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> If we want risc v to win, which I very much do, then it will need to be at least competitive, if not superlative. The whole RISC-V "winning" meme is so weird

> If we want risc v to win, which I very much do, then it will need to be at least competitive, if not superlative. The whole RISC-V "winning" meme is so weird. What do you gain if RISC-V "wins"? Even with an open source CPU core you're not getting away from binary blobs. Any wireless baseband is going to be pretty much a sealed system for regulatory reasons. Manufacturers will still lock down firmwares. Attestation chains will still be required for security. HDCP won't magically open up. High performance is largely divorced from the ISA and more related to the low level chip design and process node/chemistry. If RISC-V were to "win", the decent chips will still be manufactured by TSMC. Existing chip designers won't commit mass seppuku, they'll just start working on RISC-V designs. Compiler toolchains will just target RISC-V. So to you what do you expect to change with RISC-V? Unless you've shorted ARM and just want them to go out of business there's no magic upside for you as an end user or even as a device designer. Maybe your next phone has a RISC-V cellular baseband? You're not going to be able to tweak the EIRP of the radio any more than you can today. ARM at the core of the baseband doesn't control that but the regulatory licensing.

binary132 2y ago
that sounds an awful lot like a bunch of problems which need the same solution, rather than a bunch of reasons that we shouldn't try to solve one of, if not the most significant of them
- giantrobot 2y ago
  > that sounds an awful lot like a bunch of problems which need the same solution, rather than a bunch of reasons that we shouldn't try to solve one of, if not the most significant of them What problem or problems do you think exists? What of those problems do you think RISC-V somehow solves? An ARM laptop can run some code you write. A RISC-V laptop can as well. The difference is immaterial unless you really love writing RISC-V assembly. RISC-V doesn't change physics so it doesn't obviate radio emission regulation. RISC-V doesn't change licensing to industry SIGs for protocol compliance badging. RISC-V doesn't change security postures so it's going to still use a signed bootloader to make enterprise sales. A decent performing RISC-V chip still requires a factory costing billions of dollars so you're not going to be manufacturing your own.
  - binary132 2y ago
    You say all that, I just see “it’s fine if only one or two companies own all of the IP and manufacturing capabilities required for the whole world’s computing infrastructure”
    - giantrobot 2y ago
      The issue of fabs is completely orthogonal to the instruction set or core designs of a chip. If RISC-V completely took over microcontrollers tomorrow and every new dishwasher, hard drive, and teledildonic device was RISC-V powered it would do nothing to change your life. You won't get cleaner dishes because a microcontroller was executing RISC-V instructions instead of ARM. The open (or closed) nature of a CPU core isn't really changing the dynamics of electronics in general or computing specifically.

binary132 2y ago

that sounds an awful lot like a bunch of problems which need the same solution, rather than a bunch of reasons that we shouldn't try to solve one of, if not the most significant of them

giantrobot 2y ago
> that sounds an awful lot like a bunch of problems which need the same solution, rather than a bunch of reasons that we shouldn't try to solve one of, if not the most significant of them What problem or problems do you think exists? What of those problems do you think RISC-V somehow solves? An ARM laptop can run some code you write. A RISC-V laptop can as well. The difference is immaterial unless you really love writing RISC-V assembly. RISC-V doesn't change physics so it doesn't obviate radio emission regulation. RISC-V doesn't change licensing to industry SIGs for protocol compliance badging. RISC-V doesn't change security postures so it's going to still use a signed bootloader to make enterprise sales. A decent performing RISC-V chip still requires a factory costing billions of dollars so you're not going to be manufacturing your own.
- binary132 2y ago
  You say all that, I just see “it’s fine if only one or two companies own all of the IP and manufacturing capabilities required for the whole world’s computing infrastructure”
  - giantrobot 2y ago
    The issue of fabs is completely orthogonal to the instruction set or core designs of a chip. If RISC-V completely took over microcontrollers tomorrow and every new dishwasher, hard drive, and teledildonic device was RISC-V powered it would do nothing to change your life. You won't get cleaner dishes because a microcontroller was executing RISC-V instructions instead of ARM. The open (or closed) nature of a CPU core isn't really changing the dynamics of electronics in general or computing specifically.