5 ms·

I very much agree with you, and I think you’ll hit the hornets nest on this one unfortunately. I’m all for more architectures but RISC-V has an absurd fandom b

by dagmx 2y ago

I very much agree with you, and I think you’ll hit the hornets nest on this one unfortunately. I’m all for more architectures but RISC-V has an absurd fandom behind it now. It feels like the fandom behind Linux on the home desktop or Vulkan (which makes sense given the open nature) in the way that they’re trying to manifest its success as reality by just saying that it’ll inevitably be used, while ignoring the hurdles in the way. That’s not to say those aren’t successes when used , but I often feel the comments that put them on the pedestal don’t acknowledge the immense delta between today and their imagined future, and have very little interest when it’s pointed out. For all three it comes down to Software Compatibility and experience of use. And the proponents seem to have a “the underlying tech is built and people will flock to it when they open their eyes”, but the first part in fixing the software compatibility gulf is acknowledging it exists and actioning that. FOSS isn’t alone here, Apple does the same mistake with desktop gaming and Microsoft with almost any physical product they release that’s not running windows. I really do hope that more open platforms and technologies happen, but I feel like the people who unabashedly push them without acknowledging how it needs to happen are doing them a disservice.

giantrobot 2y ago
> I’m all for more architectures but RISC-V has an absurd fandom behind it now. I don't understand what the fandom thinks they're going to get out of RISC-V "winning". You're not going to be able to download a new CPU like you can a new Linux kernel. An open source CPU core is useless without a factory to manufacture it. There's not going to be a GNU equivalent to semiconductor manufacturing. The baseline cost to build a factory is billions of dollars. You also can't just slap any design on any manufacturing node or chemistry. There's a lot work to get a chip design working on a particular node. A CPU is a very small part of a functional computing device. It's some magical thinking to assume just because a device was built on an open source CPU core that somehow the overall system will somehow be more open. Most of the stuff people bitch about being binary blobs will remain binary blobs will remain so even with a RISC-V CPU core. Anything with a radio will remain a black box for regulatory reasons, even if the baseband core is a RISC-V chip. GPUs will remain black boxes only accessible via their drivers' interface. Peripheral controllers covered by patent pools or branding licenses won't cease to be covered even if the controllers are RISC-V.
- dagmx 2y ago
  The win is ideological not focused on pragmatism imho. Which is fair, but imho one should be honest with themselves if that’s where they’re coming from. If I can use that premise , then all the incongruity makes much more sense.
  - calf 2y ago
    Serious, nonrhetorical question, are you suggesting that Turing Award recipient Dave Patterson who is currently on the RISC-V board is somehow dishonest with their philosophy and approaching being taken here?
- eternityforest 2y ago
  Having only one architecture for almost all devices seems like it would be nice although probably not a super big advantage
  - Manabu-eo 2y ago
    Obligatory xkcd: https://xkcd.com/927/ https://xkcd.com/927/ I do recognize that as a royalty free and well supported architecture, very flexible with all the optional extensions, it do have a better shot than others at becoming the standard architecture. But the sheer amount of closed source software written for architectures that keep track of arithmetic flags that would need to be emulated is daunting.
- panick21_ 2y ago
  RISC-V isn't just the RISC-V standard. Its also a larger movement. What RISC-V critically changes is that open core designs can now openly be shared. This is something that wasn't the case before. Universities and business can now cooperate much better better, people can work on a project in university and commercialize it far faster. > You're not going to be able to download a new CPU like you can a new Linux kernel. An open source CPU core is useless without a factory to manufacture it. A huge number of well designed FPGA cores can actually be download. Not so long ago good open FPGA cores weren't that common. Now there is a wealth of options. And you can get very high quality stuff like OpenTitan and use it yourself. And designing your own CPU and letting it be manufactured more like a PCB isn't as crazy as it was. It used to cost many millions, now you can get it done for much less. 30 years ago hobbits designing their own boards and getting them within a few days wasn't a thing, now its common. Almost every hacker conference now has their own PCB per conference. This wasn't a thing not that long ago. Google worked with SkyWater Technology to actually open source most of their process. You can use a fully open flow and order your own costume chips. Contract manufacturing like that barley was a thing in the 80s, and now its the standard. > A CPU is a very small part of a functional computing device. It's some magical thinking to assume just because a device was built on an open source CPU core that somehow the overall system will somehow be more open. Nobody has this 'magical' thinking, that's a Straw man. Its about observing a longer term trend. Before RISC-V having even open-core wasn't much of a thing. And now that there are quality cores people can spend their time on other thing. Open implementation of different IPs are increasingly being designed. University research on new stuff being done by adding something to an open core. Companies like Tenstorrent added a cool vector ISA to an Open Core. Chips Alliance is investing in tools like Verilator, and other needed things like TileLink interconnects. Yes its not a guarantee that whoever uses RISC-V makes other things open, but at the very least it doesn't hurt. And the other side of the coin is that it makes it very EASY for people who want to make things open. > GPUs will remain black boxes only accessible via their drivers' interface. There are already early attempts at building RISC-V open