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ARM: “RISC-V Architecture: Understand the Facts”

riscv-basics.com

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Re: ARM: “RISC-V Architecture: Understand the Facts”

#21

Post by dchest »

harias wrote: post #13

Can somebody please verify the authenticity? Why didn't arm use a subdomain of arm.com?

Good question. Domain is registered with wildwestdomains (GoDaddy), anonymized:

    Domain Name: RISCV-BASICS.COM
    Registry Domain ID: 2277459939_DOMAIN_COM-VRSN
    Registrar WHOIS Server: whois.wildwestdomains.com
    Registrar URL: http://www.wildwestdomains.com
    Updated Date: 2018-06-20T21:54:44Z
    Creation Date: 2018-06-20T21:54:44Z
    Registry Expiry Date: 2019-06-20T21:54:44Z
    Registrar: Wild West Domains, LLC
    ...

    Registrant Name: Registration Private
    Registrant Organization: Domains By Proxy, LLC
    Registrant Street: DomainsByProxy.com
Hosted on Azure:

      Name Server: NS1-07.AZURE-DNS.COM
      Name Server: NS2-07.AZURE-DNS.NET
      Name Server: NS3-07.AZURE-DNS.ORG
      Name Server: NS4-07.AZURE-DNS.INFO
SSL cert is from GoDaddy. This is very different from arm.com.

At first sight, I'd assume it's fake.

Link to arm.com though has GA tags for tracking:

    ?utm_source=riscv-basics.com&utm_medium=website&utm_campaign=18.06_riscv-ds-eval-confidence_riscv_na_na_web_pg2956a1_02
HTML has:
which matches arm.com
Of course, these can also be fake.

But maybe it's real.

EDIT: It's real:

https://www.arm.com/-/media/global/company/arm-risc-v-infogr...

Re: ARM: “RISC-V Architecture: Understand the Facts”

#22

Post by jacknews »

These facts seem fairly true, it's a new thing and doesn't have much momentum yet.

I don't think there are that many people yet considering risc V seriously for current commercial implementations, rather than keeping an eye on it for future projects, but I'm sure there will be once momentum builds.

Re: ARM: “RISC-V Architecture: Understand the Facts”

#24

Post by trasz »

rwmj wrote: post #15
antpls wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a rather uninformed reader, and I would be interested to read about sources that say the facts presented here are wrong, rather than just read "it's a FUD campaign". At the end of the day, no camp rigoursly shared information

As with all FUD campaigns, there's an element of truth. ARM does undoubtedly have a very large ecosystem and more features (RISC-V lacks hardware virtualization for example). But there are also loads of companies using and producing real RISC-V cores and all the major Linux distros are already shipping on RISC-V. The barrier to entry to RISC-V is far lower since you can quite literally download the cores off github a…

Not just Linux distros; FreeBSD supports RISC-V as well.

Re: ARM: “RISC-V Architecture: Understand the Facts”

#26

Post by cptskippy »

jchw wrote: post #17

Some of the "facts" here are pretty weak. The "years of security expertise" is not really a feature I'd be proud of given the recent processor-level vulnerabilities that in fact, paint a very different picture about how traditional processor vendors treat security. Even if there is some validity here, this is in surprisingly poor taste. I've known people who have worked for ARM. I wonder what they think about this.

How would an open source processor be better from a security perspective? I might still be a little shell shocked from my attempts to setup a MythTV Box 10 years ago but this is what's running through my head:

"Did you RTFM?"

"Debain CPU doesn't have that issue."

"Just disable the ALUs in firmware, they're not necessary in modern processors anyways."

"That's been patched, just download processor v2.3.4.432 and send it to your FAB, they should spin you a new CPU in 8-12 months."

Re: ARM: “RISC-V Architecture: Understand the Facts”

#27

Post by pjmlp »

rwmj wrote: post #15
antpls wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a rather uninformed reader, and I would be interested to read about sources that say the facts presented here are wrong, rather than just read "it's a FUD campaign". At the end of the day, no camp rigoursly shared information

As with all FUD campaigns, there's an element of truth. ARM does undoubtedly have a very large ecosystem and more features (RISC-V lacks hardware virtualization for example). But there are also loads of companies using and producing real RISC-V cores and all the major Linux distros are already shipping on RISC-V. The barrier to entry to RISC-V is far lower since you can quite literally download the cores off github a…

> As with Linux & Windows servers c.1999, who would you bet on winning in the end?

It was more about UNIX & Windows.

Linux won on the servers thanks to majority of UNIX guys cutting down costs by outsourcing their development costs into Linux.

Had Linux not gotten the money of IBM, HP, Compaq, SGI, Intel, Oracle, Sun, Google, ...., the outcome would have looked much different.

Re: ARM: “RISC-V Architecture: Understand the Facts”

#28

Post by justinjlynn »

cptskippy wrote: post #26
jchw wrote: post #17

Some of the "facts" here are pretty weak. The "years of security expertise" is not really a feature I'd be proud of given the recent processor-level vulnerabilities that in fact, paint a very different picture about how traditional processor vendors treat security. Even if there is some validity here, this is in surprisingly poor taste. I've known people who have worked for ARM. I wonder what they think about this.

How would an open source processor be better from a security perspective? I might still be a little shell shocked from my attempts to setup a MythTV Box 10 years ago but this is what's running through my head: "Did you RTFM?" "Debain CPU doesn't have that issue." "Just disable the ALUs in firmware, they're not necessary in modern processors anyways." "That's been patched, just download processor v2.3.4.432 and send i…

All of that sounds better than: "Oh, our new processors don't have that issue. Trust us, pay me. Oh, you just bought one? Too bad."

Re: ARM: “RISC-V Architecture: Understand the Facts”

#29

Post by Dylan16807 »

legulere wrote: post #10

I have to say that I’m surprised that it seems to be pretty factual. The main points seem to be that RISC-V is not there yet and that customization is expensive. I guess for most projects you currently use ARM processors ARM will make most sense for a while. RISC-V will probably slowly eat a growing piece of that market though over the next years to decades.

When it starts off saying there are "currently" no royalties, as if royalties could be added in the future, I'm not inclined to call it "pretty factual". Maybe "contains some facts, among other things".

Also point 4 is pretty useless, and point 5 is basically nonsense. It's implying that you should avoid the higher costs of customizing by using Arm instead of just... not customizing.

Re: ARM: “RISC-V Architecture: Understand the Facts”

#30

Post by rwmj »

pjmlp wrote: post #27
rwmj wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As with all FUD campaigns, there's an element of truth. ARM does undoubtedly have a very large ecosystem and more features (RISC-V lacks hardware virtualization for example). But there are also loads of companies using and producing real RISC-V cores and all the major Linux distros are already shipping on RISC-V. The barrier to entry to RISC-V is far lower since you can quite literally download the cores off github a…

> As with Linux & Windows servers c.1999, who would you bet on winning in the end? It was more about UNIX & Windows. Linux won on the servers thanks to majority of UNIX guys cutting down costs by outsourcing their development costs into Linux. Had Linux not gotten the money of IBM, HP, Compaq, SGI, Intel, Oracle, Sun, Google, ...., the outcome would have looked much different.

I was specifically referring to the MSFT FUD against Linux.

> Had Linux not gotten the money of IBM, HP, Compaq, SGI, Intel, Oracle, Sun, Google, ...., the outcome would have looked much different.

But these companies didn't spend that money because of a fluffy corporate love of the underdog. They wanted to "commoditize their complements". And the exact same desire will apply to the CPU, which is why software companies will want to do the same thing in future once there's a viable open source CPU (whether that is RISC-V or something entirely different).

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