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How are the various riscv cpu IP vendors generally doing financially? Is this the very beginning of a market consolidation?
by somanyphotons 1y ago
How are the various riscv cpu IP vendors generally doing financially?
Is this the very beginning of a market consolidation?
- kragen 1y agoI don't think people generally pay for RISC-V CPU IP.
- somanyphotons 1y agoSure they do, most IP is proprietary
- MisterTea 1y agoThey do if they aren't implementing the ISA in silicon themselves. Its interesting to see who's designs are selling, who's aren't and why.
- Keyframe 1y agoFor ISA? Certainly not. For actual designs, for sure. Why wouldn't they unless there's some open source designs they'd be using?
- kragen 1y agoWell, because there are open-source designs they'd be using. The GD32V microcontroller, for example, uses Nucleisys's BumbleBee, and high-performance chips from several vendors use Brother Honey Badger's Apache-licensed XuanTie C910: https://github.com/XUANTIE-RV/openc910 https://github.com/XUANTIE-RV/openc910 But see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44503847 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44503847
- ryao 1y agoThere are open source designs. Here is one: https://github.com/riscv-boom/riscv-boom https://github.com/riscv-boom/riscv-boom
- aseipp 1y agoCompanies that are putting down millions for fab runs absolutely pay shitloads of money for it. The cost of design and verification of those components is enormous and that's mostly what you pay for. People have been shipping Andes and SiFive IP for years now. Downloading source dumps for C910 cores is not the hard part. For most places that kind of high-cost work doesn't make much sense when their product isn't "a CPU", and they also typically have to buy other IP anyway like memory controllers or I/O blocks -- so buying a CPU core isn't that strange in the grand scheme.
- kragen 1y agoThank you very much!
- 6SixTy 1y agoThere are a lot of different CPU IP vendors working on RISC-V. China's a big source of it, and I shouldn't have to explain why.
- showsomerespect 1y agoMaybe you shouldn't have to, but I still need it explained to me
- 6SixTy 1y agoReducing reliance on foreign IP. RISC-V is open source/public domain so no sanctions or export control can be leveraged against the IP.
- jauntywundrkind 1y agoEsperanto just shut down. https://www.eetimes.com/ai-startup-esperanto-winds-down-silicon-business/ https://www.eetimes.com/ai-startup-esperanto-winds-down-sili...