3 ms·

First, im a big fan of what riscV has brought into the world; 0.50 cent processors with radios that can reach a kilometer, 8 cent MCUs that you can put anywhere

by K0balt 1mo ago

First, im a big fan of what riscV has brought into the world; 0.50 cent processors with radios that can reach a kilometer, 8 cent MCUs that you can put anywhere because they are basically free, 8 dollar Linux computers, and 1 dollar WiFi nodes that can run reasonable applications. And also, the first application capable chip you can actually trust to be free of unpublished capabilities. RiscV is going to win despite its limitations, simply because they can be worked around freely, and the cost per core is zero. Every major company will be making their own flavor, because it’s the only way they can economically own the product of their work. Not many companies can be Qualcomm or Apple, but when a company invests millions in an architecture, they want it to be an asset on -their- balance sheet. It may not be the best starting point, but it’s the only journey that ends in ownership without starting from scratch. X86 had dominance for decades not because it’s the best architecture, but because it was the best choice. RiscV doesn’t have to be the best architecture to be the best choice for companies to build on.

random3 1mo ago
Can you list the actual chips you’re referring to and additional sources to follow? I’ve finally started playing with ESP32 and recently getting curious about the smallest possible things out there. Also
- kreelman 1mo ago
  Here's the CH32v003, https://github.com/openwch/ch32v003 https://github.com/openwch/ch32v003 These are pretty low end and are fairly available at low cost. Here's a youtube of someone talking through some of the the CH32 boards, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kss6WQvJbRs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kss6WQvJbRs He talks about them being the "10c/chip" chip. Then, there is the CH32v303 https://www.wch-ic.com/products/CH32V303.html https://www.wch-ic.com/products/CH32V303.html, which is the lower end of the chips that support minimal floating point and USB host/client. These ones are a bit more pricey, https://www.lcsc.com/product-detail/C5456849.html https://www.lcsc.com/product-detail/C5456849.html at $US1.72 each. The extra price is QFP64 (64 pins, quad flat pack) and more features on the chip, USB, CAN, V4F extension giving one instruction multiply and some floating point operations. Note that the fact that this chip uses an extension, V4F, for floating point (I think?) is part of the argument of Dmitry's piece on the RISC-V. The chip is pretty low price for a fair bit of power.
  - rasz 1mo ago
    CH32v303 costs more than much more capable ARM based RP2354A
    - phire 1mo ago
      And on the RP2354 you can swap one or both ARM cores for RISC-V cores at boot. I think the CH32v303's single V4F core might be slightly more capable than the Hazard 3 cores RISC-V cores (as it has a hardware FPU), but for everything else the RP2354 is probably better (and the ARM cores do have hardware FPUs)
    - hakfoo 1mo ago
      I feel like the Raspberry Pi products are inherently a special case. They're probably produced in far greater numbers than most off-the-shelf STM32 or CH32V chips. You've got a huge ready market in hobbyist/educational products as well as the commercial products that have used it as a convenient choice. There's that whole non-profit/educational heritage around them that likely selects for a different set of defaults and features than, say, a MCU designed specifically to be the controller for a SATA SSD or a $19 Roku clone. They also have a small product range, as compared to the broad product matrix a lot of the more "commercial brand" MCUs come in. I know even the CH32v30x chips come in several variations multiplied by several package options (which vary enough to impact the features you can realistically use on them).
      - crote 1mo ago
        > They're probably produced in far greater numbers than most off-the-shelf STM32 or CH32V chips. I highly doubt it. The RP2xxx lacks the built-in functionality for use in, say, a car, and it isn't cheap and fully-integrated enough for dime-a-dozen gadget application. They are great for hobbyists due to their low barrier to entry, but there really isn't a niche they serve when it comes to mass-produced electronics.
