31–40 of 130 posts
These guys will have to drop out and start a funded company if they want this tech to go anywhere. I don't expect IIT-M to be able to manufacture and sell the finished design.
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RISC-V was developed by the state, in particular, by UC Berkeley, a public school. And IIT Madras is also another public school. So again, a branch of the Indian state is developing this Shakti processor. There's really nothing capitalist about this at all.
I'm sure Bluespec, TSMC, SiFive, NXP, Samsung, Qualcomm, Microsemi, Micron, Huawei, and NVIDIA don't think of it like that, the RISC-V foundation is also not UC Berkeley. Also, strictly speaking the UC system ain't the state, if they were, they would not be allowed to generate copyrights from work produced by employees. IBM at least partially (if not completely) covered the fabrication of the original UCB RISC-V chip…
It's definitely to be welcomed, but India barely has the kind of interests, state-apparatus or companies that'd want something like this to succeed. India neither has Baidu, nor Tencent, nor Wechat. They have Flipkart, which is barely an Alibaba, and is on a long drawn collision course towards merging with Amazon. The startups I've seen generally seem to target foreign markets, or to service people who service foreig…
> Considering the 'prestige' and money that comes with working in the US, I'd be very surprised if the country can ever accumulate enough talent to do anything fundamentally significant (esp. since all of the relevant Education/Industry is entirely Anglophone).
That was true maybe 10/20 years ago. Right now, thanks to Trump and Republicans, the US is much less attractive destination, especially for top-tier researchers. NSF funding rates are in the single digit percentage range, every year seems to see a new assault from state-level republicans on state university systems. Rising xenophobia and white nationalism obviously don't help the cause.
The situation in India is way better. There is more money available for research: the Shakti project is one example but many other big centers are being funded in various "institutes of national importance." There is a bi-partisan commitment to increasing funding and hiring for Indian research and there is a growing talent pool emerging from the non-IIT undergraduate colleges.
Twenty years ago, every R1 university in the US was better than every university in India. Now, once you get past the top-10 or 15, beyond the Berkeleys, MITs, Princetons and maybe Purdues, it's not at all clear that it is a good idea for a young assistant professor to go to say Virgina Tech over IISc or IIT Bombay. And in fact, these Indian institutes are consistently hiring people who would have been a shoo-in for a faculty position at places like VT.
As the lead architect of Shakti and the guy who helped kick-start the project, I figure I am owed my 2 cents ! 1. We never positioned it as an ARM killer ! That was the imagination of the reporter who wrote the article. 2. Shakti is not a state only project. Parts of Shakti are funded by the govt, these relate to cores and SoCs needed by the Govt. The defense and strategic sector procurement is huge, runs in the 10s…
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One way to dethrone the competition might be to focus on openness: There are also security reasons for wanting to make a processor for India. “We don’t know really whether the processor we are getting from outside is trustworthy. Is it secure?” asks Kamakoti. “Suppose I want variants of a processor, for different needs – not just strategic, even civilian needs – I have to basically rely on the processor available to…
But in the case of ARM, you _do_ know, if you manufacture it yourself. ARM licenses intellectual property, not sells chips. Once you buy a license, you can inspect it and make sure it doesn’t have the bits you don’t like.
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I'm sure Bluespec, TSMC, SiFive, NXP, Samsung, Qualcomm, Microsemi, Micron, Huawei, and NVIDIA don't think of it like that, the RISC-V foundation is also not UC Berkeley. Also, strictly speaking the UC system ain't the state, if they were, they would not be allowed to generate copyrights from work produced by employees. IBM at least partially (if not completely) covered the fabrication of the original UCB RISC-V chip…
That is why most likely they will not succeed in economical sense. Commercial tech space is just way too fast for governments to follow efficiently.
It's definitely to be welcomed, but India barely has the kind of interests, state-apparatus or companies that'd want something like this to succeed. India neither has Baidu, nor Tencent, nor Wechat. They have Flipkart, which is barely an Alibaba, and is on a long drawn collision course towards merging with Amazon. The startups I've seen generally seem to target foreign markets, or to service people who service foreig…
Why do Baidu and Tencent count, but Infosys and TCS not count? Each of these have companies with >10B USD of revenue, so it's not like the Chinese companies are any larger. And don't tell me, it's because of the difference between product and service companies, because that is meaningless distinction from the perspective of a hardware-marker. They all need hardware to run on and arguably a service company needs more.…
umm, probably because both of these companies are not exactly known for their cutting edge r&d.
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With luck, Trump, the tightening H-1B/GC situation and the recent wave of xenophobia worldwide will push some talented people who would've otherwise left to stay in India. Modi has also pushed to make starting a business a quick process w.r.t paperwork.
Resisting mass immigration to leach from your welfare state is not xenophobic.
I don't have any objections to a country looking out for its own interest, resisting illegal immigration or immigrants that otherwise cannot contribute much to the economy, but they are not the only ones the government is cracking down on.
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Resisting mass immigration to leach from your welfare state is not xenophobic.
Sure, except immigrants under work visas are not entitled to any welfare such as unemployment/medical - in fact we lose our status as legal immigrants as soon as we become unemployed so we must leave the country. Keep the hate flowing though. I don't have any objections to a country looking out for its own interest, resisting illegal immigration or immigrants that otherwise cannot contribute much to the economy, but…
your welfare state is not the world model
e.g.
Germany Sees Welfare Benefit Costs More Than Double
Asylum seekers received nearly $5.91 billion in welfare benefits in 2015
https://www.wsj.com/articles/germanys-welfare-bill-rises-169...
and your assessment of employment rates among legal immigrants in Europe is simply not borne out by the statistics
https://www.economist.com/news/finance-economics/21709511-to...