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Open cores, ISAs, etc.: what is open about them?

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Re: Open cores, ISAs, etc.: what is open about them?

#21

Post by Alekhine »

Epiphany21 wrote: post #17
klelatti wrote: post #9

Can someone explain why the RISC-V ecosystem won’t eventually stabilise into a series of lower performance open source cores and higher performance closed source (and non licensable) cores. In other words why should designers open source performance leading cores for competitors to copy?

It's a fair question. How does an open high end chip design benefit anyone other than a competing company? How would an end user be able to verify that the chip in their hand is the same as what's in the schematics they get? Wouldn't it be cost-prohibitive for regular people to have those designs manufactured? High performance cores being opened would be nice to have but not really practical, unless I'm missing somet…

This is why I think the priority for software will shift back towards performance in the coming decades. Even now very few people can get decent GPUs. Who knows if one day chips that can run the latest bloatware will be affordable?

Re: Open cores, ISAs, etc.: what is open about them?

#22

Post by makapuf »

zozbot234 wrote: post #11
cleemens wrote: post #5

"As should be obvious by now, there is no situation where these foundry processes and tools are open source." This is already false. The famous OpenPDK by Skywater (sponsored by Google) is proving this article wrong from the beginning. ( https://github.com/google/skywater-pdk ) Yes, thats a rather old technology node, but you can now synthesize your free RISC-V design with a free Toolchain (openROAD) onto this open P…

That process node is not just "rather old", it is literally 20 years old. Sure, it's nice that these old processes are being opened up, but for anything finer you're still going to run into the patent concerns that the article talks about.

sure, but having the ability to have an open 1GHz Athlon XP (with increases in IPC allowed by modern architectures) would be nothing to sneeze at. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/130_nm_process

Re: Open cores, ISAs, etc.: what is open about them?

#23

Post by zrm »

klelatti wrote: post #20
floatboth wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With software, the one true incentive is that someone else will maintain your code and you won't have to spend valuable time constantly rebasing your downstream patches. This is why e.g. Netflix contributes heavily to FreeBSD's network stack. This is the real reason to upstream, regardless of license. When that incentive doesn't apply and companies only release for compliance, we get Android-vendor-style source dumps…

Thanks - agree completely. Possibly also true that Netflix isn’t really worried about competitors using their contributions to FreeBSD to compete with them?

That should generally be the default assumption, because companies can pay for the improvements that most benefit their niche.

Suppose your company makes the mid-range device. You have competitors above and below you. The one above you uses a fast expensive processor, the one below you uses a slow cheap processor. You need a medium processor for a medium price. If you design your own, it gets cheaper than the existing middle one but still not as cheap as the cheap one.

So if you design one, it's too big, costs too much to fab, for the low end. It's too slow for the high end. You're the only one who can use it. You and companies outside your market who don't compete with you at all, because you make network switches and they make cars.

You also make a good point about the GPL above, but there isn't any reason why processors couldn't use a GPL-style license, is there?

Re: Open cores, ISAs, etc.: what is open about them?

#24

Post by panick21_ »

klelatti wrote: post #9

Can someone explain why the RISC-V ecosystem won’t eventually stabilise into a series of lower performance open source cores and higher performance closed source (and non licensable) cores. In other words why should designers open source performance leading cores for competitors to copy?

Because open-source system don't just 'stabilize'. Just like Linux didn't stabilize on low performance cores and on high performance cores you use some proprietary core.

Open Hardware is still way more difficult but we will not reach any 'stabilization' anytime soon.

Re: Open cores, ISAs, etc.: what is open about them?

#25

Post by klelatti »

zrm wrote: post #23
klelatti wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks - agree completely. Possibly also true that Netflix isn’t really worried about competitors using their contributions to FreeBSD to compete with them?

That should generally be the default assumption, because companies can pay for the improvements that most benefit their niche. Suppose your company makes the mid-range device. You have competitors above and below you. The one above you uses a fast expensive processor, the one below you uses a slow cheap processor. You need a medium processor for a medium price. If you design your own, it gets cheaper than the existin…

I’m not a lawyer so can’t comment on the GPL point but I hope you’re right.

I suspect that the most likely route to open source higher performance cores is some sort of cross industry consortium collaboration - rather than a single firm - with GPL cores and a central body doing a lot of the work.