        ajsnigrutin 1mo ago
        > They are great for hobbyists due to their low barrier to entry, but there really isn't a niche they serve when it comes to mass-produced electronics. This. Just programming a microcontroller is generally a pain, but a pain that hardware manufacturers can deal with, because they have employees with experience, who can read the long datasheets, get proper programmers and run the manufacturers software packages to program everything. For hobbyists, you're basically limited to arduinos, esp??/??, and rpi picos, only those are guaranteed to have a lot of software support, documentation, easy availability on aliexpress etc. for cheap, and can be made to actually do some stuff in an afternoon of tinkering. (technically it's the same with proper RPis, where they're the only SBC board (not x86 baed) that you're guaranteed will have at least some software support after 5+ years).
throwaway2037 1mo ago
> And also, the first application capable chip you can actually trust to be free of unpublished capabilities. I am not in the embedded space. Can you explain your thinking behind this comment?
- RobotToaster 1mo ago
  It's widely suspected that the Intel management engine[0] and their equivalents are NSA backdoors [0] https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2017/05/intels-management-engine-security-hazard-and-users-need-way-disable-it https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2017/05/intels-management-engi...
- K0balt 1mo ago
  Subtly tainted RNGs, flash download backdoors, interfaces that allow covert JTAG are all “features” that can be found in some widely used chips. Because of the freedom of the riscV license, we have microscope inspectable processors being launched by tiny companies that are focused on security and privacy. https://baochip.com/ https://baochip.com/
bjackman 1mo ago
> RiscV is going to win despite its limitations, simply because they can be worked around freely, and the cost per core is zero. This feels right to me. I've worked on embedded systems and OS my whole career and it just doesn't really feel like riscv wins or loses on technical merit to me. Boots-on-the-ground engineers might grumble but the decisions that matter here just aren't made by them. Otherwise why would we still be using x86 so much? I've worked on platforms that had barely-functional CPUs, we had to regularly be in touch with the engs that implemented them and they'd regularly go "oh yeah you've found a bug in our memory subsystem". This was kinda annoying for us but those CPUs were cheap as fuck and that opened up business models that weren't otherwise available. This is always gonna be more important than "ah but the CPUs are suboptimal!!"
- mike_hearn 1mo ago
  We use x86 because the implementations are fast and there's so much software encoded with it. This makes up for the problems of the design. RISC-V doesn't have either of those advantages, though.
  - bjackman 1mo ago
    Yeah my x86 comment wasn't meant to suggest RISCV can easily beat x86 it was pointing out that "being a good arch" is very low on the list of priorities for making the arch successful. Exactly as you say, x86 is successful coz there are really good x86 CPUs and a SW ecosystem. Not because it's a good arch. Similarly I think, if it wins, RISCV will win because there's enough demand for a nonproprietary ISA, and this trumps basically everything else. Another way to say this: I've seen internal slide decks about ISA strategy that target C-suites at megacorps. Not once do those slide decks ever go into technical dis/advantages, coz the people steering the 9-figure investments don't give a shit. If you piped up in those meetings and said "RISCV sucks though!!!" you would just be ignored and not invited back. It's not really any different from startups. Tech stacks matter but there's a huge number of successful companies out there running total garbage and who knows how many perfectly engineered products go out of business every day coz the thing they perfectly engineered was not useful.
- 1mo ago
znpy 1mo ago
8 dollar linux computers were a thing before riscv as well btw, i remember buying 50 chip computers (9$ at the time) for my university linux users group.

