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Huawei Seeks Independence from the US with RISC-V and Ascend Chips

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Re: Huawei Seeks Independence from the US with RISC-V and Ascend Chips

#41

Post by hn_throwaway_99 »

DoreenMichele wrote: post #28

More like "Huawei seeks to survive in the future in spite of the US squeezing them. They want to believe these other chips will let them do that." I don't understand the tech well enough to know how much of a fairy tale or hope and a prayer strategy this is. But calling it "seeks independence" is some incredibly positive spin which makes me suspicious of the claims. If these other chips are so good, wouldn't you go a…

I didn't interpret "seeks independence" as positive spin at all. It's clear and obvious that they are trying to become more independent of US technologies now that they are suffering at the whims of a mercurial personality. Indeed, the article goes into detail with quotes about how their desire for RISC-V is driven by the embargo.

I think you may be reading intent into what "seeking independence" means that is not there.

Re: Huawei Seeks Independence from the US with RISC-V and Ascend Chips

#42

Post by wmf »

AlexeyBrin wrote: post #19
wmf wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What OS would they run?

A Linux distro probably, at least initially.

Does Huawei sell Linux laptops today? Why not? Why would that change? If they don't think x86/Linux or ARM/Linux laptops are a good idea, why would RISC-V/Linux laptops be a good idea?

People love to come up with fantasies and try to work backwards from them, but sometimes you really can't get there from here.

Re: Huawei Seeks Independence from the US with RISC-V and Ascend Chips

#43

Post by redm »

jsgo wrote: post #30
cmrdporcupine wrote: post #20

The problem is that while RISC-V may deliver an excellent open ISA, there is no equivalent open solution for the GPU/display controller side. As I understand it, the GPU world is full of patents and dominated by just a few parties. I don't think there's something that Huawei or other Chinese manufacturers could easily start with and extend. So I can see RISC-V being ideal for applications that are not user facing or…

> As I understand it, the GPU world is full of patents and dominated by just a few parties. This would be a impediment typically, but considering they're blackballed already, how beholden are they to patents? Block imports? Think that's being done already. Requiring US companies to not do business with them? That's being done already. At this point, they just have to ride out the US/China trade war and then when thin…

You imply Huawei was playing by the "rules" and not already stealing. [1] [2]

[1] https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2019/01/us-indicts-huawe...

[2] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2019-02-04/huawei-st...

Re: Huawei Seeks Independence from the US with RISC-V and Ascend Chips

#44

Post by magicsmoke »

jsgo wrote: post #30
cmrdporcupine wrote: post #20

The problem is that while RISC-V may deliver an excellent open ISA, there is no equivalent open solution for the GPU/display controller side. As I understand it, the GPU world is full of patents and dominated by just a few parties. I don't think there's something that Huawei or other Chinese manufacturers could easily start with and extend. So I can see RISC-V being ideal for applications that are not user facing or…

> As I understand it, the GPU world is full of patents and dominated by just a few parties. This would be a impediment typically, but considering they're blackballed already, how beholden are they to patents? Block imports? Think that's being done already. Requiring US companies to not do business with them? That's being done already. At this point, they just have to ride out the US/China trade war and then when thin…

Actually, what's to stop Huawei from just copying and incorporating whatever they need into their IC designs regardless of patents? I can imagine foreign foundaries refusing orders from Huawei to avoid manufacturing IP infringing designs, but are there foundaries in China that can produce the chips necessary while ignoring foreign patents?

As an aside to that, how do foundaries know whether their client designs infringe on patents? Is there some sort of automated system that goes through the design files they are sent looking for areas of silicon that may contain infringing IP blocks?

Re: Huawei Seeks Independence from the US with RISC-V and Ascend Chips

#46

Post by FullyFunctional »

dahfizz wrote: post #33
FullyFunctional wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mostly likely, but Android is but a recompile away (sure, not so for 3rd party apps). Even today, with hardly any hardware, there's (to various degree of completion): Debian, Fedora, Slackware, FreeBSD, and seL4.

> sure, not so for 3rd party apps. Ideally, once there is a JVM that runs on riscv, those apps are ported for free. An openJDK port is underway. I have no idea how much work it would be for Android to port its APIs, but Google certainly has the manpower if this is something they want.

I don't know why there would be _any_ porting involved. Arm and RISC-V are so similar that the compiler should take care of it.

The major pain points today are the JITs, which applies to Java and JavaScript in particular. There has been preciously little (public) progress on these.

Re: Huawei Seeks Independence from the US with RISC-V and Ascend Chips

#47

Post by gruez »

cmiles74 wrote: post #7
jimmaswell wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would we want RISC-V on laptops?

Maybe it won't contain a vendor "management engine". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_Management_Engine#Claims...

Maybe, but I doubt it. It's there to support a bunch of features that companies want (eg. remote management, trusted computing, etc.). The reason why the consumer version has it is that most consumers don't mind, and having a seperate sku with it disabled/not present would cost extra. This won't change with RISC-V. You might be able to get a low performance part without it, but all the mainstream (ie. high performance) parts will have it.

Re: Huawei Seeks Independence from the US with RISC-V and Ascend Chips

#48

Post by monocasa »

garmaine wrote: post #26
cmrdporcupine wrote: post #20

The problem is that while RISC-V may deliver an excellent open ISA, there is no equivalent open solution for the GPU/display controller side. As I understand it, the GPU world is full of patents and dominated by just a few parties. I don't think there's something that Huawei or other Chinese manufacturers could easily start with and extend. So I can see RISC-V being ideal for applications that are not user facing or…

There is plenty of work being done on RISC-V vector computing and GPU equivalents. E.g.: https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Libre-RI...

As someone who looked hard into it, RISC-V doesn't really make sense for a GPU shaders, IMO. You'd have to change so many things about how the ISA works that you wouldn't get a benefit to using a common ISA. Stuff like how shaders are batched and dispatched, textures accesses make sense to be their own instructions, you want a larger register file on the scalar side, the memory barrier semantics are much more complex, etc.

RISC-V might make sense inside of the GPU accelerators though. GFX command list processing, DMA engines, and video codecs all make sense to be something like RISC-V.

Re: Huawei Seeks Independence from the US with RISC-V and Ascend Chips

#49

Post by zsrxx »

ksec wrote: post #39
mmanfrin wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> GPUs have sort of plateaued except for the raytracing component What? As far as I understood it, CPUs had plateaued outside of efficiencies, GPU power still follows Moore's. Generational benchmarks show big leaps in every new arch on userbenchmark, whereas CPUs from 7 or 8 years ago are only marginally slower (SC) than modern ones.

>Generational benchmarks show big leaps in every new arch on userbenchmark, That is because GPU scales very well with Transistor count, throw in more transistor and memory bandwidth and you are good. On the CPU you could have doubled the transistor budget and get marginal improvement in IPC.

Why can't a GPU power a computer?

Re: Huawei Seeks Independence from the US with RISC-V and Ascend Chips

#50

Post by hutzlibu »

ksec wrote: post #39
mmanfrin wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> GPUs have sort of plateaued except for the raytracing component What? As far as I understood it, CPUs had plateaued outside of efficiencies, GPU power still follows Moore's. Generational benchmarks show big leaps in every new arch on userbenchmark, whereas CPUs from 7 or 8 years ago are only marginally slower (SC) than modern ones.

>Generational benchmarks show big leaps in every new arch on userbenchmark, That is because GPU scales very well with Transistor count, throw in more transistor and memory bandwidth and you are good. On the CPU you could have doubled the transistor budget and get marginal improvement in IPC.

Can you explain, why CPU's do not scale so well?
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