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

computerworld.com.au

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

#101

Post by nl »

jbarham wrote: post #53
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.

The Freedom E310 chip in the HiFive1 board is shipping today and is already competitive with embedded ARM: https://www.crowdsupply.com/sifive/hifive1/#comparisons . It's comically faster (i.e., 100x) than the AVR chip in the Arduino Uno board, but the similar form factor makes it cheap & easy for early adopters to play around with. I'd bet that within five years a good proportion, even the majority, of Amazon & Googl…

I'd bet that within five years a good proportion, even the majority, of Amazon & Google servers, will be running on RISC V chips.

Can I take the other side of that bet?

I'm mildly bullish on RISC V, but displacing x86/AMD64 in the data center in 2 generations (servers generally have a 2 year refresh cycle) seems fairly optimistic.

ARM hasn't managed it, despite some good attempts. Nor has AMD, nor Power8/9.

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

#102

Post by Nokinside »

faragon wrote: post #90

AFAIK, most advanced RISC-V design includes superscalar and OoOE (e.g. comparable to a MIPS R10000 (1995) or an Intel Pentium Pro (1995)), while the RISC-V for the IoT is comparable to a typical single instructions per clock RISC CPU, e.g. MIPS R3000 (1988). The success in the IoT will depend not only in a cheaper price because of no royalties, but also in the "ecosystem": peripherals, buses, etc. Running Linux is a…

>Regarding the use in mobile and desktop, it will have to wait until SIMD extensions are introduced

I'm little confused about this talk and comments in here relating to open source in high performance applications (desktop, servers etc).

The RISC-V ISA is open source, I get that. There can also be open source Verilog/VHDL designs available. They are probably good for small low performance IoT applications and old processes.

But there is long way from ISA to silicon in high performance VLSI processor design for a new processes and foundries. Architecture, logic synthesis, timing analysis, floor planning, routing and placement, and ungodly amount of testing .. I don't see anyone spending hundreds of millions of chip design for RISC-V ISA and open sourcing it.

In other words, if you want competitive RISC-V chip, some company must spend hundreds of millions to develop their own RISK-V chip architecture and they will not open source it.

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

#103

Post by eggsome »

rwmj wrote: post #100
sweden wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

RISC-V is thrown around like if it's an already working CPU but it is not. It is just a document describing an ISA, you can't compare it to Linux, it's a completely different thing. There are a lot of costs in implementing an ISA and that includes: design, functional verification, physical implementation and software testing. All those steps together will require hundreds and hundreds of engineers, many expensive too…

When I did a presentation on RISC-V last year I counted 6 real implementations (full custom ASICs). Now granted only one or two of those you can buy, the others are research projects, but they do exist and they did produce real silicon. This year we should see a couple of 64 bit implementations, which is when it'll get really interesting. There are of course multiple FPGA implementations (I have one about 2 feet away…

Is your presentation online?

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

#104

Post by tssva »

sweden wrote: post #80
yaantc wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're right, but key words here are "At this date". What you said could have been said exactly in the same way about Linux against commercial Unices about 15 years ago. It's a long game here, and we're only in the early phase. And it may not take that long, but we'll see. Regarding technology, just as Linux initially the key is not having a technological advantage, but being cheaper and good enough. The improvements…

RISC-V is thrown around like if it's an already working CPU but it is not. It is just a document describing an ISA, you can't compare it to Linux, it's a completely different thing. There are a lot of costs in implementing an ISA and that includes: design, functional verification, physical implementation and software testing. All those steps together will require hundreds and hundreds of engineers, many expensive too…

Linux didn't instantly become something you could download from kernel.org, compile overnight and get it booting right away. It took hundreds and hundreds of developers, thousands of man hours, financial investments from a large number of companies worldwide and many many years for Linux to become what it is today. All of this done while there were several existing commercial Unix variants which could have been licensed instead.

During its early years many scoffed at it as you have RISC-V. "It is a hobby OS. It will never be able to really compete with the likes of Solaris, HP-UX, and AIX. Heck, it won't even be able to compete with SCO and Unixware."

