5 ms·

This whole thing is incredibly stupid. It's an instruction set, not some magical technology (although well designed). Transfer is the whole point: it's a hardwa

This whole thing is incredibly stupid. It's an instruction set, not some magical technology (although well designed). Transfer is the whole point: it's a hardware programming interface, an agreement between interested parties to speak the same language. These idiots in Congress should just go ahead and ban the Chinese from using the alphabet or perhaps the digits 1 and 0. I'm all for responding to China's increasingly aggressive posture, their challenges to a international rules bases order, their totalitarian political system, and their support of the Russian murder machine, but this is both ineffectual and wrong.

foverzar 3y ago
> I'm all for responding to China's increasingly aggressive posture, their challenges to a international rules bases order, their totalitarian political system, and their support of the Russian murder machine, but this is both ineffectual and wrong. You are competitive, we get it. But can you at least stop turning every conflict of interest you have into a f-ing holy war while completely denying any agency for yourself? Have you considered that this way you'll might stop finding yourself in situations like these? Like, maybe if someone didn't treat China aggressively in the first place, they wouldn't have to experience pushbacks from it - yeah, what else could have happened? Maybe "Russian murder machine" (lol, how well that had aged) wouldn't be running if someone didn't lie to it about peace agreements, preparing to warfare with it instead - what else could have happened? And these countries are hardly alone in an increasing and diverse list of US enemies - there is a clear pattern with only really one thing (or actor) in common. I have no idea what you people see behind the "international rules bases order" propaganda meme that you started massively parrot recently, but try giving that speech to someone from southern hemisphere. There is a better way to live than treat everything around you with "barbarians at the gate" attitude.
hashtag-til 3y ago
IMHO it is not stupid. It's the forever challenge of communicating with non-technical people. These topics/questions/points are so badly written that people who understand the topic can actually make use of them to create effective rules. If you ever discussed requirements for something with non-technical people, that's the way it goes... I'm curious to understand, on your view, what would be more effective measures?
- monocasa 3y ago
  > I'm curious to understand, on your view, what would be more effective measures? If you absolutely wanted action, investing in US based RISC-V chips would maintain US leading edge capacity in the space. However, arguably no action is one of the most effective options. Quite a bit of RISC-V leadership is already based (or has one foot in) the US. Between Tenstorrent via Jim Keller, Ventana, and Rivos, the leading edge designs are US based. Cutting them off from the works convinces the rest of the world to invest even harder to these American companies. Protectionism here kneecaps these US companies and creates more competitors to them.
  - hashtag-til 3y ago
    I think there is plenty of evidence that companies can be successful and at the same time compliant in not giving strategic technological advances to oppressive regimes that will weaponise such tech.
    - monocasa 3y ago
      I think for leading edge technology, if these regimes can reproduce your work at all, whether they do so is more about the incentive structures in place. By restricting access, you provide the incentives for them to truly indigenously invest in the technology. By restricting access, you actually remove all control of the technology you had in the first place. After a bunch of back and forth, the US blocked access to Intel chips used in the Sunway Tianhe-2 supercomputer. The next version, the Sunway TaihuLight, was the fastest supercomputer in the world for two years, running on indigenously designed Chinese chips.
    - Dylan16807 3y ago
      Instruction set specs are not a strategic technological advance that can be weaponized. They just say what a chip should do. They don't help you make one that's more sophisticated than a basic unoptimized microcontroller, and "basic unoptimized microcontroller" is something you can get random college graduates to do.
- 3y ago
cma 3y ago
Is it about the instruction set or the reference implementations?
OhMeadhbh 3y ago
When they say "RISC-V", they're not talking about the ISA, but all the tech that goes along with making a core with things like the Rocket or BOOM generators. I suspect they're dissing on SiFive because they created a proprietary derivative of the Rocket core generator, transferred it to a Chinese subsidiary (StarFive), and then couldn't compete with StarFive because SiFive was mostly staffed by academics and then had the temerity to not be bought by Intel. I had always thought SiFive management got approval for the tech transfer (you're supposed to give the State Department / FISA Courts the right to deny the transfer of tech overseas.) I don't believe State or Commerce had a problem with what SiFive was exporting at the time. My guess is some republicans in congress found out the Trump Administration allowed the export of technology a Chinese subsidiary did something cool with and that just rubs them the wrong way, so why not blame a Democrat? So yes... there are corners of congress that are hilariously uninformed, but it's not quite as bad as you make out.
- OhMeadhbh 3y ago
  And let's not forget that some people mean "The RISC-V Foundation" when they say "RISC-V". I think my point is human language is often ambiguous and it's entirely possible that when a congressional staffer says "RISC-V", they're not using it in the same sense as most of the rest of the tech community.

