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RISC-V is much more of a threat to ARM microcontroller vendors (STMicro, NXP, Atmel et. al.) than it is to Intel. There is almost zero overlap in products/mark
by ajross 3y ago
RISC-V is much more of a threat to ARM microcontroller vendors (STMicro, NXP, Atmel et. al.) than it is to Intel. There is almost zero overlap in products/markets between RISC-V and x86. Even as you go up the stack, vendors like ARM International would care first (as it impacts mobile SOC licenses). Frankly even Apple probably cares more than Intel does.
- lolinder 3y agoApple just switched to ARM away from Intel, and I'm sure Intel is very concerned others will follow their lead. If ARM is at risk from RISC-V, then Intel is as well, transitively. That there is zero overlap now does not mean it will stay that way, as Apple demonstrated so well.
- ajross 3y agoYeah, but there's no product. There's no RISC-V CPU targetted at laptop or datacenter users that Intel would be worried about, but there absolutely are from ARM vendors. So... how would hurting RISC-V, which helps ARM, be good for Intel? It's not. Pick a different boogeyman basically, Intel isn't the one here.
- lolinder 3y agoThere was no competitive ARM CPU targeting laptop or datacenter users either, until Apple up and made one. For Intel to ignore RISC-V right now would be to completely neglect the lessons of Apple Silicon. They appear to have waited until there was an actual product taking their market share before taking ARM seriously. I expect them to learn from that and not wait for a product this time.
- error503 3y agoARM in the datacentre was somewhat of a hot topic for a while before Apple released their laptop CPUs; Amazon launched the first Gravitron to GA in 2018. Ampere launched publicly available ARM server CPUs in 2020, around the same time as Apple. Alibaba Cloud launched their instances based on their own CPU in 2021, as did Oracle (based on Ampere's CPUs). Given the years of engineering effort involved in getting any of these projects to release, this definitely looks like an industry shift, not something driven by Apple. Perhaps Intel's thinking here is that competition with ARM will drive innovation and cost-downs in that space, which will bleed 'up' and make their own competition's (mostly ARM) products even more competitive.
- brucehoult 3y agoNote that the shipping RISC-V SoC currently most suited to datacentres, the SG2042, is more powerful than the first Graviton deployed to AWS in November 2018 (five years ago) -- the C910 cores in the SG2042 are similar to the Arm A72 cores in the Graviton, but the SG2042 has 64 of them vs 16 in the Graviton. Multiple companies have M1-class RISC-V in the pipeline.
- retrocryptid 3y agoLol. Fanboi.
- SV_BubbleTime 3y agoI don’t know why you are fixated on looking at the market today. If ARM can scale up from cortex m-series to Apple M3 Pro Ultra Max… then why couldn’t RISC-V?
- ajross 3y agoBut by that logic Intel should be lobbying the government to outlaw every CPU architecture, or every competing product, or... every product they might conceivably want to compete with. The same logic works for every product! Or every company! It's all specious. In point of fact, and I'll just say it again: this is dumb. Intel isn't remotely the most likely candidate here (again, my read is that on balance they'd love to see ARM competitors get some pressure on the other side). Trying to claim otherwise is just engaging in platform flamery nonsense. The logic doesn't work.
- snvzz 3y ago>RISC-V is much more of a threat to ARM microcontroller vendors (STMicro, NXP, Atmel et. al.) How is RISC-V threatening them exactly? They can (and should) switch to RISC-V. Note NXP is already doing so[0], and that Atmel is part of Microchip[1]. 0. https://www.nxp.com/company/about-nxp/leading-semiconductor-industry-players-join-forces-to-accelerate-risc-v:NW-NXP-LEADING-SEMICONDUCTOR-INDUSTRY-PLAYERS https://www.nxp.com/company/about-nxp/leading-semiconductor-... 1. https://www.microchip.com/en-us/products/fpgas-and-plds/fpga-and-soc-design-tools/mi-v https://www.microchip.com/en-us/products/fpgas-and-plds/fpga...
- ajross 3y agoBusiness advice that is tantamount to "Oh, you should just make a better product" is basically bad business advice. Of course they should, everyone should. But the problem is that if they tried, it (1) costs money and (2) leverages no existing advantages. These low-margin companies live and die on compatibility and integration. The reason you pick a STM32-whatever as your choice for your new product is generally at least partially because your existing staff know the tooling and your existing production people know the board integration requirements. Swap that for some new RISC-V gadget and, well, you might win! Or you might find your customers walking across the street to buy someone else's gadget, because yours has no advantages. Ergo, if you're STMicro, RISC-V is a threat in a way that "Oh, you should just use it yourself" doesn't address.
- snvzz 3y agoGotta love how I pointed out 2 of the 3 companies already gone RISC-V, and you ignored this in your reply, to focus on STMicro, the remaining one. It's amusing, because I had deliberately elected to avoid mention of how STMicro is a RISC-V member[0]. >Or you might find your customers walking across the street to buy someone else's gadget, because yours has no advantages. They will for sure should they not switch to the standard ISA. In their shoes, I wouldn't want to be left behind. RISC-V is rapidly growing the strongest ecosystem. 0. https://riscv.org/member/stmicroelectronics/ https://riscv.org/member/stmicroelectronics/
- 3y ago