GPUs, that you can interact with however you want. Sure your not gone get that from NVidea but that doesn't mean its not valuable. > Peripheral controllers covered by patent pools or branding licenses won't cease to be covered even if the controllers are RISC-V. Nobody is disagreeing with that, but its still the case that a lot of things can actually be open. A position that says 'its bad because its not absolute good' is dumb. The point is that RISC-V existing and being successful is just one building block in the idea of information and technology being free and sharable, it moves cooperation and competition to a higher level. It has lots of practical benefits that have already been demonstrated and RISC-V as a movement already had a huge impact on everything from the tooling to peripherals. Just look at RISC-V Foundation, Chip Alliance, CORE-V, Pulp Project and so on and so on. > I don't understand what the fandom thinks they're going to get A better world mostly, and many practical benefits along the way.
panick21_ 2y ago
> just saying that it’ll inevitably be used, while ignoring the hurdles in the way. That statement makes no sense. These things aren't in conflict, saying something is 'inevitable' doesn't mean you can't see the hurdles or that you are ignoring them. Its just born out of an understanding of what the hurdles are and how, in time they can be overcome. > and have very little interest when it’s pointed out. Maybe they aren't interested because they know its a long road and anytime there is any success its better to just be excited for a moment and not have somebody comes in with the 'but actually'. This is a totally normal social dynamic. This concept is best addressed in The Big Lebowski, "Your not wrong your just an a*hole". > For all three it comes down to Software Compatibility And as an industry we have some understanding of how standards with open protocol work and how the situation improves. RISC-V isn't knew and we have some idea of how that process is going and how it is organized. Its reasonable to make assumptions about how this will continue. We also have a large and strong open software community that is gone focus on these standards. Even for very large cooperation, maintaining its own standard is a huge pain in the ass. There is a pretty good standards process with lots of people involved that has been making very good progress. There is also real money and effort put into improving all the upstreams. The RISE project for example, brings together tons of major companies, universities, distros and so on. And this isn't just about RISC-V, lots of effort also put into tools, open designs and so on. RISC-V went from no support to be comparable to long established ISA in a pretty short time. Its not unreasonable to project that forward. > and experience of use RISC-V has been adopted by a huge number of universities, its the default now anytime somebody upgrades those courses. Anybody doing things on a FPGA, is almost certainty gone use some open RISC-V core. Some FPGA manufactures are even pushing RISC-V as their example cores. RISC-V is also designed to be easy to learn and get into. It already has a lot of adoption all across the industry. Far more and far faster then any other ISA ever. Experience is gained by people working on projects, and there are lots of them. > Apple does the same mistake with desktop gaming and Microsoft with almost any physical product they release that’s not running windows. That's different, because Apple just clearly doesn't care very much. That a very different situation. > "the underlying tech is built and people will flock to it when they open their eyes" No they are only observing that large cooperations all over the world are already moving in that direction. That China and India see the advantage as well. That there are major chip makers who have made it the core of their business. That Europe is making a major investment. That there are a whole boatload of AI companies are adopting it. A huge number of people have already seen it and its has been growing fast for a while now and that growth can be measured in a number of ways. > I really do hope that more open platforms and technologies happen, but I feel like the people who unabashedly push them without acknowledging how it needs to happen are doing them a disservice. I feel like those people mostly exist in your imagination. When speaking in support of something you are not required to follow it up with a 50-page development plan. You can just like something and be optimistic and that is totally fine, it doesn't mean that person is naive or unaware. If you have an actual counter argument why optimism isn't warranted, then you can say that. Some people believe RISC-V is badly designed for example. Some people believe fragmentation will kill it. But just to outright state 'people who are optimistic are a problem' is a silly position.
wink 2y ago
> It feels like the fandom behind Linux on the home desktop I don't agree with this comparison (or I am misjudging your intention) - 90% of the people I know who run any sort of linux deskopt (usually developers at work) only don't switch their home desktops because of games. I know we're a tiny majority (and I am typing this from a windows machine) - but it's nothing like 10x worse in objective terms (e.g. speed).
- dagmx 2y ago
  But that’s precisely it. You don’t switch at home for games, others don’t for other compatibility reasons either. I’m not specifically talking about games but the whole user experience. That’s not a knock against Linux. It’s great but it’s also disingenuous when people push it as the year of Linux on the home desktop.
  - talldayo 2y ago
    > I’m not specifically talking about games but the whole user experience. If you are capable of using an iPad as a gaming device, I literally do not understand how you wouldn't be able to use a GNOME desktop to achieve literally the exact same outcome. Am I wrong? Getting Steam to use Proton is literally one click in the Steam settings - using an app like Bottles just has you open exes like normal. This is no worse than the Crossover Wine support from the Mac days of yore, if not more streamlined and not fighting against system integrity protection. And your fucking settings app doesn't give you a notification pip for not logging in.