by K0balt 1mo ago

random3 1mo ago

Can you list the actual chips you’re referring to and additional sources to follow? I’ve finally started playing with ESP32 and recently getting curious about the smallest possible things out there. Also

kreelman 1mo ago
Here's the CH32v003, https://github.com/openwch/ch32v003 https://github.com/openwch/ch32v003 These are pretty low end and are fairly available at low cost. Here's a youtube of someone talking through some of the the CH32 boards, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kss6WQvJbRs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kss6WQvJbRs He talks about them being the "10c/chip" chip. Then, there is the CH32v303 https://www.wch-ic.com/products/CH32V303.html https://www.wch-ic.com/products/CH32V303.html, which is the lower end of the chips that support minimal floating point and USB host/client. These ones are a bit more pricey, https://www.lcsc.com/product-detail/C5456849.html https://www.lcsc.com/product-detail/C5456849.html at $US1.72 each. The extra price is QFP64 (64 pins, quad flat pack) and more features on the chip, USB, CAN, V4F extension giving one instruction multiply and some floating point operations. Note that the fact that this chip uses an extension, V4F, for floating point (I think?) is part of the argument of Dmitry's piece on the RISC-V. The chip is pretty low price for a fair bit of power.
- rasz 1mo ago
  CH32v303 costs more than much more capable ARM based RP2354A
  - phire 1mo ago
    And on the RP2354 you can swap one or both ARM cores for RISC-V cores at boot. I think the CH32v303's single V4F core might be slightly more capable than the Hazard 3 cores RISC-V cores (as it has a hardware FPU), but for everything else the RP2354 is probably better (and the ARM cores do have hardware FPUs)
  - hakfoo 1mo ago
    I feel like the Raspberry Pi products are inherently a special case. They're probably produced in far greater numbers than most off-the-shelf STM32 or CH32V chips. You've got a huge ready market in hobbyist/educational products as well as the commercial products that have used it as a convenient choice. There's that whole non-profit/educational heritage around them that likely selects for a different set of defaults and features than, say, a MCU designed specifically to be the controller for a SATA SSD or a $19 Roku clone. They also have a small product range, as compared to the broad product matrix a lot of the more "commercial brand" MCUs come in. I know even the CH32v30x chips come in several variations multiplied by several package options (which vary enough to impact the features you can realistically use on them).
    - crote 1mo ago
      > They're probably produced in far greater numbers than most off-the-shelf STM32 or CH32V chips. I highly doubt it. The RP2xxx lacks the built-in functionality for use in, say, a car, and it isn't cheap and fully-integrated enough for dime-a-dozen gadget application. They are great for hobbyists due to their low barrier to entry, but there really isn't a niche they serve when it comes to mass-produced electronics.
      - ajsnigrutin 1mo ago
        > They are great for hobbyists due to their low barrier to entry, but there really isn't a niche they serve when it comes to mass-produced electronics. This. Just programming a microcontroller is generally a pain, but a pain that hardware manufacturers can deal with, because they have employees with experience, who can read the long datasheets, get proper programmers and run the manufacturers software packages to program everything. For hobbyists, you're basically limited to arduinos, esp??/??, and rpi picos, only those are guaranteed to have a lot of software support, documentation, easy availability on aliexpress etc. for cheap, and can be made to actually do some stuff in an afternoon of tinkering. (technically it's the same with proper RPis, where they're the only SBC board (not x86 baed) that you're guaranteed will have at least some software support after 5+ years).

throwaway2037 1mo ago

> And also, the first application capable chip you can actually trust to be free of unpublished capabilities. I am not in the embedded space. Can you explain your thinking behind this comment?

RobotToaster 1mo ago
It's widely suspected that the Intel management engine[0] and their equivalents are NSA backdoors [0] https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2017/05/intels-management-engine-security-hazard-and-users-need-way-disable-it https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2017/05/intels-management-engi...
K0balt 1mo ago
Subtly tainted RNGs, flash download backdoors, interfaces that allow covert JTAG are all “features” that can be found in some widely used chips. Because of the freedom of the riscV license, we have microscope inspectable processors being launched by tiny companies that are focused on security and privacy. https://baochip.com/ https://baochip.com/

bjackman 1mo ago

> RiscV is going to win despite its limitations, simply because they can be worked around freely, and the cost per core is zero. This feels right to me. I've worked on embedded systems and OS my whole career and it just doesn't really feel like riscv wins or loses on technical merit to me. Boots-on-the-ground engineers might grumble but the decisions that matter here just aren't made by them. Otherwise why would we still be using x86 so much? I've worked on platforms that had barely-functional CPUs, we had to regularly be in touch with the engs that implemented them and they'd regularly go "oh yeah you've found a bug in our memory subsystem". This was kinda annoying for us but those CPUs were cheap as fuck and that opened up business models that weren't otherwise available. This is always gonna be more important than "ah but the CPUs are suboptimal!!"

mike_hearn 1mo ago
We use x86 because the implementations are fast and there's so much software encoded with it. This makes up for the problems of the design. RISC-V doesn't have either of those advantages, though.
- bjackman 1mo ago
  Yeah my x86 comment wasn't meant to suggest RISCV can easily beat x86 it was pointing out that "being a good arch" is very low on the list of priorities for making the arch successful. Exactly as you say, x86 is successful coz there are really good x86 CPUs and a SW ecosystem. Not because it's a good arch. Similarly I think, if it wins, RISCV will win because there's enough demand for a nonproprietary ISA, and this trumps basically everything else. Another way to say this: I've seen internal slide decks about ISA strategy that target C-suites at megacorps. Not once do those slide decks ever go into technical dis/advantages, coz the people steering the 9-figure investments don't give a shit. If you piped up in those meetings and said "RISCV sucks though!!!" you would just be ignored and not invited back. It's not really any different from startups. Tech stacks matter but there's a huge number of successful companies out there running total garbage and who knows how many perfectly engineered products go out of business every day coz the thing they perfectly engineered was not useful.
1mo ago

znpy 1mo ago

8 dollar linux computers were a thing before riscv as well btw, i remember buying 50 chip computers (9$ at the time) for my university linux users group.