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Why are these only 1.4ghz frequency, when raspberry pi gets to 2.4ghz? Is it a limitation of the cost of scale that prevents building faster chips? Or does the
by turblety 2y ago
Why are these only 1.4ghz frequency, when raspberry pi gets to 2.4ghz? Is it a limitation of the cost of scale that prevents building faster chips? Or does the architecture not really support faster chips?
I really hope that RISC-V can take over as a modern architecture, adding some competition to Intel/AMD and Arm. But they'll need to be able to offer faster chips, or at a minimum more than 4 cores.
Also does anyone know the rate of progress? I believe 10 years ago these where at 0.5mhz?
- rbanffy 2y agoSeems to be limited mostly by the power and size constraints, while it's also fabricated in an older node. The target market seems to be simple embedded devices not needing SIMD instructions, which is less constrained by the software availability. RISC-V is still a very new architecture.
- daef 2y agoi thought risc-v is >10years "old". how long is an ISA "very new"?
- rbanffy 2y agox86 is more than 40. ARM is 30-ish. Most importantly, it's been just a few years since we could start getting reasonable RISC-V boards.
- Someone 2y agoand one likely reason the boards weren’t there was (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RISC-V#Design https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RISC-V#Design): “As of June 2019, version 2.2 of the user-space ISA[46] and version 1.11 of the privileged ISA[3] are frozen, permitting software and hardware development to proceed. The user-space ISA, now renamed the Unprivileged ISA, was updated, ratified and frozen as version 20191213” So, it’s more like 5 years old, compared to ≈40 for 32-bit x86, ≈20 for 64-bit x86.
- snvzz 2y agoDecember 2021, for the specs required by RVA22 which the P550 implements. P550 was announced shortly after these specs were ratified, so it's one of the earliest RVA22 designs. I am expecting there'll be others we will get to see this year.
- RobotToaster 2y agoFirst ARM processor was 1985, so 40 years almost exactly.
- klelatti 2y agoI think it’s a bit problematic to say ARM is 30-ish years old. The company is 34 years old but 64 bit Arm (AArch64) which is really very different to its predecessors was announced in 2011 so arguably only 14 years old.
- K0balt 2y agoI’m pretty sure the IP/experience transfer to arch64 was massive compared to starting for scratch.
- klelatti 2y agoSo PowerPC is 70 years old because IBM was designing computers in 1954? :)
- K0balt 2y agoYes, in a sense. But that is not an apt comparison at all, really. ISA design is a complex endeavor. Arch64 benefited from multiple factors directly attributable to ARMs prior art, domain knowledge, and market positioning. There is a huge distinction between a globally recognized and dominant ISA engineering firm coming out with a “new” ISA that their engineers had been prepping for for years, and the effort required to create a novel ISA and ecosystem from scratch. One is just another day at the office, while the other is a very riscy endeavor that requires amassing the talent, creating incentives, creating an engineering culture, and trying to create a niche in a market that was arguably fully populated by other options. And then, you still have to create an entire family of ISAs to match various specification levels. It’s not an apples to apples comparison.
- beeflet 2y agoThis same point is made in threads discussing how wayland protocol is 16 years "old". I think it's different if the system starts out as a research project rather than a commercial project, because the time until a usable implementation is much greater. For example, I would say that riscv is "newer" than loongISA/loongarch despite being slightly older in a literal sense. If you look at an arch like x86 or ARM it was designed right before chips were released, and then extended over time. The same goes for the X protocol, it simply extended previous versions. If you are designing something from the ground up to avoid the inherent problems of an existing system, it is reasonable to take time and research design problems to make sure you don't recreate the same issues (which would defeat the point of the redesign). It doesn't compete on the same time-frame as an extension of an existing system.
- formerly_proven 2y agoPrivileged spec is only a couple years old and mainline Linux only runs on RISC-V since 2022 or something like that.
- snvzz 2y ago>i thought risc-v is >10years "old". September 2019 for the base specs being ratified. But even that isn't the true starting gun for anything but basic MCU.. For high performance, it's RVA22. The relevant specs were only ratified in December 2021. It takes 3 years from IP to chips, and thus we are seeing the first RVA22 chips now. No surprises there.
- gliptic 2y ago> while it's also fabricated in an older node Is this 7 nm node really older than raspberry pi 5's 16 nm node?
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- nsteel 2y ago> This SoC has a 1.4 GHz, quad core P550 cluster with 4 MB of shared cache. The EIC7700X is manufactured on TSMC’s 12nm FFC process > Next up is TSMC’s 12 nm FFC manufacturing technology, which is an optimized version of the company’s CLN16FFC that is set to use 6T libraries (as opposed to 7.5T and 9T libraries) providing a 20% area reduction. Despite noticeably higher transistor density, the CLN12FFC is expected to also offer a 10% frequency improvement at the same power and complexity or a 25% power reduction at the same clock rate and complexity. They optimised for density and power, not frequency. A lot of the benefit they're claiming comes just from this. https://www.anandtech.com/show/11337/samsung-and-tsmc-roadmaps-12-nm-8-nm-and-6-nm-added/4 https://www.anandtech.com/show/11337/samsung-and-tsmc-roadma...
