Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Western Digital Plans to Ship More Than One Billion RISC-V Cores a Year

wdc.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 149 posts

Re: Western Digital Plans to Ship More Than One Billion RISC-V Cores a Year

#11

Post by wmf »

sverige wrote: post #6

I haven't been following the RISC-V story too closely, possibly because I didn't want to get my hopes up only to be dashed. From the article, it sounds like these cores will be developed solely for use in data storage. Can someone with more knowledge tell whether this will help provide the kind of production volume needed to make consumer products (like laptops and desktops) more likely to be viable? Are general purp…

whether this will help provide the kind of production volume needed to make consumer products (like laptops and desktops) more likely to be viable?

It probably won't, despite a lot of wishful thinking to the contrary.

Are general purpose chips likely to be one result of the development of RISC-V, or have I missed something fundamental?

Out of the whole RISC-V ecosystem it looks like only SiFive is working on that, so it will take time.

Re: Western Digital Plans to Ship More Than One Billion RISC-V Cores a Year

#12

Post by microcolonel »

Numberwang wrote: post #8

I have not been following this, what are the advantages?

Smaller designs, easier to license designs, simpler and more attractive ISA extension mechanisms, no royalties, no license negotiation periods, no incremental cost to adding more cores of different designs.

Re: Western Digital Plans to Ship More Than One Billion RISC-V Cores a Year

#13

Post by tw04 »

Numberwang wrote: post #8

I have not been following this, what are the advantages?

For you as an end-user? Nothing. For WD? They escape paying ARM licensing fees on every drive. They'll see an extra couple points of margin on every hard drive they sell.

Re: Western Digital Plans to Ship More Than One Billion RISC-V Cores a Year

#15

Post by erikj »

sverige wrote: post #7
microcolonel wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think it necessarily addresses that concern, but Machine mode might be the right place to address the concerns which ME addresses on a RISC-V machine; which means that it's at least more likely that it'll be programmable on whatever machine you're looking at. Just a thought though, it could really go any way. The nice thing though, is that you'll have more than two vendors, which means that the niche of PSP/M…

I'm one of the paranoids. This is one of the main things I'm hoping for. Is there any indication of what price point such chips might be offered at? I have no idea how much it costs to set up fabrication, etc., but it seems like ARM chips have done very well.

ARM chips have a much higher production volume so they are going to be much cheaper than RISC-V chips, at least for the foreseeable future.

Re: Western Digital Plans to Ship More Than One Billion RISC-V Cores a Year

#16

Post by guelo »

wmf wrote: post #11
sverige wrote: post #6

I haven't been following the RISC-V story too closely, possibly because I didn't want to get my hopes up only to be dashed. From the article, it sounds like these cores will be developed solely for use in data storage. Can someone with more knowledge tell whether this will help provide the kind of production volume needed to make consumer products (like laptops and desktops) more likely to be viable? Are general purp…

whether this will help provide the kind of production volume needed to make consumer products (like laptops and desktops) more likely to be viable? It probably won't, despite a lot of wishful thinking to the contrary. Are general purpose chips likely to be one result of the development of RISC-V, or have I missed something fundamental? Out of the whole RISC-V ecosystem it looks like only SiFive is working on that, so…

The announcement does say "we are providing all of our RISC-V logic work to the community." Whatever that means.

Re: Western Digital Plans to Ship More Than One Billion RISC-V Cores a Year

#17

Post by fulafel »

pedroaraujo wrote: post #9
H99189 wrote: post #4

I like the idea behind RISC-V's open architecture but I had a question. Does it do or even try to do anything about the cloud of uncertainty surrounding Intel ME and the AMD equivalent in x86?

RISC-V is not an architecture, it is just an instruction set. People still need to design the architecture for an implementation of RISC-V. Intel ME is a co-processor that runs at the same time as the main processor, it is not related to the instruction set. To answer your question: Intel ME is a problem that happens on an higher level than the document that defines instruction set.

There are "instruction set architecture" and "microarchitecture" (=specific implementation of an ISA). ISA is the one more commonly referred to as just architecture, I think.

Re: Western Digital Plans to Ship More Than One Billion RISC-V Cores a Year

#18

Post by phkahler »

0xFFC wrote: post #2

This was what I exactly predicted one year ago. Risk-V ISA is coming for all of them{x86,arm,mips}. And this is very smart move by WD to jump into Risk-V wagon. Update: Why do people downvote? I honestly don’t understand.

>> Why do people downvote?

Because they can't handle the fact that you're right. RISC-V is coming for all of them. I like your phrasing too, it's accurate but I guess people think it's more pretentious. Only time will tell for sure.

Re: Western Digital Plans to Ship More Than One Billion RISC-V Cores a Year

#19

Post by pjc50 »

H99189 wrote: post #4

I like the idea behind RISC-V's open architecture but I had a question. Does it do or even try to do anything about the cloud of uncertainty surrounding Intel ME and the AMD equivalent in x86?

That depends on the manufacturer. There's no reason such a thing has to be there.

A lot of people are hoping that someone will put in the work to bring the architecture up to speeds competitive with i7 and mass-manufacture it, despite being legally cloneable.

Re: Western Digital Plans to Ship More Than One Billion RISC-V Cores a Year

#20

Post by pjc50 »

sverige wrote: post #7
microcolonel wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think it necessarily addresses that concern, but Machine mode might be the right place to address the concerns which ME addresses on a RISC-V machine; which means that it's at least more likely that it'll be programmable on whatever machine you're looking at. Just a thought though, it could really go any way. The nice thing though, is that you'll have more than two vendors, which means that the niche of PSP/M…

I'm one of the paranoids. This is one of the main things I'm hoping for. Is there any indication of what price point such chips might be offered at? I have no idea how much it costs to set up fabrication, etc., but it seems like ARM chips have done very well.

How long is a piece of string?

It depends entirely on features and performance. Like Intel and arm chips have a 10x range of cost.

Post reply on HN