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China's strategic bet on open-source RISC-V chips

AlbatrossAA 3y ago
[dead]
0cf8612b2e1e 3y ago
Serious question, x86 has obviously gotten us very far, but has legacy baggage, plus licensing restrictions. Is RISC-V so much better that the future (whatever long horizon) is inevitable? Or are we likely to continue x86 forever? RISC for specialized (matmul, embedded) applications and x86 will remain CPUs? If China injects $$ into the problem, will Intel and AMD have to follow?
- John23832 3y ago
  Both amd and intel have hitched their wagons to ARM.
- snvzz 3y ago
  RISC-V is inevitable. For legal reasons, not technical reasons. This is despite having the technical chops, providing highest code density in 32 and 64 bit with highly competitive path length[0], all while remaining a much simpler ISA relative to the competition. What actually matters is that it is an open ISA with huge traction that everybody gets a free license to. There's no need to ask for permission to use/implement it. RISC-V is rapidly building the strongest ecosystem. 0. https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/3624062.3624233 https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/3624062.3624233
- aurareturn 3y ago
  I can see a world in which the US transitions to ARM fully while everyone else transitions to RISCV. Apple is not going to change to RISCV after spending a huge amount to move their entire lineup of products to ARM. Everyone else like Amazon and Nvidia are making ARM chips. Even Intel and AMD are rumored to be designing ARM chips. Qualcomm is also moving ARM to computers and servers.
  - ngcc_hk 3y ago
    Free world use both. But after totalitarian countries use riscv, it will cut and there are many ways to ban your adversities asset. Btw, adverse countries list are official.
  - brucehoult 3y ago
    > Apple is not going to change to RISCV after spending a huge amount to move their entire lineup of products to ARM You could say the same about Apple spending a huge amount of money to move from 6502 to 68000 (which lasted 10 years), or spending a huge amount of money to move to PowerPC (which lasted 11 years), or spending a huge amount of money to move to x86 (which lasted 15 years). RISC-V wasn't ready when Apple made their move to Arm64 in 2020 -- the base RISC-V ISA was only published in final form in July 2019 (RV64GC aka RVA20), many things needed for good desktop systems were added in November 2021 (RVA22), and Android for example is going to require the new RVA23 profile as its minimum configuration when the first devices come out around 2026. Apple could move to RISC-V from around 2026 if they really wanted to. In an extraordinary move they've signed up with Arm until 2040 -- 16 years from now -- but who knows what will happen in that time period. Will Arm even exist? Will Apple be the only company still using the ISA? At least with arm64 Apple is building their own cores and chips. Apple moved on from 68000, PowerPC, and x86 not because the companies ceased to exist but because they stopped making chips relevant to Apple, or the direction Apple wanted to move. But never say it's too expensive for Apple to move ISAs. They've done it four times already, they can do it again.
    - aurareturn 3y ago
      They've done it for their computers only, which is just 10% of their revenue in 2024. If they do it again, they'd have to do it for the iPhone, iPad, Vision Pro, Macs, monitors that have A series chips, Apple TV, Watch, and all their smaller products. I didn't say never. But 2040 is probably around the time they'd do it if they ever do it.
      - snvzz 3y ago
        >I didn't say never. But 2040 is probably around the time they'd do it if they ever do it. Doubtful. Once a decision is made, it would take full effect within 5 years. And if they make the decision, they would make it when they determine that the ISA is ready (which would be soon, if not already in the past). Not a decade after.
r2vcap 3y ago
Hmm... Is China betting on RISC-V chips? China is too big to rely solely on a single chip architecture. I saw another attempt to develop a new chip architecture in China, called Loongson64. In recent years, I've seen a lot of contributions to libraries/software, such as the Linux Kernel, Chromium, LLVM, V8, and ffmpeg, by Loongson, a Chinese chip company that produces an architecture called Loongson64. Apparently, China wants to develop its own chip architecture, chip design, and chip manufacturing capabilities, and RISC-V is one of the options, but there isn't a single path to achieving that.
- John23832 3y ago
  > China is too big to rely solely on a single chip architecture. This doesn’t really make sense. Prior to the current ARM revolution, the entire world was on x86. > I saw another attempt to develop a new chip architecture in China, called Loongson64 Without using a common chip arch, you go at it alone. That is a competitive disadvantage.
  - FirmwareBurner 3y ago
    > Prior to the current ARM revolution, the entire world was on x86. Hmm, that's kinda false. Let's go back ~20 years. Workstation and datacenters were on Sparc or PowerPC. ARM was in every phone, MP3 player, digital camera or any other portable device. Gaming consoles and set top boxes and the like were on MIPS or the new Cell processor which was also PowerPC based. The world definitely was never fully on X86, and ARM was always among us.
    - John23832 3y ago
      >Hmm, that's kinda false. > The world definitely was never fully on X86, and ARM was always among us. The "entire world" there wasn't meant to be absolutely literal. The point I refuting was that because of China's size, they cannot focus on a single architecture. That makes no sense. China overwhelmingly utilizes x86 now. > Let's go back ~20 years. Workstation and datacenters were on Sparc or PowerPC. ARM was in every phone, MP3 player, digital camera or any other portable device. Gaming consoles and set top boxes and the like were on MIPS or the new Cell processor which was also PowerPC based. That's all great and good, and while I never discounted a heterogenous world, this is both Intel and AMD's marketshare: https://www.statista.com/statistics/735904/worldwide-x86-intel-amd-market-share/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/735904/worldwide-x86-int... The world is on x86.