- beeflet 2y agoI think that the development of riscv will eek out greater market share for chinese manufacturers, which will have a negative effect on the global order. I am also skeptical that it will lead to more open designs, but perhaps it could increase competition enough in the chip design space that more open chip designers can make a space for themselves, especially if the business of chip fabrication is isolated from design.
- cbm-vic-20 2y agoI'm surprised China's economic rivals, specifically India, hasn't made a serious push to bootstrap a home-grown chip industry based around RISC-V.
- Arnavion 2y agoIndia had https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/SHAKTI_(microprocessor) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/SHAKTI_(microprocessor) as of a few years ago but I haven't followed it. The main website and blog seem to have had not much activity since 2021.
- daghamm 2y agoChina tried to create a homegrown CPU 15-20 years ago with their MIPS variant but that died out. I think this time they are much wiser and will pull it off. In 5-8 years we may have China CPUs dominating the Asian market at least. Riscv leading to more open designs is wishful thinking, plus probably a large dose of PR. MIPS has been open for years and how many open source MIPS desisgn have we seen so far?
- azinman2 2y agoDoes Intel/AMD/ARM really need more competition? Do you think they’re stagnant? As I and others have said before, successful consolidation around RISC-V is an ultimately a gift to China. Maybe you’re for that; as an American I am not.
- wbl 2y agoHow is it a gift to China? Architecture isn't where the magic is.
- azinman2 2y agoBecause the tooling is make or break. When LLVM, Linux, rust, debuggers, Android etc etc support it you have a real chance. Having an ISA that one company doesn’t own means you can develop chips that plug in, although all the extensions of RISC-V make that a little harder.
- le-mark 2y agoAlso, do Chinese companies have licenses for all the ARM cores they produce? I assumed they don’t. They traditionally don’t care about IP, so it’s a wash anyaway.
- toast0 2y agoIt's a gift to everyone if an actually open architecture is usable. But it's especially a gift to sanctioned regimes, because they can more easily use this architecture for home grown chips that become desirable when mainstream chips are embargoed or under threat of embargo. Yes, there's still fabrication, but China and Russia have some fabrication going, just not at the latest nodes. Starting from an open standard makes it a lot easier than if they have to clone an architecture/chip or make a whole ecosystem of architecture and software.
- brucehoult 2y ago> Why are these only 1.4ghz frequency, when raspberry pi gets to 2.4ghz? Milk-V Megrez is shipping the same SoC running at 1.8 GHz. Intel's Horse Creek chip with the same cores ran at 2.4 GHz, but Intel is in trouble and cancelled non-core activities. A working board was shown at Hot Chips 23. Clock speed depends on the SoC integrator at least as much as the core designer, and the process node it is made on. And the packaging thermal envelope. > Or does the architecture not really support faster chips? Of course not. From as technical point of view it's essentially identical to Arm64, and with the same financial investment and comparable engineers will run at the same speed. The P550 is a very early RISC-V design, announced in June 2021, just a few months after the RVA22 spec it implements was published. Three to four years to go from core to SBC is normal in the industry, including for Arm's A53, A72, A76. SiFive has designed and shipped two or three major generations of more advanced cores since then, in the P670, P870, and P870-D.
- drmpeg 2y agoIs the P550 RVA22? Here's the ISA string in Linux. Seems like a lot is missing. rv64imafdch_zicsr_zifencei_zba_zbb_sscofpmf
- brucehoult 2y agoOops! You're right. They only claim RV64GBC https://www.sifive.com/document-file/p550-core-data-sheet https://www.sifive.com/document-file/p550-core-data-sheet Although that was at announcement in June 2022. SiFive have continuous improvement and quarterly updates, which is how the U74 in the JH7110 ended up with Zba and Zba that the FU740 (and I thin JH7100) doesn't have, but missed out on the L2 prefetcher that the next quarterly updata got. We do know that the Eswin chip has H, right?
- brucehoult 2y agoActually Eswin doesn't seem to claim B extension: https://www.eswincomputing.com/en/bocupload/2024/06/19/17187920991529ene8q.pdf https://www.eswincomputing.com/en/bocupload/2024/06/19/17187... But Intel Horse Creek did (and also was higher MHz, they said 2+ GH, but I think they demoed it at 2.2 at Hot Chips and were shooting for 2.4 in production): https://community.intel.com/t5/Blogs/Tech-Innovation/open-intel/What-s-in-store-for-the-latest-RISC-V-development-board/post/1448348 https://community.intel.com/t5/Blogs/Tech-Innovation/open-in... All will be revealed in 10 days or so.