Earlier quoted context omitted.
RISC? RISC has changed everything 20 years ago. That's done already. Or did you mean RISC-V?
it's a movie quote
Oops. Haven't seen that movie in a while :)
Europe bets once again on RISC-V for supercomputing
161–170 of 233 posts
Re: Europe bets once again on RISC-V for supercomputing
#162Earlier quoted context omitted.
in uk, so in continental europe, yes.
It was in the EU when ARM started as well, fwiw.
The EU was established in 1993. Arm was founded in 1990.
For that matter the UK is composed of islands and parts thereof and nothing in "continental Europe", a term which refers to just the contiguous landmass. (Gibraltar is owned by the UK, but not part of it.)
Luckily Europe is not defined by the EU or sea levels, and the UK is very much in Europe the continent.
Re: Europe bets once again on RISC-V for supercomputing
#163Earlier quoted context omitted.
Its specifically Softbank which might be japanese but its very much aligned with US and VC funds. It might as well be VC fund.
So what? What's the scenario here? The USA pressures Japan to stop selling licences to European Fabs? Why, what would push them to such extremes? Fabs can still produce those current designs (they just don't have licences). Now Europe can buy SoftBank out, or Britain can just walk into ARM Cambridge and say it's been sequested for the war effort.
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Re: Europe bets once again on RISC-V for supercomputing
#164Earlier quoted context omitted.
The US is extremely chaotic and unpredictable. China is fairly stable and predictable.
Yup, relying on sadistic, communistic regime that puts people into concentration camps is a great idea! What can go wrong!? For instance trading with Russia, Nord Stream, didn't have any bad results... Oh, crap, no, we have some full scale war going on in Europe now, because Putin thought he keeps Europe on the gas & oil leash (and he was almost right).
Authoritarian stable regime in the east, or authoritarian and erratic regime in the west. I know which one I'd prefer, long term.
Re: Europe bets once again on RISC-V for supercomputing
#165Earlier quoted context omitted.
So what? What's the scenario here? The USA pressures Japan to stop selling licences to European Fabs? Why, what would push them to such extremes? Fabs can still produce those current designs (they just don't have licences). Now Europe can buy SoftBank out, or Britain can just walk into ARM Cambridge and say it's been sequested for the war effort.
Given ARM is mostly an IP bsaed company that wouldn't really work. For reference just look at what happened with ARM's china susidiary with which this basically happened.
ARM China is a sales office. Not the same thing at all.
If a design is made in a British office of a British company, 'by hook or by crook' the state can gain access to it. That's the hard, perhaps slightly uncomfortable truth.
Of course it would only ever come to this if softbank refused to sell and there was some national security angle.
If ARM want to close their office here, then the state can hire all their engineers and offer immunity/void on any NDA they've signed with ARM, if anything that's actually the most desirable outcome.
Again we're talking about things that simply aren't going to happen, and if they do there are much much bigger problems.
Re: Europe bets once again on RISC-V for supercomputing
#166There'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…
Speculation is that most of these EU funding efforts aren't for producing viable competitors but industry subsidry - jobs programs with a dash of embezzling.
Maybe someone from Europe could weigh in? I'm probably wrong, if the funding is transparent it should be easy to confirm or deny.
Re: Europe bets once again on RISC-V for supercomputing
#167It rather should be for general computing too starting with government office computers. Yeah they'll be slow but nothing can be slower than an x86 loaded with a Windows 11 or something on it.
Also, even a 10 year old x86 system is fine for web browsing and office tasks. If RISC-V hit that level, it’d be fine for many millions of people.
Re: Europe bets once again on RISC-V for supercomputing
#168Earlier quoted context omitted.
No it's not. For HPC good software support for the vector extension is basically everything that matters, and the framework main board doesn't support that extension. I would currently recommend the BananaPI BPI-F3 or the OrangePI RV2 for that purpose, as they both have the same SpacemiT X60 cores, which support the vector extension. Sadly there are currently only in-order cores with RVV support available. Getting a…
Thank you! I've been waiting for a viable RVV board for a long time. Just ordered the OrangePi RV2. This unblocks me properly working to optimize for vector support in software. OOO and even wider RVV registers will then automatically speed things up, without even a recompile. Yes, I know I could use qemu, but it's not the same. I feel like this is what unblocks me on the software side.
> OOO and even wider RVV registers will then automatically speed things up, without even a recompile.
The problem is that there are some things in RVV where it's unclear how they will perform on high perf OoO cores:
* general choice of LMUL: on in-order cores it's clear that maximizing LMUL without spilling is the best approach, for OoO this isn't clear.
* How will LMUL>1 vrgather and vcompress perform?
* How high is the impact of vsetvli instructions? Is it worth trying to move them outside of loops whenever possible, or is the impact minimal like in the current in-order implementations.
* What is the overhead of using .vx instruction variants, is there additional cost involved in moving between GPRs and vector registers?
* Is there additional overhead when reinterpreting vector masks?
* What performance can we expect from the more complex load/stores, especially the segmented ones.
The LLVM scheduling models give some insight:
* SiFive P670: https://github.com/llvm/llvm-project/blob/main/llvm/lib/Targ...
* Tenstorrent Ascalon: https://github.com/llvm/llvm-project/blob/main/llvm/lib/Targ... (still missing the vector part, but there is supposed to be a PR in the near future)
I'm trying to collect as much info on hardware as I can: https://camel-cdr.github.io/rvv-bench-results/index.html
Re: Europe bets once again on RISC-V for supercomputing
#169Earlier quoted context omitted.
The US is extremely chaotic and unpredictable. China is fairly stable and predictable.
Most authoritarian states are 'stable and predictable'. When you meet a lion on the savannah the beast is stable and predictable in that it will most likely try to eat you unless it isn't hungry. Step on a snake and the outcome is stable and predictable in that you will get bitten. It is good for Europe to learn to stand on its - our - own legs, to become less dependent on the USA for territorial defence and probably…
You're going well off-topic here and into inflammatory territory. This whole debate should probably best happen somewhere else.
But just one thing: while I personally share your take on the political and societal issues, I do think it's unfortunate that you lump "climate" in there, in scare quotes. The climate issue is informed by hard science. America's tendency to politicize everything will have terrible outcomes if climate gets completely caught up in the culture war. Whatever we think about the solutions, we have to find a way to agree that this particular problem is bad and needs to be addressed urgently.
Still, again, here is not the best place for this whole discussion.
Re: Europe bets once again on RISC-V for supercomputing
#170Earlier quoted context omitted.
It was in the EU when ARM started as well, fwiw.
The EU was established in 1993. Arm was founded in 1990. For that matter the UK is composed of islands and parts thereof and nothing in "continental Europe", a term which refers to just the contiguous landmass. (Gibraltar is owned by the UK, but not part of it.) Luckily Europe is not defined by the EU or sea levels, and the UK is very much in Europe the continent.
Being slightly pedantic, Gibraltar is a British Overseas Territory on continental Europe.