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Nordic is getting involved in RISC-V

blog.nordicsemi.com

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Re: Nordic is getting involved in RISC-V

#21

Post by audunw »

0xDEF wrote: post #11
ahartmetz wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> is getting crushed by a wave of very low cost Chinese competitors Oh lordy. Bluetooth is about to get even worse? AFAIK, Nordic's harwdare and software are among the few high quality Bluetooth stacks.

Maybe the quality of the Chinese competitors is/was worse but ESP32 and its predecessor have completely taken over the cheap BLE/WiFi segment by simply flooding hobbyists and students with ultra-cheap devkits. Maybe something the Western competitors should learn from.

> Maybe something the Western competitors should learn from.

Back in the day our university was flooded with Atmel AVR kits.

I don't know about my university now, but many high schools now use BBC micro:bit kits, which uses Nordic Semi SoCs.

Re: Nordic is getting involved in RISC-V

#22

Post by dkjaudyeqooe »

This is a harbinger of RISC-V's rise. ARM can't compete in power usage with RV's simple and clean ISA, just like x86 can't compete with ARM's power optimised design. Ultimately power usage decides everything.

Eventually there will advanced RV implementations that outdo everything x64 and ARM can offer because of the RV design advantage and because there will be multiple players completing to capture market share. Intel no longer has a process advantage, and is unlikely to ever regain it.

Re: Nordic is getting involved in RISC-V

#23

Post by mark_l_watson »

Classic HN: the comments here are more interesting than the article.

Off topic, but I have started to realize that I am developing a strong bias of liking anything “open” (open source, open LLMs, books released under Creative Commons licenses, etc., etc.) and a dislike or mistrust against closed proprietary systems. I used to be more balanced in my views. I am not a hardware person, just a humble programmer, but articles about RISC-V always interest me.

Re: Nordic is getting involved in RISC-V

#24

Post by audunw »

fullstop wrote: post #15
0xDEF wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe the quality of the Chinese competitors is/was worse but ESP32 and its predecessor have completely taken over the cheap BLE/WiFi segment by simply flooding hobbyists and students with ultra-cheap devkits. Maybe something the Western competitors should learn from.

You can get started with esp32 for $5. Nordic devkits are more expensive, and going past that requires a JTAG programmer, which is an expensive option for hobbyists and students. It's not surprising that they have taken off like they have. Initially it was because it was inexpensive, but now the community is huge and that is a very attractive selling point.

You can get a BBC micro:bit with Nordic SoC for $15 Not exactly $5, but not very expensive either There's also a decent growing community around them

You've also got the nRF52 USB dongle which seems similar to those cheaper ESP32 kits, for around $10.

> and going past that requires a JTAG programmer

No, the official Nordic devkits comes with a built-in debugger. Same for micro:bit. It's just plain USB.

That said, I do think Nordic could be better at penetrating the hobbyist/student market. I think one problem is the lack of a combined BT/WiFi chip.

I think once Zephyr becomes more mature and there's more tutorials/guides around it, a good BT+Thread+WiFi solution from Nordic could become very popular. Zephyr is a bit hard to get into, but incredibly powerful once you get used to it.

Re: Nordic is getting involved in RISC-V

#25

Post by flumpcakes »

dkjaudyeqooe wrote: post #22

This is a harbinger of RISC-V's rise. ARM can't compete in power usage with RV's simple and clean ISA, just like x86 can't compete with ARM's power optimised design. Ultimately power usage decides everything. Eventually there will advanced RV implementations that outdo everything x64 and ARM can offer because of the RV design advantage and because there will be multiple players completing to capture market share. Int…

Does a "clean" vs. "messy" ISA really affect power utilisation more than low single digits?

I can't see what the difference is outside the FE decoding.

Perhaps an ISA having more useful instructions would matter, as we would then be able to implement hardware optimisations. But just having poor ISA encoding or inconsistency seems, to my uneducated eyes, more of a human problem than a machine problem?

