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RISC-V Profiles is a technical working group of RISC-V International which decides on a common set of extensions that hardware in particular profiles (eg. appli

by rwmj 3y ago

RISC-V Profiles is a technical working group of RISC-V International which decides on a common set of extensions that hardware in particular profiles (eg. application servers) must implement. Recently there has been some rather heated discussion of the Compressed extension. The C extension adds 16 bit instructions, somewhat like Thumb on armv7. Larger server vendors argued that the C extension made it harder to verify implementations and proposed alternatives. Other RVI members argued that dropping C would effectively split the standard (especially if the space used by the C extension was reused for other things). Unexpectedly the Board of Directors stepped in to make this decision yesterday. This doesn't preclude another profile (eg. "high end servers") being created in future.

snvzz 3y ago
>Larger server vendors argued Uh no. Let's set the record straight: It was proposed by Qualcomm, and only Qualcomm presented a case against C, which was quickly and thoroughly shot down by SiFive[0]. During the discussion, it became apparent that Qualcomm was only having issues because they tried to swap the frontend of the ARM core they got from Nuvia with the minimal amount of effort. This end result shows that RISC-V Board is strong and won't be easily derailed by one of its member companies. 0. https://lists.riscv.org/g/tech-profiles/attachment/353/0/RISCV-20231004-C.pdf https://lists.riscv.org/g/tech-profiles/attachment/353/0/RIS...
- brucehoult 3y ago
  > it became apparent As fact? Certainly I've seen (and repeated) speculation that this might be the case.
- monocasa 3y ago
  I heard rumors that Rivos was tentatively on board as well, but yeah, very little support.
  - snvzz 3y ago
    >I heard rumors that Rivos Yes, I saw this rumor too. Rivos actually appeared in the conversation to basically give the polite equivalent of "don't put words in our mouth". It turned out, the rumor was made up.
    - monocasa 3y ago
      Good to know, thanks. Doubly so right that the effort to remove RV-C failed then.

by rwmj 3y ago

snvzz 3y ago

>Larger server vendors argued Uh no. Let's set the record straight: It was proposed by Qualcomm, and only Qualcomm presented a case against C, which was quickly and thoroughly shot down by SiFive[0]. During the discussion, it became apparent that Qualcomm was only having issues because they tried to swap the frontend of the ARM core they got from Nuvia with the minimal amount of effort. This end result shows that RISC-V Board is strong and won't be easily derailed by one of its member companies. 0. https://lists.riscv.org/g/tech-profiles/attachment/353/0/RISCV-20231004-C.pdf https://lists.riscv.org/g/tech-profiles/attachment/353/0/RIS...

brucehoult 3y ago
> it became apparent As fact? Certainly I've seen (and repeated) speculation that this might be the case.
monocasa 3y ago
I heard rumors that Rivos was tentatively on board as well, but yeah, very little support.
- snvzz 3y ago
  >I heard rumors that Rivos Yes, I saw this rumor too. Rivos actually appeared in the conversation to basically give the polite equivalent of "don't put words in our mouth". It turned out, the rumor was made up.
  - monocasa 3y ago
    Good to know, thanks. Doubly so right that the effort to remove RV-C failed then.