by dagmx 2y ago

giantrobot 2y ago

> I’m all for more architectures but RISC-V has an absurd fandom behind it now. I don't understand what the fandom thinks they're going to get out of RISC-V "winning". You're not going to be able to download a new CPU like you can a new Linux kernel. An open source CPU core is useless without a factory to manufacture it. There's not going to be a GNU equivalent to semiconductor manufacturing. The baseline cost to build a factory is billions of dollars. You also can't just slap any design on any manufacturing node or chemistry. There's a lot work to get a chip design working on a particular node. A CPU is a very small part of a functional computing device. It's some magical thinking to assume just because a device was built on an open source CPU core that somehow the overall system will somehow be more open. Most of the stuff people bitch about being binary blobs will remain binary blobs will remain so even with a RISC-V CPU core. Anything with a radio will remain a black box for regulatory reasons, even if the baseband core is a RISC-V chip. GPUs will remain black boxes only accessible via their drivers' interface. Peripheral controllers covered by patent pools or branding licenses won't cease to be covered even if the controllers are RISC-V.

dagmx 2y ago
The win is ideological not focused on pragmatism imho. Which is fair, but imho one should be honest with themselves if that’s where they’re coming from. If I can use that premise , then all the incongruity makes much more sense.
- calf 2y ago
  Serious, nonrhetorical question, are you suggesting that Turing Award recipient Dave Patterson who is currently on the RISC-V board is somehow dishonest with their philosophy and approaching being taken here?
eternityforest 2y ago
Having only one architecture for almost all devices seems like it would be nice although probably not a super big advantage
- Manabu-eo 2y ago
  Obligatory xkcd: https://xkcd.com/927/ https://xkcd.com/927/ I do recognize that as a royalty free and well supported architecture, very flexible with all the optional extensions, it do have a better shot than others at becoming the standard architecture. But the sheer amount of closed source software written for architectures that keep track of arithmetic flags that would need to be emulated is daunting.
panick21_ 2y ago
RISC-V isn't just the RISC-V standard. Its also a larger movement. What RISC-V critically changes is that open core designs can now openly be shared. This is something that wasn't the case before. Universities and business can now cooperate much better better, people can work on a project in university and commercialize it far faster. > You're not going to be able to download a new CPU like you can a new Linux kernel. An open source CPU core is useless without a factory to manufacture it. A huge number of well designed FPGA cores can actually be download. Not so long ago good open FPGA cores weren't that common. Now there is a wealth of options. And you can get very high quality stuff like OpenTitan and use it yourself. And designing your own CPU and letting it be manufactured more like a PCB isn't as crazy as it was. It used to cost many millions, now you can get it done for much less. 30 years ago hobbits designing their own boards and getting them within a few days wasn't a thing, now its common. Almost every hacker conference now has their own PCB per conference. This wasn't a thing not that long ago. Google worked with SkyWater Technology to actually open source most of their process. You can use a fully open flow and order your own costume chips. Contract manufacturing like that barley was a thing in the 80s, and now its the standard. > A CPU is a very small part of a functional computing device. It's some magical thinking to assume just because a device was built on an open source CPU core that somehow the overall system will somehow be more open. Nobody has this 'magical' thinking, that's a Straw man. Its about observing a longer term trend. Before RISC-V having even open-core wasn't much of a thing. And now that there are quality cores people can spend their time on other thing. Open implementation of different IPs are increasingly being designed. University research on new stuff being done by adding something to an open core. Companies like Tenstorrent added a cool vector ISA to an Open Core. Chips Alliance is investing in tools like Verilator, and other needed things like TileLink interconnects. Yes its not a guarantee that whoever uses RISC-V makes other things open, but at the very least it doesn't hurt. And the other side of the coin is that it makes it very EASY for people who want to make things open. > GPUs will remain black boxes only accessible via their drivers' interface. There are already early attempts at building RISC-V open GPUs, that you can interact with however you want. Sure your not gone get that from NVidea but that doesn't mean its not valuable. > Peripheral controllers covered by patent pools or branding licenses won't cease to be covered even if the controllers are RISC-V. Nobody is disagreeing with that, but its still the case that a lot of things can actually be open. A position that says 'its bad because its not absolute good' is dumb. The point is that RISC-V existing and being successful is just one building block in the idea of information and technology being free and sharable, it moves cooperation and competition to a higher level. It has lots of practical benefits that have already been demonstrated and RISC-V as a movement already had a huge impact on everything from the tooling to peripherals. Just look at RISC-V Foundation, Chip Alliance, CORE-V, Pulp Project and so on and so on. > I don't understand what the fandom thinks they're going to get A better world mostly, and many practical benefits along the way.