[dead]

Serious question, x86 has obviously gotten us very far, but has legacy baggage, plus licensing restrictions. Is RISC-V so much better that the future (whatever long horizon) is inevitable? Or are we likely to continue x86 forever? RISC for specialized (matmul, embedded) applications and x86 will remain CPUs? If China injects $$ into the problem, will Intel and AMD have to follow?

John23832 3y ago
Both amd and intel have hitched their wagons to ARM.
snvzz 3y ago
RISC-V is inevitable. For legal reasons, not technical reasons. This is despite having the technical chops, providing highest code density in 32 and 64 bit with highly competitive path length[0], all while remaining a much simpler ISA relative to the competition. What actually matters is that it is an open ISA with huge traction that everybody gets a free license to. There's no need to ask for permission to use/implement it. RISC-V is rapidly building the strongest ecosystem. 0. https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/3624062.3624233 https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/3624062.3624233
aurareturn 3y ago
I can see a world in which the US transitions to ARM fully while everyone else transitions to RISCV. Apple is not going to change to RISCV after spending a huge amount to move their entire lineup of products to ARM. Everyone else like Amazon and Nvidia are making ARM chips. Even Intel and AMD are rumored to be designing ARM chips. Qualcomm is also moving ARM to computers and servers.
- ngcc_hk 3y ago
  Free world use both. But after totalitarian countries use riscv, it will cut and there are many ways to ban your adversities asset. Btw, adverse countries list are official.
- brucehoult 3y ago
  > Apple is not going to change to RISCV after spending a huge amount to move their entire lineup of products to ARM You could say the same about Apple spending a huge amount of money to move from 6502 to 68000 (which lasted 10 years), or spending a huge amount of money to move to PowerPC (which lasted 11 years), or spending a huge amount of money to move to x86 (which lasted 15 years). RISC-V wasn't ready when Apple made their move to Arm64 in 2020 -- the base RISC-V ISA was only published in final form in July 2019 (RV64GC aka RVA20), many things needed for good desktop systems were added in November 2021 (RVA22), and Android for example is going to require the new RVA23 profile as its minimum configuration when the first devices come out around 2026. Apple could move to RISC-V from around 2026 if they really wanted to. In an extraordinary move they've signed up with Arm until 2040 -- 16 years from now -- but who knows what will happen in that time period. Will Arm even exist? Will Apple be the only company still using the ISA? At least with arm64 Apple is building their own cores and chips. Apple moved on from 68000, PowerPC, and x86 not because the companies ceased to exist but because they stopped making chips relevant to Apple, or the direction Apple wanted to move. But never say it's too expensive for Apple to move ISAs. They've done it four times already, they can do it again.
  - aurareturn 3y ago
    They've done it for their computers only, which is just 10% of their revenue in 2024. If they do it again, they'd have to do it for the iPhone, iPad, Vision Pro, Macs, monitors that have A series chips, Apple TV, Watch, and all their smaller products. I didn't say never. But 2040 is probably around the time they'd do it if they ever do it.
    - snvzz 3y ago
      >I didn't say never. But 2040 is probably around the time they'd do it if they ever do it. Doubtful. Once a decision is made, it would take full effect within 5 years. And if they make the decision, they would make it when they determine that the ISA is ready (which would be soon, if not already in the past). Not a decade after.

r2vcap 3y ago

Hmm... Is China betting on RISC-V chips? China is too big to rely solely on a single chip architecture. I saw another attempt to develop a new chip architecture in China, called Loongson64. In recent years, I've seen a lot of contributions to libraries/software, such as the Linux Kernel, Chromium, LLVM, V8, and ffmpeg, by Loongson, a Chinese chip company that produces an architecture called Loongson64. Apparently, China wants to develop its own chip architecture, chip design, and chip manufacturing capabilities, and RISC-V is one of the options, but there isn't a single path to achieving that.

John23832 3y ago
> China is too big to rely solely on a single chip architecture. This doesn’t really make sense. Prior to the current ARM revolution, the entire world was on x86. > I saw another attempt to develop a new chip architecture in China, called Loongson64 Without using a common chip arch, you go at it alone. That is a competitive disadvantage.
- FirmwareBurner 3y ago
  > Prior to the current ARM revolution, the entire world was on x86. Hmm, that's kinda false. Let's go back ~20 years. Workstation and datacenters were on Sparc or PowerPC. ARM was in every phone, MP3 player, digital camera or any other portable device. Gaming consoles and set top boxes and the like were on MIPS or the new Cell processor which was also PowerPC based. The world definitely was never fully on X86, and ARM was always among us.
  - John23832 3y ago
    >Hmm, that's kinda false. > The world definitely was never fully on X86, and ARM was always among us. The "entire world" there wasn't meant to be absolutely literal. The point I refuting was that because of China's size, they cannot focus on a single architecture. That makes no sense. China overwhelmingly utilizes x86 now. > Let's go back ~20 years. Workstation and datacenters were on Sparc or PowerPC. ARM was in every phone, MP3 player, digital camera or any other portable device. Gaming consoles and set top boxes and the like were on MIPS or the new Cell processor which was also PowerPC based. That's all great and good, and while I never discounted a heterogenous world, this is both Intel and AMD's marketshare: https://www.statista.com/statistics/735904/worldwide-x86-intel-amd-market-share/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/735904/worldwide-x86-int... The world is on x86.