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$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

#61

Post by brucehoult »

zwieback wrote: post #20

Since most of us don't design CPUs or micros, does it matter much whether it's RISC-V vs ARM? In other words, is there any way to contribute in the RISC-V space and gain an advantage? I can see how it could work out for Intel or Nvidia but for an end-user I can't see how I would jump away from the architecture I've spent the last 10 years on.

Technically they are close enough that you mostly don't care. Many RISC-V core customers say they ended up with using less silicon area / cost / energy usage at the same performance level. Arm proponents say their code size is a little smaller in 32 bit -- RISC-V is definitely significantly smaller code than Arm or x86 in 64 bit.

But we're only talking 10% or 20% difference here.

The big difference is Arm is owned by a single company that can and does change its contract terms and prices, sues its customers, obsoletes old stuff at will etc.

RISC-V is managed by a non-profit that is steering along a path agreed by its hundreds of member companies, but can't and doesn't stop anyone from adding custom stuff as long as they stay compatible with the core ISA. There is a promise to only add capability over time, but keeping compatibility with the core 32 and 64 bit ISAs published in 2015 and ratified in 2019 ... forever.

There are already a dozen or more companies competing to design the best and most competitive and compatible RISC-V cores and chips, and that's only going to increase. If the company you are using falls behind or raises prices or goes out of business then you can just switch to another -- as long as you didn't drink their proprietary extension cool-aid (it can be very tasty).

The current limits of the RISC-V ecosystem are (I currently have one sitting in front of me, and ssh access to the other):

- WCH CH32V003 microcontroller with 2 KB RAM and 16 KB flash in an 8 pin package for 10c each or 20 pin package for $14.6c https://www.aliexpress.us/item/3256804850399956.htm

- Sophon SG2042 64x 2.0 GHz OoO cores similar to Arm A72, each core with a 256 bit vector unit, 64K L1 cache, 1M L2 (shared per 4 cores), 4M L3 local to a cluster of 4 cores, with the other 15x 4 MB L3 accessible via NoC at ~half the local bandwidth. 32 lanes of PCIe gen 4. https://www.sophon.ai/product/introduce/sg2042.html

Re: $70 RISC-V Computer from Pine64 Goes on Sale April 4 – OMG Linux

#62

Post by brucehoult »

fithisux wrote: post #21

At some point some RISC-V researchers tried to put GPU instructions in CPU. It seems no RISC-V implementation uses it.

Perhaps you mean "serial raiser of money but never delivering a product" Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton. See, for example https://www.crowdsupply.com/eoma68/micro-desktop

On the other hand, existing GPU company Think Silicon spent six weeks in October/November 2019 adding some GPU instructions to RISC-V, showed it running in an FPGA at their booth at the December 2019 RISC-V Summit, and are shipping the resulting product now:

https://www.think-silicon.com/?section=2172

Re: $70 RISC-V Computer from Pine64 Goes on Sale April 4 – OMG Linux

#63

Post by gary_0 »

brucehoult wrote: post #60
gary_0 wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To the end user, it won't matter much either way, because most open source software already compiles and runs just fine on RISC-V; there are plans for projects like Chromium and Android to fully support RISC-V. RISC-V is on a trajectory to "just work". However, what does matter is that the RISC-V ISA will be cheaper and more flexible for device manufacturers to use. That's why it's superior to ARM and has already par…

10 billion as at the middle of last year. And Qualcomm alone had shipped 650 million of them.

I had a feeling my number was out of date, but wow!

Re: $70 RISC-V Computer from Pine64 Goes on Sale April 4 – OMG Linux

#65

Post by brucehoult »

klelatti wrote: post #34
cfiggers wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Basically, all the same arguments you've heard in favor of open source in general. Today, board developers have to pay if they want to license ARM. And with recent developments coming out of ARM, the price to pay is going up by a lot, very soon. If RISC-V can develop to the point of more or less parity with ARM, then that will enable cheaper products that are just as good, equally priced products that are better, or…

This emphasis on price is a bit misleading imho. Arm had revenues of less than $800m in the last reported quarter and there were 8 billion Arm cores shipped. So that’s less than 10c per core. And that’s not the fee for the ISA it’s the total cost of licensing the core. So if you’re expecting a big cost saving on the end user price from the ISA being open source then you’ll be likely to be disappointed. More important…

$745m, their highest ever. $2.74 billion for the year. Not chicken feed.