foverzar 3y ago

> I'm all for responding to China's increasingly aggressive posture, their challenges to a international rules bases order, their totalitarian political system, and their support of the Russian murder machine, but this is both ineffectual and wrong. You are competitive, we get it. But can you at least stop turning every conflict of interest you have into a f-ing holy war while completely denying any agency for yourself? Have you considered that this way you'll might stop finding yourself in situations like these? Like, maybe if someone didn't treat China aggressively in the first place, they wouldn't have to experience pushbacks from it - yeah, what else could have happened? Maybe "Russian murder machine" (lol, how well that had aged) wouldn't be running if someone didn't lie to it about peace agreements, preparing to warfare with it instead - what else could have happened? And these countries are hardly alone in an increasing and diverse list of US enemies - there is a clear pattern with only really one thing (or actor) in common. I have no idea what you people see behind the "international rules bases order" propaganda meme that you started massively parrot recently, but try giving that speech to someone from southern hemisphere. There is a better way to live than treat everything around you with "barbarians at the gate" attitude.

hashtag-til 3y ago

IMHO it is not stupid. It's the forever challenge of communicating with non-technical people. These topics/questions/points are so badly written that people who understand the topic can actually make use of them to create effective rules. If you ever discussed requirements for something with non-technical people, that's the way it goes... I'm curious to understand, on your view, what would be more effective measures?

monocasa 3y ago
> I'm curious to understand, on your view, what would be more effective measures? If you absolutely wanted action, investing in US based RISC-V chips would maintain US leading edge capacity in the space. However, arguably no action is one of the most effective options. Quite a bit of RISC-V leadership is already based (or has one foot in) the US. Between Tenstorrent via Jim Keller, Ventana, and Rivos, the leading edge designs are US based. Cutting them off from the works convinces the rest of the world to invest even harder to these American companies. Protectionism here kneecaps these US companies and creates more competitors to them.
- hashtag-til 3y ago
  I think there is plenty of evidence that companies can be successful and at the same time compliant in not giving strategic technological advances to oppressive regimes that will weaponise such tech.
  - monocasa 3y ago
    I think for leading edge technology, if these regimes can reproduce your work at all, whether they do so is more about the incentive structures in place. By restricting access, you provide the incentives for them to truly indigenously invest in the technology. By restricting access, you actually remove all control of the technology you had in the first place. After a bunch of back and forth, the US blocked access to Intel chips used in the Sunway Tianhe-2 supercomputer. The next version, the Sunway TaihuLight, was the fastest supercomputer in the world for two years, running on indigenously designed Chinese chips.
  - Dylan16807 3y ago
    Instruction set specs are not a strategic technological advance that can be weaponized. They just say what a chip should do. They don't help you make one that's more sophisticated than a basic unoptimized microcontroller, and "basic unoptimized microcontroller" is something you can get random college graduates to do.
3y ago

cma 3y ago

Is it about the instruction set or the reference implementations?

OhMeadhbh 3y ago

When they say "RISC-V", they're not talking about the ISA, but all the tech that goes along with making a core with things like the Rocket or BOOM generators. I suspect they're dissing on SiFive because they created a proprietary derivative of the Rocket core generator, transferred it to a Chinese subsidiary (StarFive), and then couldn't compete with StarFive because SiFive was mostly staffed by academics and then had the temerity to not be bought by Intel. I had always thought SiFive management got approval for the tech transfer (you're supposed to give the State Department / FISA Courts the right to deny the transfer of tech overseas.) I don't believe State or Commerce had a problem with what SiFive was exporting at the time. My guess is some republicans in congress found out the Trump Administration allowed the export of technology a Chinese subsidiary did something cool with and that just rubs them the wrong way, so why not blame a Democrat? So yes... there are corners of congress that are hilariously uninformed, but it's not quite as bad as you make out.

OhMeadhbh 3y ago
And let's not forget that some people mean "The RISC-V Foundation" when they say "RISC-V". I think my point is human language is often ambiguous and it's entirely possible that when a congressional staffer says "RISC-V", they're not using it in the same sense as most of the rest of the tech community.