Earlier quoted context omitted.
Free is about freedom, not price.
So, freedom is only for the rich?
In business there is no "cheap" or "expensive". There is only "worth the money" or "not".
Open-source chip RISC-V to take on closed x86, ARM CPUs
61–70 of 157 posts
Re: Open-source chip RISC-V to take on closed x86, ARM CPUs
#62Earlier quoted context omitted.
Vim and gcc run fine, I can compiler kernels and busybox and work on my personal software projects and homework on mine. They don't run gnome or html5 browsers as well as your laptop might but nothing runs those well anyway.
t-try installing Chrome on it...
Not Chrome proper but Chromium works (surprisingly) well on Raspberry Pi 3.
Re: Open-source chip RISC-V to take on closed x86, ARM CPUs
#63Re: Open-source chip RISC-V to take on closed x86, ARM CPUs
#64Earlier quoted context omitted.
Free is about freedom, not price.
So, freedom is only for the rich?
Freedom is sometimes efficient enough that it costs nothing to have freedom.
Other times, there are real or artificial barriers that mean freedom has a cost. In those cases, someone has to bear the cost or forego freedom.
Re: Open-source chip RISC-V to take on closed x86, ARM CPUs
#65Re: Open-source chip RISC-V to take on closed x86, ARM CPUs
#66Earlier quoted context omitted.
You can actually run Windows on a Raspberry Pi. Having said that, they make for horrible machines to do actual work on even with desktop Linux.
The "Windows" you can run on a Raspberry Pi (ignoring anything involving X86 emulation) isn't a general-purpose OS. It's more like a deployment target for UWP/IoT apps that you write on a Windows 10 PC.
It's written in C. Why not a general purpose OS?
Re: Open-source chip RISC-V to take on closed x86, ARM CPUs
#67I 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…
> RISC-V is amenable to a wide array of microarchitectural decisions
As is ARMv8. Applied Micro, Broadcom, Cavium, Huawei, Nvidia, AMD, Samsung and Apple are all architectural licensees with radically different microarchitectural implementations. For example, Nvidia is Transmeta code-morphing style implementation. Also, Intel and AMD continue to innovate in the x86 space.
At this date, RISC-V has no fundamental advantage over any of these architectures and then has the fundamental disadvantage of not having access to their IP. You're lining up against Usain Bolt and your advantage is that you're wearing organic cotton. That's just not gonna work.
Re: Open-source chip RISC-V to take on closed x86, ARM CPUs
#68Earlier quoted context omitted.
I am curious as a total novice why chips and why now? As you said ARM is cheap. For price to performance I don't see why there aren't multi-motherboards coming out. Someone made a 10 raspberry pi MoBo which if it is cost effective would be easier than a cluster. I think it would be awesome if that was scaleable but I am sure there is a reason. It would be cool and save space making a cluster out of 4 of those boards…
10 raspberry pi MoBo? Do you have a link for that?
It was actually 16
http://hackaday.com/2016/01/25/raspberry-pi-zero-cluster-pac...
Re: Open-source chip RISC-V to take on closed x86, ARM CPUs
#69I 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…
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…
For the costs, they do not only get the license to use the ISA, but the whole processor design, as in the "source code" to the whole processor. As a licensee, you place that design together with any other electronics you create (or license separately) on a chip to create the device you want.
Re: Open-source chip RISC-V to take on closed x86, ARM CPUs
#70Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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…
>BigCo's like Apple or Samsung are probably ARM partners, so no per-design/unit fees. Nope, all ARM licensees pay a per-unit royalty, regardless of their partnership level[0]. Being the biggest might help Apple and Samsung negotiate a slightly lower royalty rate, but by the end of the day it's still at least 1% of the chip's selling price. [0] http://www.anandtech.com/show/7112/the-arm-diaries-part-1-ho...
> but by the end of the day it's still at least 1% of the chip's selling price.
Right, but you cannot just consider the difference in royalty fees between ARM and another ISA.
For example, the STM32F* chips cost between $0.60 (STM32F0) [0] and $19 (STM32F7) [1].
You can't just compare the royalty fee here when thinking of lost revenue for the manufacturer. The ARM ecosystem is huge, and if ST switched to another ISA, they would probably lose customers unless the new ISA had an ecosystem that was as good or better than ARM.
Yes, the royalty amount matters, but customer preferences also matter. I doubt any high volume ST customer would be willing to switch to an entirely new ISA without the kind of ecosystem that ARM has for a few pennies per chip. And who is going to pay for the development of the tools? Unless it's someone like RISC-V, then they're probably stuck developing it themselves. Kiss goodbye to all the money you "saved" by not paying ARM royalties.
Furthermore, if ST switched to a different ISA to save the ARM royalty, what makes you think they would pass along that savings to the customer?
[0] https://www.digikey.com/products/en/integrated-circuits-ics/...
[1] https://www.digikey.com/products/en/integrated-circuits-ics/...