As for the 10c a core on average, there will be billions of 1c/core royalties for things you don't even realise have a CPU in them, and tens of millions of much much higher royalties on the kinds of chips that go into smartphones and SBCs. Maybe as much as $10 a chip?

Re: $70 RISC-V Computer from Pine64 Goes on Sale April 4 – OMG Linux

#66

Post by klelatti »

brucehoult wrote: post #65
klelatti wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This emphasis on price is a bit misleading imho. Arm had revenues of less than $800m in the last reported quarter and there were 8 billion Arm cores shipped. So that’s less than 10c per core. And that’s not the fee for the ISA it’s the total cost of licensing the core. So if you’re expecting a big cost saving on the end user price from the ISA being open source then you’ll be likely to be disappointed. More important…

$745m, their highest ever. $2.74 billion for the year. Not chicken feed. As for the 10c a core on average, there will be billions of 1c/core royalties for things you don't even realise have a CPU in them, and tens of millions of much much higher royalties on the kinds of chips that go into smartphones and SBCs. Maybe as much as $10 a chip?

No your numbers are wrong (1) by an order of magnitude. The cost per smartphone equivalent CPU will be around $1 and that’s for the whole design not the ISA.

[1] tens of millions is wrong and it clearly not true that Arm charges ‘as much as $10’ for an SBC that will cost $40 retail.

Re: $70 RISC-V Computer from Pine64 Goes on Sale April 4 – OMG Linux

#67

Post by therealcamino »

bluGill wrote: post #48
arcanemachiner wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AMD uses x86.

AMD had their own non-x86 instruction set once upon a time. I remember using it in the mid-90s in some embedded thing it worked, but as a developer once there is a compiler all instruction sets are hidden so I can't comment.

Maybe the 29000 is the one you're thinking of?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/AMD_Am29000

The article says it got designed in to a bunch of laser printers, but not which ones.

There were a bunch of RISC designs floating around then. The ones still relatively familiar are those that were being used as workstation CPUs -- SPARC, MIPS, POWER/PowerPC, DEC Alpha. But there were also the 29k, the Motorola 88000, and Intel i860. Probably others I'm not remembering.

Re: $70 RISC-V Computer from Pine64 Goes on Sale April 4 – OMG Linux

#68

Post by brucehoult »

klelatti wrote: post #66
brucehoult wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

$745m, their highest ever. $2.74 billion for the year. Not chicken feed. As for the 10c a core on average, there will be billions of 1c/core royalties for things you don't even realise have a CPU in them, and tens of millions of much much higher royalties on the kinds of chips that go into smartphones and SBCs. Maybe as much as $10 a chip?

No your numbers are wrong (1) by an order of magnitude. The cost per smartphone equivalent CPU will be around $1 and that’s for the whole design not the ISA. [1] tens of millions is wrong and it clearly not true that Arm charges ‘as much as $10’ for an SBC that will cost $40 retail.

There are phones that cost $1000.

Apple sells 70 or 80 million phones per quarter and they are only a small fraction of the market. Android phones sell over a billion a year.

Re: $70 RISC-V Computer from Pine64 Goes on Sale April 4 – OMG Linux

#69

Post by klelatti »

brucehoult wrote: post #68
klelatti wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No your numbers are wrong (1) by an order of magnitude. The cost per smartphone equivalent CPU will be around $1 and that’s for the whole design not the ISA. [1] tens of millions is wrong and it clearly not true that Arm charges ‘as much as $10’ for an SBC that will cost $40 retail.

There are phones that cost $1000. Apple sells 70 or 80 million phones per quarter and they are only a small fraction of the market. Android phones sell over a billion a year.

So if there are over a billion phones sold per year Arm clearly don’t charge anywhere near $10 per smartphone CPU.

Re: $70 RISC-V Computer from Pine64 Goes on Sale April 4 – OMG Linux

#70

Post by brucehoult »

klelatti wrote: post #69
brucehoult wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are phones that cost $1000. Apple sells 70 or 80 million phones per quarter and they are only a small fraction of the market. Android phones sell over a billion a year.

So if there are over a billion phones sold per year Arm clearly don’t charge anywhere near $10 per smartphone CPU.

Not on average, obviously. But most phones sold are low end. I bet Arm gets a lot more than $1 from ARMv9 Snapdragon 8 gen 1/2 with the very latest cores.
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