Re: Nordic is getting involved in RISC-V

#26

Post by mardifoufs »

dkjaudyeqooe wrote: post #22

This is a harbinger of RISC-V's rise. ARM can't compete in power usage with RV's simple and clean ISA, just like x86 can't compete with ARM's power optimised design. Ultimately power usage decides everything. Eventually there will advanced RV implementations that outdo everything x64 and ARM can offer because of the RV design advantage and because there will be multiple players completing to capture market share. Int…

Is risc-v really more power efficient at similar performance levels? I would think the ISA itself wouldn't matter that much for power efficiency, all things considered.

Re: Nordic is getting involved in RISC-V

#27

Post by graphe »

audunw wrote: post #24
fullstop wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can get started with esp32 for $5. Nordic devkits are more expensive, and going past that requires a JTAG programmer, which is an expensive option for hobbyists and students. It's not surprising that they have taken off like they have. Initially it was because it was inexpensive, but now the community is huge and that is a very attractive selling point.

You can get a BBC micro:bit with Nordic SoC for $15 Not exactly $5, but not very expensive either There's also a decent growing community around them You've also got the nRF52 USB dongle which seems similar to those cheaper ESP32 kits, for around $10. > and going past that requires a JTAG programmer No, the official Nordic devkits comes with a built-in debugger. Same for micro:bit. It's just plain USB. That said, I d…

Where are the nRF52 usb dongles for $10?

Re: Nordic is getting involved in RISC-V

#28

Post by fullstop »

audunw wrote: post #24
fullstop wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can get started with esp32 for $5. Nordic devkits are more expensive, and going past that requires a JTAG programmer, which is an expensive option for hobbyists and students. It's not surprising that they have taken off like they have. Initially it was because it was inexpensive, but now the community is huge and that is a very attractive selling point.

You can get a BBC micro:bit with Nordic SoC for $15 Not exactly $5, but not very expensive either There's also a decent growing community around them You've also got the nRF52 USB dongle which seems similar to those cheaper ESP32 kits, for around $10. > and going past that requires a JTAG programmer No, the official Nordic devkits comes with a built-in debugger. Same for micro:bit. It's just plain USB. That said, I d…

> No, the official Nordic devkits comes with a built-in debugger. Same for micro:bit. It's just plain USB.

Right, the devkits can do this. If you want to go past that, like making your own PCB with a NRF52 on it you need JTAG, which is not a requirement for esp32.

Maybe the NRF52 has some sort of ROM serial loader that I've missed though.

Re: Nordic is getting involved in RISC-V

#29

Post by freeopinion »

fullstop wrote: post #13
xadhominemx wrote: post #5

Nordic is a very high volume supplier of BT chips for consumer applications, but is getting crushed by a wave of very low cost Chinese competitors. Among the western chip companies, they are the ideal candidate for RISC-V adoption. I'm very curious to see what TI is planning for RISC-V as they begin to seriously engage in the low cost general purpose microcontroller market for the first time.

Unless things have changed recently, Nordic is still king of low power applications. With that being said, I've worked with both the Nordic NRF SDK and the Espressif SDK and greatly preferred Espressif. For doo-dads that I make for my home, esp32 and esp8266 are fantastic. The modules are inexpensive and the community is huge. I would not want to be in Nordic's shoes right now.

It's easy for us hobbiests to forget that all the spare do-dads we have floating around our workbench aren't even a drop in the bucket compared to the number of chips bought by a single manufacturer for a single model of a kitchen blender.

We matter a little and can be somewhat of an indicator sometimes. Right up until we don't. A lot of times what matters to us just doesn't apply at scale.

Re: Nordic is getting involved in RISC-V

#30

Post by ihattendorf »

boesboes wrote: post #17
0xDEF wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe the quality of the Chinese competitors is/was worse but ESP32 and its predecessor have completely taken over the cheap BLE/WiFi segment by simply flooding hobbyists and students with ultra-cheap devkits. Maybe something the Western competitors should learn from.

Definitely! And make sure to sell to consumers too if you want to compete. Anecdotal, but I wanted to build a 3D printer, most parts are simply not available in the EU if you are normal person. Even stuff like hex-bolts and t-nuts are impossible to source in the EU outside of specialty webshops where the markup is 2000%. And that was just the mechanical parts...

Do you not have anything like Home Depot/Grainger/McMaster-Carr in the EU? A quick check shows 3/8"-16 T-Nuts are $10/10, $15/50, and $33/100 respectively, with the first two available within a 15 minute drive of my location in the US.
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