3 ms·

Good marketing, this could open up more large investment into RISC-V.

Joel_Mckay 1y ago
Be honest, what does RISC-V offer that 10 year old AArch64 doesn't already provide? RISC-V is still too green, and fragmented-standards always look like a clown car of liabilities to Business people. =3
- kryptiskt 1y ago
  Less legal risk, ARM has grown litigious and wants a bigger piece of the pie.
  - Joel_Mckay 1y ago
    IP costs real money, and consumers usually don't care how people split up their pies. 100% of a small pie is worth far less than a slice from a large pie. I've met people that made that logical error, and it usually doesn't end well. =3
- blurbleblurble 1y ago
  What does <open source anything> offer that trusty old <proprietary burden> doesn't already provide?
  - Joel_Mckay 1y ago
    I would agree for FPGA soft-cpu the RISC-V is an obvious choice. But in general, the next question will be which version did you deploy, and which cross-compiler do you use. All the documentation people search will have caveats, or simply form contradictory guidance. The problem isn't the ISA, but the ill fated trap of trying to hit every use-case (design variant fragmentation.) ARM 6 made the same mistake, and ARM8/9 greatly consolidated around the 64 bit core design. Indeed, an ISO standard may help narrow the project scope, but I doubt it can save the designs given the behavior some of its proponents have shown. =3
    - Pet_Ant 1y ago
      People complain about fragmentation, but I feel like they are missing the forest for the trees. In the past if you didn't find something you needed, you'd design your own. Now you just tweak RISC-V. I mean "12 variants of RISC-V" is actually less fragmentation than "RISC-V and 11 others". As long as there is a stable core to target, that is all that matters for main stream adoption, and profiles and distros are already there with RVA23.
      - Joel_Mckay 1y ago
        Sure, but what we saw was most software simply disabled the advanced vendor specific features in ARM, and still only compile for stable code around the core IP. This is an important phenomena committee consensus couldn't reconcile. =3 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second-system_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second-system_effect
- mrbluecoat 1y ago
  While the sentiment is a bit harsh, the performance gap noted is real. RISC-V has a ways to go to catch up to ARM64 and then finally AMD64 but if the Apple M1 taught us anything, it's possible.
  - Joel_Mckay 1y ago
    RISC-V shouldn't try to catch 40 years of spiral-development, but rather focus on something people can gather momentum around. amd64 wasn't a great design, but provided a painless migration path for x86 developers to 64bit. Even Intel adopted this competitors architecture. I like the company making a multi-core pseudo GPU card around RISC-V + DSP cores, but again copying NVIDIA bodged on mailbox style hardware is a mistake. It is like the world standardized around square-wheels as a latency joke or something... lol Making low-volume bespoke silicon is a fools errand, and competing with a half-baked product for an established market is a failed company sooner or later. I think people are confusing what I see with what I would like to see. An open ISA would be great, but at this point I can't even convince myself I'd buy a spool of such chips. =3
  - blurbleblurble 1y ago
    Correct me if I'm wrong but I'd imagine the performance gap has almost nothing to do with RISC-V and everything to do with implementation.
    - Joel_Mckay 1y ago
      Like everything in tech... the answer is "it depends": the barrel-shifter in ARM is considered energy-efficient. Also, most RISC design concepts are using more numerous simpler instructions at higher clock-rates, and doesn't rely on mystery microcode to pull off the same workloads as amd64 etc. ARM8/9 is quite good, but partly because a lot of the unused legacy chip features were stripped out. RISC-V had potential, but is still too fragmented... It is the value proposition to companies that is a problem, and in the current consumer market it will likely meet the same fate as PowerPC. =3 "Why the Original Apple Silicon Failed" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tld91M_bcEI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tld91M_bcEI

Be honest, what does RISC-V offer that 10 year old AArch64 doesn't already provide? RISC-V is still too green, and fragmented-standards always look like a clown car of liabilities to Business people. =3

kryptiskt 1y ago
Less legal risk, ARM has grown litigious and wants a bigger piece of the pie.
- Joel_Mckay 1y ago
  IP costs real money, and consumers usually don't care how people split up their pies. 100% of a small pie is worth far less than a slice from a large pie. I've met people that made that logical error, and it usually doesn't end well. =3
blurbleblurble 1y ago
What does <open source anything> offer that trusty old <proprietary burden> doesn't already provide?
- Joel_Mckay 1y ago
  I would agree for FPGA soft-cpu the RISC-V is an obvious choice. But in general, the next question will be which version did you deploy, and which cross-compiler do you use. All the documentation people search will have caveats, or simply form contradictory guidance. The problem isn't the ISA, but the ill fated trap of trying to hit every use-case (design variant fragmentation.) ARM 6 made the same mistake, and ARM8/9 greatly consolidated around the 64 bit core design. Indeed, an ISO standard may help narrow the project scope, but I doubt it can save the designs given the behavior some of its proponents have shown. =3
  - Pet_Ant 1y ago
    People complain about fragmentation, but I feel like they are missing the forest for the trees. In the past if you didn't find something you needed, you'd design your own. Now you just tweak RISC-V. I mean "12 variants of RISC-V" is actually less fragmentation than "RISC-V and 11 others". As long as there is a stable core to target, that is all that matters for main stream adoption, and profiles and distros are already there with RVA23.
    - Joel_Mckay 1y ago
      Sure, but what we saw was most software simply disabled the advanced vendor specific features in ARM, and still only compile for stable code around the core IP. This is an important phenomena committee consensus couldn't reconcile. =3 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second-system_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second-system_effect
mrbluecoat 1y ago
While the sentiment is a bit harsh, the performance gap noted is real. RISC-V has a ways to go to catch up to ARM64 and then finally AMD64 but if the Apple M1 taught us anything, it's possible.
- Joel_Mckay 1y ago
  RISC-V shouldn't try to catch 40 years of spiral-development, but rather focus on something people can gather momentum around. amd64 wasn't a great design, but provided a painless migration path for x86 developers to 64bit. Even Intel adopted this competitors architecture. I like the company making a multi-core pseudo GPU card around RISC-V + DSP cores, but again copying NVIDIA bodged on mailbox style hardware is a mistake. It is like the world standardized around square-wheels as a latency joke or something... lol Making low-volume bespoke silicon is a fools errand, and competing with a half-baked product for an established market is a failed company sooner or later. I think people are confusing what I see with what I would like to see. An open ISA would be great, but at this point I can't even convince myself I'd buy a spool of such chips. =3
- blurbleblurble 1y ago
  Correct me if I'm wrong but I'd imagine the performance gap has almost nothing to do with RISC-V and everything to do with implementation.
  - Joel_Mckay 1y ago
    Like everything in tech... the answer is "it depends": the barrel-shifter in ARM is considered energy-efficient. Also, most RISC design concepts are using more numerous simpler instructions at higher clock-rates, and doesn't rely on mystery microcode to pull off the same workloads as amd64 etc. ARM8/9 is quite good, but partly because a lot of the unused legacy chip features were stripped out. RISC-V had potential, but is still too fragmented... It is the value proposition to companies that is a problem, and in the current consumer market it will likely meet the same fate as PowerPC. =3 "Why the Original Apple Silicon Failed" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tld91M_bcEI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tld91M_bcEI