. Why would it make sense to ban it in the US? T

Wasn’t RISC-V developed in the US? And the first company to produce chips with this ISA, SiFive is US based too. Why would it make sense to ban it in the US? They literally invented it.

SllX 3y ago
It doesn’t. Right now we’re having an anti-PRC moment. There are good and intelligent ways to have that moment, and there bad and stupid ways to have that moment. This is one of the latter, but Congress is a deliberative body within a free democracy so we’re going to see all of it.
wmf 3y ago
The concern is that open-sourcing processor design knowledge will create a "reverse brain drain", allowing other countries (especially the boogeyman China) to catch up. It's nonsense in a globalized world.
AnthonyMouse 3y ago
This is basically ARM lobbying to hamper their challenger. There is no legitimate reason for it. (That doesn't mean we don't still need to fight it.)
- 0xDEF 3y ago
  Something to look out for in recent years are cultist grassroot investors who organize on Reddit and Twitter to influence politicians to do something that is favorable to their stock and harass journalists and YouTubers who report critically and harm their stock. r/TeslaInvestors and r/AMD_Stock are some of the worst. I can easily imagine some in the latter organizing to get RISC-V banned in the US.
  - AnthonyMouse 3y ago
    Eh. RISC-V isn't really competing with AMD64, which is high performance processors that can natively run x86 binaries, neither of which RISC-V would do any time soon. And if there were they would most likely be made by AMD, who would then make money selling them. The loser from RISC-V is clearly ARM because it's not nearly as hard to produce a low-power processor with mid-level performance, which is the core of ARM's market but RISC-V allows the vendors to avoid paying for the ARM license. And unlike x86, most existing ARM software isn't distributed as third party binaries tied to a particular architecture and could easily be recompiled for something else.
    - snvzz 3y ago
      >which is high performance processors that can natively run x86 binaries >neither of which RISC-V would do any time soon. The latter, maybe. The former, as soon as 2024 (e.g. Tenstorrent Ascalon)
      - AnthonyMouse 3y ago
        TBD, but there is nothing magic about RISC-V that would make this possible if it wasn't already possible with ARM. Apple has even done it with ARM, but to date no one else has. And if someone else did, it wouldn't really matter to AMD if it was RISC-V or ARM. But it would matter to ARM.
  - nebula8804 3y ago
    Wonder how much of the pro-Elon nonsense I see here, on Twitter and Reddit is just stockholders who got rich off of Tesla. I like to think that there is some sophisticated automated ML system Elon has got running to find and respond to haters....but then I saw that Youtube video discussing the poor code at Tesla so I dont know what to think anymore.
    - AnthonyMouse 3y ago
      It's pretty obvious what causes this for both companies. You have companies that were previously in a precarious position, which attracts interest from short sellers who think the company will fail, but instead the company makes money. Then all the people holding a short position get desperate to drive the stock price down so they can close their position without losing their shirts, so they keep attacking the company well past the point that there is no reasonable expectation they're going to go bankrupt anymore. That makes the company's supporters intolerant of criticism because they've been conditioned to expect criticism to be in bad faith. Which continues even after the short sellers have given up or been eviscerated by margin calls.