panick21_ 2y ago

> just saying that it’ll inevitably be used, while ignoring the hurdles in the way. That statement makes no sense. These things aren't in conflict, saying something is 'inevitable' doesn't mean you can't see the hurdles or that you are ignoring them. Its just born out of an understanding of what the hurdles are and how, in time they can be overcome. > and have very little interest when it’s pointed out. Maybe they aren't interested because they know its a long road and anytime there is any success its better to just be excited for a moment and not have somebody comes in with the 'but actually'. This is a totally normal social dynamic. This concept is best addressed in The Big Lebowski, "Your not wrong your just an a*hole". > For all three it comes down to Software Compatibility And as an industry we have some understanding of how standards with open protocol work and how the situation improves. RISC-V isn't knew and we have some idea of how that process is going and how it is organized. Its reasonable to make assumptions about how this will continue. We also have a large and strong open software community that is gone focus on these standards. Even for very large cooperation, maintaining its own standard is a huge pain in the ass. There is a pretty good standards process with lots of people involved that has been making very good progress. There is also real money and effort put into improving all the upstreams. The RISE project for example, brings together tons of major companies, universities, distros and so on. And this isn't just about RISC-V, lots of effort also put into tools, open designs and so on. RISC-V went from no support to be comparable to long established ISA in a pretty short time. Its not unreasonable to project that forward. > and experience of use RISC-V has been adopted by a huge number of universities, its the default now anytime somebody upgrades those courses. Anybody doing things on a FPGA, is almost certainty gone use some open RISC-V core. Some FPGA manufactures are even pushing RISC-V as their example cores. RISC-V is also designed to be easy to learn and get into. It already has a lot of adoption all across the industry. Far more and far faster then any other ISA ever. Experience is gained by people working on projects, and there are lots of them. > Apple does the same mistake with desktop gaming and Microsoft with almost any physical product they release that’s not running windows. That's different, because Apple just clearly doesn't care very much. That a very different situation. > "the underlying tech is built and people will flock to it when they open their eyes" No they are only observing that large cooperations all over the world are already moving in that direction. That China and India see the advantage as well. That there are major chip makers who have made it the core of their business. That Europe is making a major investment. That there are a whole boatload of AI companies are adopting it. A huge number of people have already seen it and its has been growing fast for a while now and that growth can be measured in a number of ways. > I really do hope that more open platforms and technologies happen, but I feel like the people who unabashedly push them without acknowledging how it needs to happen are doing them a disservice. I feel like those people mostly exist in your imagination. When speaking in support of something you are not required to follow it up with a 50-page development plan. You can just like something and be optimistic and that is totally fine, it doesn't mean that person is naive or unaware. If you have an actual counter argument why optimism isn't warranted, then you can say that. Some people believe RISC-V is badly designed for example. Some people believe fragmentation will kill it. But just to outright state 'people who are optimistic are a problem' is a silly position.

wink 2y ago

> It feels like the fandom behind Linux on the home desktop I don't agree with this comparison (or I am misjudging your intention) - 90% of the people I know who run any sort of linux deskopt (usually developers at work) only don't switch their home desktops because of games. I know we're a tiny majority (and I am typing this from a windows machine) - but it's nothing like 10x worse in objective terms (e.g. speed).

dagmx 2y ago
But that’s precisely it. You don’t switch at home for games, others don’t for other compatibility reasons either. I’m not specifically talking about games but the whole user experience. That’s not a knock against Linux. It’s great but it’s also disingenuous when people push it as the year of Linux on the home desktop.
- talldayo 2y ago
  > I’m not specifically talking about games but the whole user experience. If you are capable of using an iPad as a gaming device, I literally do not understand how you wouldn't be able to use a GNOME desktop to achieve literally the exact same outcome. Am I wrong? Getting Steam to use Proton is literally one click in the Steam settings - using an app like Bottles just has you open exes like normal. This is no worse than the Crossover Wine support from the Mac days of yore, if not more streamlined and not fighting against system integrity protection. And your fucking settings app doesn't give you a notification pip for not logging in.