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> The VF2 has been out for over a year. How long does it take to write a bootloader that can load a kernel from USB? Manpower is extremely limited -- unless of

> The VF2 has been out for over a year. How long does it take to write a bootloader that can load a kernel from USB? Manpower is extremely limited -- unless of course you're offering to do that part. What would you like someone to not do so that they can do USB booting instead? > It can only help your chances of getting mass RISC-V adoption, right? There is not yet any RISC-V hardware in production that has performance suitable for mass adoption in laptops/desktops, just as there is none in the Arm world except from Apple. Maybe the Radxa Orion O6 and/or Qualcomm's Oryon/Snapdragon X Elite, I don't know as I haven't tried them yet. The Pi 5 / Rock 5 / Orange Pi 5 generation are kind of ok but not quite there as an x86 replacement. RISC-V is two or three years behind (non Apple) Arm. Pushing people into RISC-V before it is ready is what would be counter-productive. Maybe booting from USB is part of that, but general app performance is far more important. It's coming, but the Android phone/tablet market is both far larger and much easier and will happen first. No one expects their Android phone to boot from a USB stick. > The ISA is done. There are some vector extension things that remain in beta, or have possibly just left beta Showing how little you know about the current status. The Vector extension was ratified three years ago in November 2021. Hasn't been beta for ages. But there are lots of other very important things needed for feature parity with Arm and x86 which have just been ratified in 2024, culminating with RVA23 in December. That is not "finished" by any means, just as Arm and Intel/AMD continue to add things to their ISAs, but it's a good base for an ISA spec allowing general adoption. Chips implementing RVA23 will be out in two or three years AND should simultaneously hit a performance level that won't disappoint users AND all important software should be available at the same time. I expect including your USB booting. Waiting is...

phendrenad2 2y ago
> Manpower is extremely limited And that's why this needs to be solved at a higher level than engineering. There's clearly ample investment into RISC-V - Tenstorrent just raised $693 million. Convincing investors to throw hundreds of millions at "AI magic" is easy. Convincing them to throw $50k at a contractor to make a USB bootloader... that's a harder sell - even if that small investment would have a huge impact on the public perception of RISC-V overall. I think this idea is wasted on "Hacker" News, I need to find "Tech Investor" News, but it doesn't seem to exist. :P
- snvzz 2y ago
  This is a pointless discussion when the USB bootloader already exists, in the form of edk2. See my (two) replies multiple levels above. Of course, the RISC-V edk2 port is a funded effort. And of course, I am glad I could get the first mass-produced RISC-V SBC 2 years ago instead of now. Had they waited until the UEFI-based firmware was done rather than shipped them two years ago, it would have significantly delayed the entire RISC-V ecosystem.

phendrenad2 2y ago

> Manpower is extremely limited And that's why this needs to be solved at a higher level than engineering. There's clearly ample investment into RISC-V - Tenstorrent just raised $693 million. Convincing investors to throw hundreds of millions at "AI magic" is easy. Convincing them to throw $50k at a contractor to make a USB bootloader... that's a harder sell - even if that small investment would have a huge impact on the public perception of RISC-V overall. I think this idea is wasted on "Hacker" News, I need to find "Tech Investor" News, but it doesn't seem to exist. :P

snvzz 2y ago
This is a pointless discussion when the USB bootloader already exists, in the form of edk2. See my (two) replies multiple levels above. Of course, the RISC-V edk2 port is a funded effort. And of course, I am glad I could get the first mass-produced RISC-V SBC 2 years ago instead of now. Had they waited until the UEFI-based firmware was done rather than shipped them two years ago, it would have significantly delayed the entire RISC-V ecosystem.