      - nebula8804 3y ago
        You make a good point. I was a lurker on the "RealTesla" and "Teslamotors" subreddits during the whole 2016-2020 saga. So many nutjobs on both sides of the aisle. And more importantly, both sides were very wrong on some things and very right on other things. That was the take away I got from that era.
    - edgyquant 3y ago
      I wonder how much of the anti-Elon posts I see here, on Twitter and Reddit are just NPCs who have been told to hate a person and regurgitate talking points designed in a lab. I’m pretty sure the answer is 80-90%. I’m also not an Elon fanboy nor have I ever owned Tesla. It just really woke me up seeing the entire internet flip against Elon so quickly and it having been so obviously inorganic.
      - 3y ago
- anigbrowl 3y ago
  How do you know it's ARM though? Taking low-cost potshots at China is an easy choice for some conservative politicians, there's a large number of voters/small $ donors who are easily activated by the claim to 'standing up to communism'.
  - AnthonyMouse 3y ago
    There are ten thousand ways to take potshots at China, but they're doing it in this way. Cui bono?
OhMeadhbh 3y ago
SiFive launched a chinese subsidiary (StarFive) in 2017/2018. And they just announced they were giving designs for some of their high-end cores to Sophgo (a company out of Beijing.) My guess is US administrators want SiFive to apply for export licenses before they do this again. I pretty much agree w/ Bunnie on this one. I lived through the Crypto(graphy) Wars of 90s and still have my "Sink Clipper" poster around here somewhere. If US companies are trying to sell products and services based on technology they can't export, but foreign countries can easily replicate, the only thing you're doing is making them (US tech companies) operate at a disadvantage. If we were worried about foreign tech dominance, then maybe we could do what foreign countries do: a. Develop a national industrial policy. b. Pay for kids to get EE degrees. (or hell, pay for kids to get business or art degrees.) c. Subsidize the chip manufacturing sector the same way we subsidize farmers or petroleum marketers. d. Force Samsung and TSMC (both foreign countries) to form joint ventures with US firms where US countries own at least 51% of the JV. Claiming they can close the Pandora's Box of semiconductor manufacturing knowledge this late in the game makes them (US Lawmakers) look incompetent. If they wanted to "save US chip manufacturing" they should have done something in the 1970s when TI was building manufacturing plants in Malaysia and Thailand.
- ocdtrekkie 3y ago
  Samsung and TSMC may be in foreign countries, but the key thing is both South Korea and Taiwan are very closely aligned with the United States for defense. This concern is less about the chips being made here, but controlling the ability for enemy powers to get a hold of them. Consider that "bombing the TSMC facilities" has been considered a possible plan if Taiwan is invaded, because a key goal is ensuring China doesn't control that capability.
  - FpUser 3y ago
    >"enemy powers" Do you trade with the enemy? That's a traitor's domain. Or they're rather competitors you are not happy with and scared that they beat you at the game? Get off you butt and do something productive then.