I do wonder whether you eventually end up with something that economically looks a lot like a cross between Red Hat and Arm though - say with membership fees for support rather than licensing fees.

Re: Open cores, ISAs, etc.: what is open about them?

#26

Post by ksec »

MisterTea wrote: post #4
turbinerneiter wrote: post #2

I think that the patent threat will crumble with more and more complex features being implemented on the Open Source cores, like BOOM and so on. I don't think that ideas that are taught commonly at university and are all over GitHub will be able to stay "owned". The question than will be how close we can come to the proprietary systems and which use-cases are low-key enough that their cutting edge new innovations don…

Someone eventually has to build the hardware and that's the really expensive part. Arm has the upper hand here as they deliver more than just an ISA, they can sell you a whole silicon and software stack including engineering expertise to help get your thing to market. Plus they control the ecosystem so you're not going to run into odd edge cases (e.g. Loongson which is sorta MIPS). Not saying that companies like SiFi…

Absolutely agree with GP on microcontroller. I mean it is practically everywhere now, from Video Encoding / Decoding Engine to within GPU.

And that cost is exactly why it makes Zero sense the mainstream view on internet and HN that SiFive or RISC-V is going to crush ARM on Server / Desktop / Smartphone computing. Despite repeatedly asking what are the competitive advantage. Of course China betting everything on RISCV is a different story.

And this submission only have 52 upvote with very little comments. i.e It will never reach mainstream thoughts. Although I dont think any of the RISC-V Evangelism Strikeforce would want to hear them anyway.

Re: Open cores, ISAs, etc.: what is open about them?

#27

Post by ksec »

zrm wrote: post #13
klelatti wrote: post #9

Can someone explain why the RISC-V ecosystem won’t eventually stabilise into a series of lower performance open source cores and higher performance closed source (and non licensable) cores. In other words why should designers open source performance leading cores for competitors to copy?

You're Netgear or Asus or someone. You need a core to put in your network equipment, and the low performance one is nearly good enough. If you spend some money to make it 10% better then it is good enough. If that amount of money is less than you'd have to pay to license ARM, you might as well do that. You also might as well release your changes. If you try and keep your improvements to yourself then when someone els…

>and the low performance one is nearly good enough.

You may be surprised at the CPU requirement for modern WIFi Router.

>If that amount of money is less than you'd have to pay to license ARM, you might as well do that.

That is not only it, the cost are going to support the linux firmware these router will be based on. Which having ARM ecosystem will be beneficial. So your initial cost estimate will have to include that into calculation as well.

And it is part of the reason why all routers are moving from their own MIPS CPU to ARM CPU.

Re: Open cores, ISAs, etc.: what is open about them?

#28

Post by zrm »

ksec wrote: post #27
zrm wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're Netgear or Asus or someone. You need a core to put in your network equipment, and the low performance one is nearly good enough. If you spend some money to make it 10% better then it is good enough. If that amount of money is less than you'd have to pay to license ARM, you might as well do that. You also might as well release your changes. If you try and keep your improvements to yourself then when someone els…

>and the low performance one is nearly good enough. You may be surprised at the CPU requirement for modern WIFi Router. >If that amount of money is less than you'd have to pay to license ARM, you might as well do that. That is not only it, the cost are going to support the linux firmware these router will be based on. Which having ARM ecosystem will be beneficial. So your initial cost estimate will have to include th…

> You may be surprised at the CPU requirement for modern WIFi Router.

You may be surprised at the performance of modern CPUs. Even the slow ones are pretty fast.

> That is not only it, the cost are going to support the linux firmware these router will be based on. Which having ARM ecosystem will be beneficial. So your initial cost estimate will have to include that into calculation as well.

The Linux ecosystem is highly portable. It's not like Windows where you're stuck with already-compiled binaries for the wrong architecture. You have the source code, it already runs on half a dozen processor architectures, so you compile it for the one you're using.

> And it is part of the reason why all routers are moving from their own MIPS CPU to ARM CPU.

They're doing that because MIPS is dead. The company that owns MIPS went bankrupt and has now announced they're going to make RISC-V processors:

https://www.eejournal.com/article/wait-what-mips-becomes-ris...

Before that they half-heartedly tried to open source MIPS, but that was after they were already sinking and it was too late to save them.

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