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Europe bets once again on RISC-V for supercomputing

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Re: Europe bets once again on RISC-V for supercomputing

#121

Post by 3eb7988a1663 »

6SixTy wrote: post #33
briandear wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is ARM better than RiSC? How many RISC computers can I go buy right now at the local Carrefour here in Barcelona? Weird definition of “abandoning.”

RISC-V is probably no different than ARM at it's core. Also, both of them are RISC ISAs. Right now, you are far more likely to use RISC-V and not know it than to knowingly interact with RISC-V directly. For example, since about 2015, Nvidia has used RISC-V as an onboard controller for their GPUs.

Western Digital also announced they were looking (have already?) to move to RISC-V.

If you manufacture items at scale, getting away from ARM licensing costs per unit makes financial sense. Especially if you already have in-house expertise who can design chips tuned to your specific requirements.

Re: Europe bets once again on RISC-V for supercomputing

#122

Post by omnimus »

microtonal wrote: post #39
6SixTy wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Choosing RISC-V here is more about how much soverienty a country has over the IP than anything else here. The US can probably consider most-all ARM IP to be dual use technology and immediately deny use of it. RISC-V being based out of Switzerland, the ISA being under a permissive Creative Commons license, and most software tools being FOSS is definitely why it's being adopted here. It's completely isolated from all g…

I'm all in for RISC-V, but ARM Holdings is British (and owned by the Japanese SoftBank group). ASML is in the The Netherlands. And there are some European ARM CPU vendors (NXP, ST Microelectronics, etc.). So Europe could also standardize on ARM without sovereignty issues?

Why risking doing that if you can go to ASML and those vendors to manucature you RISC which isnt owned by Softbank…

Re: Europe bets once again on RISC-V for supercomputing

#123

Post by ben_w »

pipes wrote: post #115
ratatoskrt wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is it. China might be authoritarian, but it's acting way less eratic than the US right now.

"right now" being the key phrase here. On what length of time due you judge stability? The last 75 years or so in China... well amoung other things they killed over 50 million of their own people with a man made famine. The question is if the institutions that produced USA can hold. China on the other hand lacks the self correcting mechanisms that USA has built in.

> The last 75 years or so in China... well amoung other things they killed over 50 million of their own people with a man made famine.

Such an event is also one reason India got my grandparent's generation to leave.

And the one about 175 years ago in Ireland probably contributed to both the (eventual) Irish home rule movement and the writing of the Communist Manifesto.

While the Great Leap Forward's famine was avoidable in theory, I think that the historical examples of so many others having similar experiences during the transition from agrarian to industrial, shows that in practice the mistakes are very easy to fall into.

Re: Europe bets once again on RISC-V for supercomputing

#124

Post by Yoric »

blackeyeblitzar wrote: post #107
regularjack wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By negotiated peace you mean taking the agressor's side?

I mean a negotiated peace. The alternative is a drawn out conflict that either wipes out Ukraine’s male population or significantly weakens the economies of Europe and America or both. Avoiding those things is taking the side of Ukrainians, Europeans, and Americans. Does it mean a dictator (Putin) gets some land? Sure. But I don’t think that’s the reason to seek peace.

This kind of reasoning made sense before the 1938 Munich agreements.

By now, we have to assume that giving a dictator a victory will only fuel his next campaign. Especially since it's a campaign for which Russia has been preparing for 70+ years – including exercises shortly before the latest invasion of Ukraine.

Re: Europe bets once again on RISC-V for supercomputing

#125

Post by ajmurmann »

light_hue_1 wrote: post #101

There's nothing to celebrate here. This is another sad moment for Europeans everywhere. > The first phase of this six-year endeavor is backed by €240 million (£200 million, $260 million) in funding. For this to be a serious effort it would take another two zeros at the end of that number. This is 100x too small. In 6 years, we'll have spent a pittance, to realize that we got basically nothing for it, and we're even f…

Who in Europe would fund something bigger? Governments are tight on money and in many countries a aging population is overwhelming the welfare state while at the same time defense spending must go up dramatically and yesterday.

Private investors in Europe don't have the very deep pockets of US tech investors and there is much less of a culture of risk taking in investing in Europe on top of that

Edit: to be clear, I agree with your general point.

Re: Europe bets once again on RISC-V for supercomputing

#126

Post by Yoric »

sashank_1509 wrote: post #89
f1shy wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there “good” dictatorships? My personal opinion is there is no good dictator (ok, in HN context, BDFL in a SW project) I like no totalitarian regime. No one.

How is a dictatorship different from a monarchy? There have been plenty of good monarchies throughout history. Frederick The Great, created the Prussian State. Stuart’s were well loved that they ended parliamentary democracy to restore the Stuarts. Victorian, Elizabethan era were also prosperous and well known. Ceasar was the final monarch who united the enmity between the nobles and plebs. The problem is we look at…

I'm going to assume that you're speaking of monarchies in which the monarch is the actual ruler, rather than UK, Belgium, the Netherlands or Canada for instance, right?

In that case, I'd say that a monarchy is essentially dictatorship + a (usually) clear line of succession.

Re: Europe bets once again on RISC-V for supercomputing

#128

Post by Yoric »

hulitu wrote: post #59
tux1968 wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://milkv.io/duo Gives you something to play around with, very inexpensively. But really, virtual machines may be preferable; at least to get started.

> But really, virtual machines may be preferable; at least to get started. And what shall one emulate in a VM ? A nonexisting physical processor ? /s

I'm almost certain that this is exactly how it works in processor design. You start building your compiler before the processor is finished, and test it with the emulator.

At least, in quantum computing, that's how it works.

Re: Europe bets once again on RISC-V for supercomputing

#129

Post by goodpoint »

f1shy wrote: post #49
tntxtnt wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because in spite of the west's propaganda, Xi is a good dictator. Singapore was/is also a totalitarian state yet many do business with it.

Is there “good” dictatorships? My personal opinion is there is no good dictator (ok, in HN context, BDFL in a SW project) I like no totalitarian regime. No one.

> there is no good dictator

A good dictator is a...

Re: Europe bets once again on RISC-V for supercomputing

#130

Post by Yoric »

light_hue_1 wrote: post #101

There's nothing to celebrate here. This is another sad moment for Europeans everywhere. > The first phase of this six-year endeavor is backed by €240 million (£200 million, $260 million) in funding. For this to be a serious effort it would take another two zeros at the end of that number. This is 100x too small. In 6 years, we'll have spent a pittance, to realize that we got basically nothing for it, and we're even f…

You make a point. However, I'm not sure how it'd be possible.

The US has been funded by an insane level of debt for the last 60+ years. Debt that might come calling quite soon, according to Donald Trump's own treasure secretary, iirc, and might even be the reason for all the current apparent international Trump-craziness (well, Trump being a narcissist certainly doesn't help).

While the EU has serious debt, if I understand correctly, that's several orders of magnitude smaller when compared to GNP, which limits the ability of the EU to invest.

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