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

#105

Post by tyingq »

swiley wrote: post #12
deepnotderp wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Atm, arm is likely a better fit for that.

Right now the arm SBCs actually make functional desktops. There's very little you can't do on a raspberry pi other than run closed software.

Odroid is probably a better choice for a little extra oomph you would want on a desktop without costing that much more: http://www.hardkernel.com/main/main.php

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

#106

Post by tyingq »

DonbunEf7 wrote: post #2

I want to buy RISC-V, both to play with and to support the cause. What are my options like and should I buy something now or wait for the next generation?

People mentioned the siFive option, but that's a microcontroller. If you were looking for a 64 bit processor implementation, without having to use an FPGA...

It looks like the first dev board that would be capable of running linux will likely be the lowRISC project.

"We are expecting to crowdfund an initial instantiation of the lowRISC platform during the course of 2017" http://www.lowrisc.org/

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

#107

Post by sweden »

rwmj wrote: post #100
sweden wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

RISC-V is thrown around like if it's an already working CPU but it is not. It is just a document describing an ISA, you can't compare it to Linux, it's a completely different thing. There are a lot of costs in implementing an ISA and that includes: design, functional verification, physical implementation and software testing. All those steps together will require hundreds and hundreds of engineers, many expensive too…

When I did a presentation on RISC-V last year I counted 6 real implementations (full custom ASICs). Now granted only one or two of those you can buy, the others are research projects, but they do exist and they did produce real silicon. This year we should see a couple of 64 bit implementations, which is when it'll get really interesting. There are of course multiple FPGA implementations (I have one about 2 feet away…

I am aware that they exist but it's not like companies are going to actively invest in devices for the end consumer purely based on RISC-V.

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

#108

Post by iliis »

sweden wrote: post #81
jbarham wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You don't need to be completely tied to ARM. The point is that if you want to use the ARM ISA you have to pay ARM. Not so with RISC-V. Anyone is free to fab a RISC-V chip without paying royalties.

You are talking like you could download RISC-V from the internet and send it to the foundry for mass production without additional costs or effort. RISC-V is just a document, is not an implementation. There are many costs involved into designing a CPU that end up costing much more money than paying a license fee. Check this comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14284450

How about this: http://www.pulp-platform.org/ ? It still in development, but the plan is to release the full CPU. You still need process/foundry specific data of course (things like flash-cells).

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

#109

Post by sweden »

tssva wrote: post #104
sweden wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

RISC-V is thrown around like if it's an already working CPU but it is not. It is just a document describing an ISA, you can't compare it to Linux, it's a completely different thing. There are a lot of costs in implementing an ISA and that includes: design, functional verification, physical implementation and software testing. All those steps together will require hundreds and hundreds of engineers, many expensive too…

Linux didn't instantly become something you could download from kernel.org, compile overnight and get it booting right away. It took hundreds and hundreds of developers, thousands of man hours, financial investments from a large number of companies worldwide and many many years for Linux to become what it is today. All of this done while there were several existing commercial Unix variants which could have been licen…

I'm not saying that RISC-V is an hobby project, I'm just saying that hardware development is nowhere comparable to software development.

You need much more support and verification while developing hardware then developing software. And while you can reuse the functional design (please note the keyword "functional"), the physical implementation needs to be redone from project to project.

ARM, Intel, AMD, Apple and Qualcomm have an army of engineers with all kinds of tools that go through all the steps of hardware design and implementation which you can't do as a side project at home using just your computer.

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

#110

Post by sweden »

iliis wrote: post #108
sweden wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are talking like you could download RISC-V from the internet and send it to the foundry for mass production without additional costs or effort. RISC-V is just a document, is not an implementation. There are many costs involved into designing a CPU that end up costing much more money than paying a license fee. Check this comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14284450

How about this: http://www.pulp-platform.org/ ? It still in development, but the plan is to release the full CPU. You still need process/foundry specific data of course (things like flash-cells).

Pulp seems to be just a microcontroller, not a modern CPU. It is a good effort but you wouldn't be using it on a normal computer.
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