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Instruction Sets Should Be Free: The Case for RISC-V [pdf] (2014)

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Re: Instruction Sets Should Be Free: The Case for RISC-V [pdf] (2014)

#21

Post by bee_rider »

ysofunny wrote: post #19

free instruction sets: this "langauge" should be spoken by all! a public ISA private instruction sets: this is a private matter, restricted to a need-to-know basis. private ISA the main difference is the private one can sneak in magic backdoor instructions, lost in the vastness of a 2^bit_depth space which is better for a languge? to be spoken used and known by many? or to be unkown and obscure? the funky business is…

It seems like, if someone has the ability to slip an evil instruction into a proprietary ISA, they could also slip an evil instruction into their implementation of an open ISA and just not document it. RISC-V leaves room for proprietary extensions, right? Why not use that?

I think RISC-V is very cool and the future, but I don’t really see how it helps here.

Re: Instruction Sets Should Be Free: The Case for RISC-V [pdf] (2014)

#22

Post by leucineleprec0n »

Instruction set baselines should ideally be well-regulated open standards. They should also be good, and not moronic academic projects running of 32B opcode space because of religious dedication to silly extensions and the uniformity of an ISA for saving pennies on microcontrollers to high performance CPUs.

RISC-V in principle is a great idea. Hopefully we’ll get something that’s at the caliber of a well-oiled machine backed by real experience and practical high performance use like Arm V8 and V9 someday that’s a bit more open, but as of right now RISC-V not only isn’t that on a technical level but is fighting some serious fragmentation.

https://www.theregister.com/2024/05/29/riscv_messsaging_stru...

And here’s David Chisnall on ISAs, which do matter:

https://queue.acm.org/detail.cfm?id=3639445

Re: Instruction Sets Should Be Free: The Case for RISC-V [pdf] (2014)

#23

Post by amelius »

snvzz wrote: post #13
CalChris wrote: post #7

There is also a response from ARM, The Case for Licensed Instruction Sets . https://web.archive.org/web/20140926222155/http://www.linley...

It is appalling how stupid whoever at ARM must have been, to respond and thus bring attention to RISC-V. Back then, RISC-V was not anywhere as well-known as it is today.

It's also a decent thing to do. In science it is actually expected behavior.

Re: Instruction Sets Should Be Free: The Case for RISC-V [pdf] (2014)

#24

Post by abdullahkhalids »

ginko wrote: post #20
ysofunny wrote: post #19

free instruction sets: this "langauge" should be spoken by all! a public ISA private instruction sets: this is a private matter, restricted to a need-to-know basis. private ISA the main difference is the private one can sneak in magic backdoor instructions, lost in the vastness of a 2^bit_depth space which is better for a languge? to be spoken used and known by many? or to be unkown and obscure? the funky business is…

>the main difference is the private one can sneak in magic backdoor instructions, lost in the vastness of a 2^bit_depth space There's nothing keeping an implementation of a public ISA from adding backdoors.

I imagine, with knowledge of the ISA, can help one can define a verification algorithm, in which, the CPU is probed with some known inputs to gain confidence that there is no backdoor.

Re: Instruction Sets Should Be Free: The Case for RISC-V [pdf] (2014)

#25

Post by demondemidi »

DarkNova6 wrote: post #8
demondemidi wrote: post #3

No one said they shouldn't be. I mean, its not like there are laws saying they cannot be free. Patternson has always used too much hyperbole and marketing himself as a crusader. RISC-V is great, let the technology speak for itself.

With market forces being the way they are, the quality of technology is becoming increasingly irrelevant. What counts is having a dominant position so you can shove down your "product" right through everybody's throat.

Really? Wow, Western Digital and nVidia sure are having ARM rammed down their throat... oh wait, they are using RISC V.

What are you even talking about?

Re: Instruction Sets Should Be Free: The Case for RISC-V [pdf] (2014)

#26

Post by bdowling »

Would copying an instruction set and ABI to make an interoperable processor and system be fair use in light of Google v. Oracle (2021) [0][1]?

[0] https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/20pdf/18-956_d18f.pdf

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_LLC_v._Oracle_America,_....

Edit: Changed phrasing of question. Also, to be clear I think the answer is probably yes.

Re: Instruction Sets Should Be Free: The Case for RISC-V [pdf] (2014)

#27

Post by [deleted] »

snvzz wrote: post #13
CalChris wrote: post #7

There is also a response from ARM, The Case for Licensed Instruction Sets . https://web.archive.org/web/20140926222155/http://www.linley...

It is appalling how stupid whoever at ARM must have been, to respond and thus bring attention to RISC-V. Back then, RISC-V was not anywhere as well-known as it is today.

[deleted]

Re: Instruction Sets Should Be Free: The Case for RISC-V [pdf] (2014)

#28

Post by lizknope »

bee_rider wrote: post #12
fidotron wrote: post #11

There was a reimplementation of SuperH as https://j-core.org some years ago and AFAIK it didn't really go anywhere, sadly. One of the things you get when dealing with OEMs, and IP licensors like Arm, is a huge amount of paperwork about patents, and I used to believe this was annoying, but have come to believe it is vital. The alternative "open" "free" approach leads to something like the cloud world, where in practic…

Amazon also, of course, designs ARM cores. But they do seem a tad less “locked in via complexity” than their cloud stuff. I wonder if that is a result of the license situation. Alternatively, Amazon may just not be very good at coming up with hardware extensions, and also trying to commoditize their complement.

Amazon does not design ARM cores. Graviton uses Neoverse cores licensed from ARM

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AWS_Graviton

Re: Instruction Sets Should Be Free: The Case for RISC-V [pdf] (2014)

#29

Post by colejohnson66 »

abdullahkhalids wrote: post #24
ginko wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>the main difference is the private one can sneak in magic backdoor instructions, lost in the vastness of a 2^bit_depth space There's nothing keeping an implementation of a public ISA from adding backdoors.

I imagine, with knowledge of the ISA, can help one can define a verification algorithm, in which, the CPU is probed with some known inputs to gain confidence that there is no backdoor.

You would just tailor your backdoor to not trigger unless a certain key sequence is performed.

Re: Instruction Sets Should Be Free: The Case for RISC-V [pdf] (2014)

#30

Post by hn_acker »

bdowling wrote: post #26

Would copying an instruction set and ABI to make an interoperable processor and system be fair use in light of Google v. Oracle (2021) [0][1]? [0] https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/20pdf/18-956_d18f.pdf [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_LLC_v._Oracle_America,_... . Edit: Changed phrasing of question. Also, to be clear I think the answer is probably yes.

Most likely yes. In Google v. Oracle, the Supreme Court ignored whether software APIs are copyrightable and instead performed a fair use test. Oracle's Java APIs remain under copyright, but Google's use of the APIs were fair use.
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