$70 RISC-V Computer from Pine64 Goes on Sale April 4 – OMG Linux
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Re: $70 RISC-V Computer from Pine64 Goes on Sale April 4 – OMG Linux
#2Can someone explain what all the fuss around RISC-V is about?
Re: $70 RISC-V Computer from Pine64 Goes on Sale April 4 – OMG Linux
#3Can someone explain what all the fuss around RISC-V is about?
x86 is the past, but ARM is proprietary. RISC-V is the open source answer (there is SPARC but it's much older and never gained enough traction + Power/PowerPC became open source too but it's also not a modern ISA)
Re: $70 RISC-V Computer from Pine64 Goes on Sale April 4 – OMG Linux
#4Can someone explain what all the fuss around RISC-V is about?
x86 is the past, but ARM is proprietary. RISC-V is the open source answer (there is SPARC but it's much older and never gained enough traction + Power/PowerPC became open source too but it's also not a modern ISA)
what about AMD? wasn't it gaining traction?
Re: $70 RISC-V Computer from Pine64 Goes on Sale April 4 – OMG Linux
#5Earlier quoted context omitted.
x86 is the past, but ARM is proprietary. RISC-V is the open source answer (there is SPARC but it's much older and never gained enough traction + Power/PowerPC became open source too but it's also not a modern ISA)
what about AMD? wasn't it gaining traction?
AMD uses x86.
Re: $70 RISC-V Computer from Pine64 Goes on Sale April 4 – OMG Linux
#6Earlier quoted context omitted.
x86 is the past, but ARM is proprietary. RISC-V is the open source answer (there is SPARC but it's much older and never gained enough traction + Power/PowerPC became open source too but it's also not a modern ISA)
what about AMD? wasn't it gaining traction?
If you mean amd64 it's the 64 bit extension of the x86 instruction set. It's just named after AMD because they were the ones introducing it while Intel was instead working on the arguably failed brand new 64 bit-only Itanium architecture. In the end they "went back" and picked up amd64 too that's why multiple names exist: x64, x86_64, amd64.
Re: $70 RISC-V Computer from Pine64 Goes on Sale April 4 – OMG Linux
#7Can someone explain what all the fuss around RISC-V is about?
x86 is the past, but ARM is proprietary. RISC-V is the open source answer (there is SPARC but it's much older and never gained enough traction + Power/PowerPC became open source too but it's also not a modern ISA)
To be precise, RISC-V is an open architecture. (Which the hope is will be more successful than cases where the implementation was mostly take it or leave it open implementations/models.)
Re: $70 RISC-V Computer from Pine64 Goes on Sale April 4 – OMG Linux
#8Earlier quoted context omitted.
what about AMD? wasn't it gaining traction?
If you mean amd64 it's the 64 bit extension of the x86 instruction set. It's just named after AMD because they were the ones introducing it while Intel was instead working on the arguably failed brand new 64 bit-only Itanium architecture. In the end they "went back" and picked up amd64 too that's why multiple names exist: x64, x86_64, amd64.
thanks, TIL
Re: $70 RISC-V Computer from Pine64 Goes on Sale April 4 – OMG Linux
#9Can someone explain what all the fuss around RISC-V is about?
The instruction set architecture (ISA), is open source, which means there is a minimum amount of instructions (think assembly instructions) that people can use to target/implement the functionality of that CPU architecture, similar to x86, x64, ARM or POWER.
The big thing that is different than other "open" ISAs in the past is that there is an open specification / standard that isn't encumbered by restrictive licensing or patents. This allows software (think compilers) and hardware designers to target the ISA without fears of getting sued for using the ISA or having to have restrictive licenses.
It can also be simple to implement, but there are commercial, highly performant cores available too, for example, sifive.
Re: $70 RISC-V Computer from Pine64 Goes on Sale April 4 – OMG Linux
#10Can someone explain what all the fuss around RISC-V is about?
People get excited because "it's open source". Except it's really not as only the instruction set is "open source" and even that doesn't really mean much as interfaces have dubious copyright protection. Still, it promises a cheaper alternative to ARM because of the theoretical reduced licensing costs from the trademark name.
The other salient is political: ARM, x86, etc are Western aligned while RISC-V is attractively nonaligned. ARM's government mandated Chinese subsidiary went rogue against ARM itself which endangers the use of ARM chips in China. RISC-V hedges against this risk for China.