Open-source chip RISC-V to take on closed x86, ARM CPUs

Post by dom0 » Sun, May 07, 2017, 6:14 AM UTC

microcolonel wrote: post #41

wyldfire wrote: post #34

I thought that microprocessor production and design was fraught with risk of infringing on other designers' patents (even for original ISAs). I can see that industry heavyweights have arrived to support RISC-V, so hopefully that comes with a team of professors/lawyers that could defend them. But, why now? Why couldn't this have happened sooner? Didn't Sun try to create an open SPARC processor design? What does RISC-V…

There are a number of things that make RISC-V different from OpenSPARC. One is that OpenSPARC is not a very scalable design, it could probably only ever work in servers and workstations, and workstations are essentially a monoculture. Another reason is timing: manufacturing processes have effectively stopped yielding performance and power gains as the fundamental constraint (distance between components on chip) doesn…

Post by jbarham » Sun, May 07, 2017, 6:15 AM UTC

webaholic wrote: post #29

RISC-V is atleast 10 years away from competing with x86 and ARM. It is just now getting to a point where it can power arduino class hardware. Long way to go... but looks promising.

Post by dom0 » Sun, May 07, 2017, 6:19 AM UTC

orionblastar wrote: post #39

abeyer wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have a point, but I think there is a reasonable midpoint that Talos missed altogether. RISC-V's move towards RPi/Arduino style mini-systems lets them get a market going at a price point that has some chance to get some uptake early, and hopefully grow from there. Talos seemed amazing, and I was always fond of the ppc/power architecture and wished for something more modern than an old G5 mac, but $7k for a desktop…

That was the Apple Lisa's folly. It cost too much than most early adopters wanted to pay. The PPC was a good brand but Intel out innovated them making faster x86 chips cheaper than PPC makers could. Apple had to move to Intel to compete with Intel PCs running Windows or Linux. Amiga still uses PPC but they are expensive. Arm chips are so cheap to make that there is the $5 Raspberry PI Zero cheapest computer on a chip…

Post by raverbashing » Sun, May 07, 2017, 6:22 AM UTC

dom0 wrote: post #50

indolering wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The RISC-V team was very careful in establishing prior art for every design decision. The patents on ISAs tend to be on their quirks, so keeping things truly minimal helps avoid all of that complexity. Like a lot of what Sun did, prior open chip designs weren't good enough. Academics starting with a clean slate and a 20+ years of additional experience gives RISC-V real advantages over MIPS and ARM. The primary advant…

> Just getting a license from ARM is 10+ million dollars. Which license? ARM offers several different models. > Apple creates their own CPU and GPU designs, Google has custom hardware for machine learning, and Samsung is about to overtake Intel as the world's largest chip manufacturer. Why should they keep shelling out billions to ARM, Intel, and AMD just to use their ISA? The Google hardware we know (TPU) for learni…

Post by desdiv » Sun, May 07, 2017, 6:34 AM UTC

dom0 wrote: post #50

indolering wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The RISC-V team was very careful in establishing prior art for every design decision. The patents on ISAs tend to be on their quirks, so keeping things truly minimal helps avoid all of that complexity. Like a lot of what Sun did, prior open chip designs weren't good enough. Academics starting with a clean slate and a 20+ years of additional experience gives RISC-V real advantages over MIPS and ARM. The primary advant…

> Just getting a license from ARM is 10+ million dollars. Which license? ARM offers several different models. > Apple creates their own CPU and GPU designs, Google has custom hardware for machine learning, and Samsung is about to overtake Intel as the world's largest chip manufacturer. Why should they keep shelling out billions to ARM, Intel, and AMD just to use their ISA? The Google hardware we know (TPU) for learni…