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RISC-V Is Inevitable: State of the Union Keynote Argues

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11–20 of 142 posts

Re: RISC-V Is Inevitable: State of the Union Keynote Argues

#11

I'm working on making SIMD better in Dart. Dart supports RISC-V as a target architecture for compilation, but I'm not really excited about figuring out how to map the wasm-SIMD-style primitives to RISC-V's RVV and so I don't really plan to look into it at all. This is mostly because their approach to SIMD is so different, but also because I can't test it at all. Are there any RISC-V "machines"? that one can use to do…

There are several RISC-V machines. In the microcontroller world it's becoming more and more usual, but those won't have RVV. SpacemiT K3 based machines are probably your best bet when it comes to RISC-V processors with SIMD support. There are several manufacturers: Milk-V with the Jupiter II, Sipeed, Banana Pi, ...

Re: RISC-V Is Inevitable: State of the Union Keynote Argues

#12
post #10

> “CHERI is not an extension; CHERI is a new base,” Asanović clarified to the keynote audience. > Addressing concerns that creating a new base ISA might fracture the open-source community, Asanović offered a devoted defense to EE Times. “CHERI is too invasive to be a simple extension on regular RISC-V, and so needs a new base ISA for that reason,” To me it sounds like they're creating RISC-VI before RISC-V even winni…

There's zero chance CHERI will go anywhere, I wouldn't worry about it.

Re: RISC-V Is Inevitable: State of the Union Keynote Argues

#13

While the consumer market is still years away from widespread RISC-V adoption, if you pay attention to the embedded / MCU market (especially Espressif & co) you will indeed come to the conclusion that RISC-V is inevitable and software maturity will probably come from these early adopters. Go!

I wouldn't bet against software inertia.

x86 only missed the mobile market because of multiple bad business decisions, otherwise ARM (and RISC architectures overall) would have been relegated to more decades as backwater architectures.

There is nothing inevitable about anything as Apple controls its own silicon very tightly, Microsoft hasn't even really transitioned away from x86, and Android probably isn't very keen to transition away from ARM.

Now, embedded markets are different but they've always been different and the number of embedded programmers is dwarfed by non embedded programmers and regular users will for a long time never install an app on RISC-V.

It's an interesting journey, let's see where it takes us in 20 years.

Re: RISC-V Is Inevitable: State of the Union Keynote Argues

#14
post #7

While the consumer market is still years away from widespread RISC-V adoption, if you pay attention to the embedded / MCU market (especially Espressif & co) you will indeed come to the conclusion that RISC-V is inevitable and software maturity will probably come from these early adopters. Go!

Krste wasn't even saying anything controversial. It's obvious that manufacturers will use the cheapest (free) least legally entangled option, and that this adoption will happen first amongst those with the tightest margins. And - Clayton's law[1] - it will eventually extend to the rest of the market (albeit over a very long time). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clayton_Christensen

The good RISC-V designs are not free though and the free ones are not good. MCUs are not a category of computer to draw lessons from for the broader market.

Re: RISC-V Is Inevitable: State of the Union Keynote Argues

#15
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Krste wasn't even saying anything controversial. It's obvious that manufacturers will use the cheapest (free) least legally entangled option, and that this adoption will happen first amongst those with the tightest margins. And - Clayton's law[1] - it will eventually extend to the rest of the market (albeit over a very long time). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clayton_Christensen

The good RISC-V designs are not free though and the free ones are not good. MCUs are not a category of computer to draw lessons from for the broader market.

is what every company that didn't understand disruption said.

Re: RISC-V Is Inevitable: State of the Union Keynote Argues

#16

It was a decent little talk this one. Now that we are seeing RVA23 chips available we are starting to at least see a lot of software packages actively compiled for the platform. They aren't optimized much at all but they do run. I am cautiously optimistic about the future of RISC-V. It is likely to start biting at the heals of ARM in another 5 years or so, and having no licensing fees makes it very attractive in that…

5 years ago there was a req on the Apple job site for engineers familiar with RISC-V.

https://riscv.org/blog/apple-exploring-risc-v-hiring-risc-v-...

Re: RISC-V Is Inevitable: State of the Union Keynote Argues

#17

It was a decent little talk this one. Now that we are seeing RVA23 chips available we are starting to at least see a lot of software packages actively compiled for the platform. They aren't optimized much at all but they do run. I am cautiously optimistic about the future of RISC-V. It is likely to start biting at the heals of ARM in another 5 years or so, and having no licensing fees makes it very attractive in that…

We still have to see a RISC-V implementation that comes even close to the performance of ARM

Rivos was competitive. Sadly bought by Meta and "disappeared" into the company.

Re: RISC-V Is Inevitable: State of the Union Keynote Argues

#18
post #13

While the consumer market is still years away from widespread RISC-V adoption, if you pay attention to the embedded / MCU market (especially Espressif & co) you will indeed come to the conclusion that RISC-V is inevitable and software maturity will probably come from these early adopters. Go!

I wouldn't bet against software inertia. x86 only missed the mobile market because of multiple bad business decisions, otherwise ARM (and RISC architectures overall) would have been relegated to more decades as backwater architectures. There is nothing inevitable about anything as Apple controls its own silicon very tightly, Microsoft hasn't even really transitioned away from x86, and Android probably isn't very keen…

Chinese companies are really into RISC-V and China both builds and uses a lot of smartphones, I'm very sure we won't have to wait 20 years for regular users installing apps on RISC-V hardware.

Re: RISC-V Is Inevitable: State of the Union Keynote Argues

#19
post #10

> “CHERI is not an extension; CHERI is a new base,” Asanović clarified to the keynote audience. > Addressing concerns that creating a new base ISA might fracture the open-source community, Asanović offered a devoted defense to EE Times. “CHERI is too invasive to be a simple extension on regular RISC-V, and so needs a new base ISA for that reason,” To me it sounds like they're creating RISC-VI before RISC-V even winni…

What a circular argument that avoids answering the question. How does "it needs a new base ISA" address the concern about "might fracture the open-source community" even one bit? Why does the "journalist"/writer call that reply "a devoted defense", in what world is that any sort of defense?

Re: RISC-V Is Inevitable: State of the Union Keynote Argues

#20
post #12
post #10

> “CHERI is not an extension; CHERI is a new base,” Asanović clarified to the keynote audience. > Addressing concerns that creating a new base ISA might fracture the open-source community, Asanović offered a devoted defense to EE Times. “CHERI is too invasive to be a simple extension on regular RISC-V, and so needs a new base ISA for that reason,” To me it sounds like they're creating RISC-VI before RISC-V even winni…

There's zero chance CHERI will go anywhere, I wouldn't worry about it.

Yeah, I feel like Rust has killed Cheri.
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