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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

#121

Post by cmrdporcupine »

microcolonel wrote: post #73
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…

Nothing about RISC-V would cause any more difficulty interfacing with GPUs. Any GPU you can license piecemeal right now, can also be connected to a RISC-V complex.

Presumably if Huawei can't license an ARM core before of trade restrictions, they're not going to be able to license a GPU because of similar restrictions.

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

#122

Post by axaxs »

mappu wrote: post #115
axaxs wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>are there foundaries in China that can produce the chips necessary while ignoring foreign patents? Realistically, no. The only two competitive, bleeding edge foundries are TSMC and Samsung.

SMIC are now rolling out 14nm - that's apparently competitive enough for people to still use Intel CPUs.

Intel is Intel, as unhelpful as that statement is. So these guys are starting on 14nm, while others are pushing ahead to 5 and below. Sure it'll work, but I don't find that competitive in an already crowded smartphone market in the next 2 years.

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

#123

Post by phkahler »

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…

If they can only sell their phones in China, they will go ahead and make their own GPUs since they can violate US patents all they want in their own market. That will just force them to develop good GPUs.

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

#124

Post by gruez »

madez wrote: post #119
gruez wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Intel has a huge variety of different models. They are experts in market segmentation. They could do that. But they won't, and there are few who could do that. That's true, but the way they do that is in a way that requires minimal changes. In terms of the management engine, that means not including AMT module (software) but keeping the rest of the ME (hardware). After all, it also does some essential things like po…

> Something without an management engine would certainly possible, but would be limited to niche products like the librem. I don't share this forecast. I think many private customers would view a machine without the ME and it's capabilities as a plus for a product when the marketing is done right. Especially since most don't care for the capabilities.

>I don't share this forecast. I think many private customers would view a machine without the ME and it's capabilities as a plus for a product when the marketing is done right

A lot of people say they value privacy, but when push comes to shove, they'll willingly trade privacy for convenience and cost. See: any facebook/instagram user, or iOS users who use google maps. iOS/Mac is marketed as the private phone/computer, but their market share shows how little consumers are willing to pay a premium for privacy (except in the US where iOS share is surprisingly high). You can try to convince consumers otherwise, but in truth, a management engine with backdoors/0days isn't really applicable to most consumers' threat model. The risks from social engineering attacks or unpatched software is a much greater threat.

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

#125

Post by microcolonel »

cmrdporcupine wrote: post #121
microcolonel wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nothing about RISC-V would cause any more difficulty interfacing with GPUs. Any GPU you can license piecemeal right now, can also be connected to a RISC-V complex.

Presumably if Huawei can't license an ARM core before of trade restrictions, they're not going to be able to license a GPU because of similar restrictions.

Maybe Jingjia. Most GPU IP vendors are U.S, Korean, or broadly Western; so I can imagine it'd be difficult. It's not like they're having a more difficult time as a result of the host ISA. That's my main point.

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

#126

Post by atdrummond »

detaro wrote: post #89
atdrummond wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

@Taniwha - I can't reply to you directly because we're so deep, thread-wise. I appreciate and understand the discussion around IPC and how BOOM is a significant improvement on the state of the craft. I cut my early programming teeth by developing PPC and SPARC versions of my business' embedded software products. I'm a longtime fan of alternative architectures and keep up with the industry through attendance at events…

You can always click on the timestamp of a comment to got the comment permalink and reply from there.

That didn't seem to work at the time but both options are now available. Too late to delete and re-post, regardless.

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

#127

Post by microcolonel »

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...

The available Linux-capable RISC-V SoCs have an equivalent to the management engine, though the firmware is open, in the case of SiFive's offering.

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

#128

Post by microcolonel »

FullyFunctional wrote: post #46
dahfizz wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

It's a lot of work, and I don't know that there's any support for the effort to port V8 and ART to RISC-V. When I was starting on V8 port, I didn't see much in terms of interest in providing material support for it.

I got one interview out of it, but I feel like maybe the Foundation is the right place for that. They'd have to delegate the hiring and management to a member, but I think it could work.

Huawei has their own VM for Android, so they would likely port that for their effort.

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

#129

Post by jimmaswell »

ummonk wrote: post #17
Taniwha wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not? a diverse ecosystem of silicon with some actual competition is going to help get us out of this US-centric intel/amd world where all laptops are essentially the same

It appears likely that Apple will be transitioning to ARM for its laptops in the future so regardless we should start seeing architecture diversity in laptops.

For even the top models? How can that be performant?

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

#130

Post by hermitdev »

Retric wrote: post #51
zsrxx wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why can't a GPU power a computer?

The biggest issue is lack of huge caches, and the extreme latency to main memory due to the speed of light. GPU’s are fine or even better for a wide range of compute tasks see CUDA etc, they just end up being very slow at a subset of common tasks.

Circuits don't operate at speed of light, though. People like to say this over and over again, but electron mobility through a circuit is only around 2/3s the speed of light, IIRC. They may have very tiny mass, but they still have mass.
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