Bit of a RISC-Y manoeuvrer no?
*Badumph*
Apple to Move a Part of Its Embedded Cores to RISC-V
11–20 of 51 posts
Re: Apple to Move a Part of Its Embedded Cores to RISC-V
#12They had a job posting a few months ago which asked for RISC-V experience.
edit: they still have them.
https://jobs.apple.com/en-us/details/200349341/system-archit...
Re: Apple to Move a Part of Its Embedded Cores to RISC-V
#13What benefits does RISC-V have over ARM besides it being open/free?
Re: Apple to Move a Part of Its Embedded Cores to RISC-V
#1410 billion RISC-V cores were shipped last year - mostly you wont see them because they're heavily embedded - in disk drives/etc - used to be every flash drive had an ARM core in it and paid a few pennies to ARM, that's likely to change quickly
One thing to note is that RISC-V is only royalty-free for people making custom silicon implementations - i.e. the equivalent of an ARM architectural license. You still have to design the cores and that's the really hard part, moreso than designing the ISA. Apple is in a unique position where they have all these Cortex cores for various reasons, but also have the resources to actually design a RISC-V implementation th…
>You still have to design the cores and that's the really hard part, moreso than designing the ISA.
Designing them is an option. RISC-V's license allows doing so. But, unlike ARM, where your only alternative is to license ARM's own designs, in RISC-V there are several options.
You could use open source cores, or license cores from someone. As there's an open market of cores, there are several competing companies, offering several competing cores and support arrangements.
Re: Apple to Move a Part of Its Embedded Cores to RISC-V
#15I wish I could buy stock in RISC-V (in the abstract). See also today: https://twitter.com/SiFive/status/1570880204804849671
If there was a RISC-V ETF, internally using companies that sell RISC-V IP and hardware, I'd definitely buy it, and prefer it over NASDAQ (QQQ).
Re: Apple to Move a Part of Its Embedded Cores to RISC-V
#16This is based on Dylan Patel’s speculation, and he quite commonly just comes up with something that he wants to be reality and presents it as fact.
Re: Apple to Move a Part of Its Embedded Cores to RISC-V
#1710 billion RISC-V cores were shipped last year - mostly you wont see them because they're heavily embedded - in disk drives/etc - used to be every flash drive had an ARM core in it and paid a few pennies to ARM, that's likely to change quickly
It's more likely that RISC-V replaces MIPS than ARM, although it's certainly competing for the latter too. ...and USB flash drives are more likely to be based on 8051s than ARM in volume.
I'm pretty sure they're all ARM. Why would they be 8051s? Are there any sufficiently performant 8051 cores?
Re: Apple to Move a Part of Its Embedded Cores to RISC-V
#1810 billion RISC-V cores were shipped last year - mostly you wont see them because they're heavily embedded - in disk drives/etc - used to be every flash drive had an ARM core in it and paid a few pennies to ARM, that's likely to change quickly
One thing to note is that RISC-V is only royalty-free for people making custom silicon implementations - i.e. the equivalent of an ARM architectural license. You still have to design the cores and that's the really hard part, moreso than designing the ISA. Apple is in a unique position where they have all these Cortex cores for various reasons, but also have the resources to actually design a RISC-V implementation th…
There's lots of open source RISC-V cores - but can't be any fully OS ARM ones (even if someone's made a n OS ARM core you still have to pay ARM a royalty)
The big advantage to rolling your own private ISA is that there's already a rich compiler and O/S ecosystem for RISC-V while if you do use RISC-V it's all already there for you.
It really does feel like a second generation 'barn raising'
Re: Apple to Move a Part of Its Embedded Cores to RISC-V
#19What benefits does RISC-V have over ARM besides it being open/free?
What benefits does Linux/BSD have over Windows, as a highly productive development environment outside of all the possibilities it had opened by being open/free ?
Re: Apple to Move a Part of Its Embedded Cores to RISC-V
#20Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's more likely that RISC-V replaces MIPS than ARM, although it's certainly competing for the latter too. ...and USB flash drives are more likely to be based on 8051s than ARM in volume.
I'm pretty sure they're all ARM. Why would they be 8051s? Are there any sufficiently performant 8051 cores?
Here's one with a 250MHz 8051: https://github.com/flowswitch/phison/wiki/PS2303
They don't need anything as powerful as ARM (and thus avoid the licensing fees), and it's a very price-sensitive market, so a fast 8051 + accelerator hardware is enough.
No doubt some of the more expensive ones may be ARM-based, but I think the 8051-based ones far outsell them in volume.