Wasn’t RISC-V developed in the US? And the first company to produce chips with this ISA, SiFive is US based too. Why would it make sense to ban it in the US? They literally invented it.

SllX 3y ago

It doesn’t. Right now we’re having an anti-PRC moment. There are good and intelligent ways to have that moment, and there bad and stupid ways to have that moment. This is one of the latter, but Congress is a deliberative body within a free democracy so we’re going to see all of it.

wmf 3y ago

The concern is that open-sourcing processor design knowledge will create a "reverse brain drain", allowing other countries (especially the boogeyman China) to catch up. It's nonsense in a globalized world.

AnthonyMouse 3y ago

This is basically ARM lobbying to hamper their challenger. There is no legitimate reason for it. (That doesn't mean we don't still need to fight it.)

0xDEF 3y ago
Something to look out for in recent years are cultist grassroot investors who organize on Reddit and Twitter to influence politicians to do something that is favorable to their stock and harass journalists and YouTubers who report critically and harm their stock. r/TeslaInvestors and r/AMD_Stock are some of the worst. I can easily imagine some in the latter organizing to get RISC-V banned in the US.
- AnthonyMouse 3y ago
  Eh. RISC-V isn't really competing with AMD64, which is high performance processors that can natively run x86 binaries, neither of which RISC-V would do any time soon. And if there were they would most likely be made by AMD, who would then make money selling them. The loser from RISC-V is clearly ARM because it's not nearly as hard to produce a low-power processor with mid-level performance, which is the core of ARM's market but RISC-V allows the vendors to avoid paying for the ARM license. And unlike x86, most existing ARM software isn't distributed as third party binaries tied to a particular architecture and could easily be recompiled for something else.
  - snvzz 3y ago
    >which is high performance processors that can natively run x86 binaries >neither of which RISC-V would do any time soon. The latter, maybe. The former, as soon as 2024 (e.g. Tenstorrent Ascalon)
    - AnthonyMouse 3y ago
      TBD, but there is nothing magic about RISC-V that would make this possible if it wasn't already possible with ARM. Apple has even done it with ARM, but to date no one else has. And if someone else did, it wouldn't really matter to AMD if it was RISC-V or ARM. But it would matter to ARM.
- nebula8804 3y ago
  Wonder how much of the pro-Elon nonsense I see here, on Twitter and Reddit is just stockholders who got rich off of Tesla. I like to think that there is some sophisticated automated ML system Elon has got running to find and respond to haters....but then I saw that Youtube video discussing the poor code at Tesla so I dont know what to think anymore.
  - AnthonyMouse 3y ago
    It's pretty obvious what causes this for both companies. You have companies that were previously in a precarious position, which attracts interest from short sellers who think the company will fail, but instead the company makes money. Then all the people holding a short position get desperate to drive the stock price down so they can close their position without losing their shirts, so they keep attacking the company well past the point that there is no reasonable expectation they're going to go bankrupt anymore. That makes the company's supporters intolerant of criticism because they've been conditioned to expect criticism to be in bad faith. Which continues even after the short sellers have given up or been eviscerated by margin calls.
    - nebula8804 3y ago
      You make a good point. I was a lurker on the "RealTesla" and "Teslamotors" subreddits during the whole 2016-2020 saga. So many nutjobs on both sides of the aisle. And more importantly, both sides were very wrong on some things and very right on other things. That was the take away I got from that era.
  - edgyquant 3y ago
    I wonder how much of the anti-Elon posts I see here, on Twitter and Reddit are just NPCs who have been told to hate a person and regurgitate talking points designed in a lab. I’m pretty sure the answer is 80-90%. I’m also not an Elon fanboy nor have I ever owned Tesla. It just really woke me up seeing the entire internet flip against Elon so quickly and it having been so obviously inorganic.
    - 3y ago
anigbrowl 3y ago
How do you know it's ARM though? Taking low-cost potshots at China is an easy choice for some conservative politicians, there's a large number of voters/small $ donors who are easily activated by the claim to 'standing up to communism'.
- AnthonyMouse 3y ago
  There are ten thousand ways to take potshots at China, but they're doing it in this way. Cui bono?

OhMeadhbh 3y ago

SiFive launched a chinese subsidiary (StarFive) in 2017/2018. And they just announced they were giving designs for some of their high-end cores to Sophgo (a company out of Beijing.) My guess is US administrators want SiFive to apply for export licenses before they do this again. I pretty much agree w/ Bunnie on this one. I lived through the Crypto(graphy) Wars of 90s and still have my "Sink Clipper" poster around here somewhere. If US companies are trying to sell products and services based on technology they can't export, but foreign countries can easily replicate, the only thing you're doing is making them (US tech companies) operate at a disadvantage. If we were worried about foreign tech dominance, then maybe we could do what foreign countries do: a. Develop a national industrial policy. b. Pay for kids to get EE degrees. (or hell, pay for kids to get business or art degrees.) c. Subsidize the chip manufacturing sector the same way we subsidize farmers or petroleum marketers. d. Force Samsung and TSMC (both foreign countries) to form joint ventures with US firms where US countries own at least 51% of the JV. Claiming they can close the Pandora's Box of semiconductor manufacturing knowledge this late in the game makes them (US Lawmakers) look incompetent. If they wanted to "save US chip manufacturing" they should have done something in the 1970s when TI was building manufacturing plants in Malaysia and Thailand.

ocdtrekkie 3y ago
Samsung and TSMC may be in foreign countries, but the key thing is both South Korea and Taiwan are very closely aligned with the United States for defense. This concern is less about the chips being made here, but controlling the ability for enemy powers to get a hold of them. Consider that "bombing the TSMC facilities" has been considered a possible plan if Taiwan is invaded, because a key goal is ensuring China doesn't control that capability.
- FpUser 3y ago
  >"enemy powers" Do you trade with the enemy? That's a traitor's domain. Or they're rather competitors you are not happy with and scared that they beat you at the game? Get off you butt and do something productive then.