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Europe bets once again on RISC-V for supercomputing

theregister.com

191–200 of 233 posts

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

#191
post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you ignore the military ambitions of China and the fact they’re openly sharing technology with Russia, perhaps. I don’t see anything but regret for Europe several decades from now if they decide to start providing China with the technical expertise they’re currently lacking in this space. This is all about China trying to find a way to escape the pressure of sanctions from Europe and the US.

Didn't ARM start in Europe?

And RISC-V started at UC Berkeley in 2010.

RISC-V: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RISC-V

"Ask HN: How much would it cost to build a RISC CPU out of carbon?" (2024) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41153490 with nanoimprinting (which 10x's current gen nanolithography FWIU)

"Nanoimprint Lithography Aims to Take on EUV" (2025) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42575111 :

> Called nanoimprint lithography (NIL), it’s capable of patterning circuit features as small as 14 nanometers—enabling logic chips on par with Intel, AMD, and Nvidia processors now in mass production.

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

#192

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…

Comparing cpu centric startups to AI accelerator ones on funding raised in current climate is a little silly.

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

#193
post #186
post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For secular and democratic nations, multiculturalism isn’t inherently dangerous if there are principles and ideals around which newcomers to any nation can assimilate and integrate. America attempted that to some degree of success with its melting pot ideals till the 90s, but there wasn’t enough emphasis on civic duty, from either the commoners or the elite. The US founding fathers included everyone in their vision,…

> The US founding fathers included everyone in their vision, btw Of course many were only 3/5th included. And half the population weren’t included at all.

That’s not a fair or reasonable thing to point out given that few countries at that time gave slaves or women voting rights. The U.S. was one of the first majority White countries to give Black men voting rights in 1870, after France did some time in late 1700s. Haiti was the first country to give all people, regardless of race, voting rights in 1804. I agree that the U.S. was really late to enter into women’s suffrage compared to other majority white countries.

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

#194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That may be in part to their 'president for life'. Leaders are not immortal though and transitions between them have seen large and sometimes catastrophic changes. China designed its modern political system to avoid that, only for Xi to undo it and purge younger potential challengers.

For life and is 71 in arguably the most stressful job in the world. The risk of mental decline cannot be ignored, particularly as he has now served longer than any US president in all of history. Although I say that and then I went down the rabbit hole of trying to find which individual had the longest tenure of presidency and vice presidency combined. It seems like it’s either Nixon, HW Bush, or Biden.

As the US president is more or less in the same position as the monarch in the UK -- the main *official* task is to approve or reject legislation already passed by parliament -- you should perhaps look at the 63 years 216 days Victoria reigned, or 70 years 214 days of Elizabeth II, both far exceeding any recent US, Chinese, or Russian supreme leader.

I recently noticed with horror that my birth is now closer to the end of Victoria's reign in 1901 than it is to today.

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

#195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it’s open source it doesn’t matter who the state they’re collaborating with is.

Well. I have worked quite a bit with Chinese businesses and let's just put like this: It does not matter much whatever license you think the SW or HW has. Whatever is available will be used and modified to the liking of the customer. It is common for new employees to walk in with code bases of previous projects they have worked with and there is a great deal of administration involved in ensuring that no one else get…

Again, if it’s open source there’s nothing illegal in it.

The point of closed source is that it allows the people doing the research and engineering to recoup and profit off their investments.

Which I’m in favor of.

However, considering currently the disproportionately overwhelming majority of the value is being captured by American firms, and the US has proven to be an unreliable partner, it’s in both the EU and China’s interests to eliminate the profit from this industry entirely in order to promote competitiveness with the US based front runners.

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

#197
post #115

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.

I sincerely doubt much is left of those self-correcting mechanism in the US. They are being deconstructed at high pace currently, and not even in secret, and apart from a delay by a judge here and there, it's crickets.

We will see what man made disasters the current (and future) US adminstration will cause. By every measure it looks like they are determined to find out the hard way.

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

#198
post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

The US is not just erratic, it wouldn't be a stretch to call them hostile towards the EU right now.

That’s a pretty insane take that ignores decades of actual history.

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

#199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm very impressed and fascinated by the Chinese society and their progress. I love the country and it's rich history. But is it a democracy? No not according to my idea of what that word means. It's a great country nonetheless, people are free in China, they have their own system and it works for them, good! Why pretend it's a democracy?

It's worth debating because China describes itself as such: http://en.moj.gov.cn/2024-03/05/c_967573.htm The Chinese would say the point of democracy is to translate the will of the people into action, it's to efficiently solve problems that people have, it's in their understanding neither liberal nor representative. In fact they'd likely turn your question around, if democracy is merely a set of procedures or ritual…

Deciding the best course of action in the interest of others is different from letting go of power and allowing people to collectively make decisions that might go against your own view of what is in their best interest. Without making a judgement I'd call the latter democracy but not the first.

In this distinction there were no references to procedures or rituals, so it cannot only be a question of that.

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

#200

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…

Not completely disagreeing with you but:

1. It is a single entity but composed of teams from 38 different partners. They have a "consortium". It has its disadvantages but it is not a completely independent funding.

2. The "consortium" may have asked for much more (between 5x to 20x more) and was probably denied.

As to your question of why we cannot seriously invest in startups?

- Because we do not have a single funding agency across whole of Europe. Each country has its own funding problems and Germany has its debt brake. So, the funding is not unified. Each country wants to fund 10 of its own startups instead of Europe by itself funding 10. This means 10x less money. EU Horizon projects didn't focus on industry at all. EuroHPC is a very new, 4 years into its first projects.

- There's no funding because we do not have customers! None of European tech companies will benefit from chips enough to invest in new tech. All of them are running old technologies. Car companies are to blame here because they are the biggest customers in Germany and they think of themselves as only car companies. No one in Germany is doing AI for cars for FSD for example. In general, European consumption is very backward and low-tech.

- Europe is finding it very hard to raise capital from outside Europe due to various reasons. Like Groq raised 650M from Saudi Arabia. In Europe, that is politically impossible.

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