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Western Digital Plans to Ship More Than One Billion RISC-V Cores a Year

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Re: Western Digital Plans to Ship More Than One Billion RISC-V Cores a Year

#31

Post by 0xFFC »

topspin wrote: post #26
0xFFC wrote: post #2

This was what I exactly predicted one year ago. Risk-V ISA is coming for all of them{x86,arm,mips}. And this is very smart move by WD to jump into Risk-V wagon. Update: Why do people downvote? I honestly don’t understand.

Yes, this mod behavior is pretty astonishing. microcolonel's comment is getting downvoted as well for no apparent reason. I guess there are RISC-V haters...? Good grief.

Yeah exactly. I would say this is very informative comment but sadly gets downvoted:

>>Smaller designs, easier to license designs, simpler and more attractive ISA extension mechanisms, no royalties, no license negotiation periods, no incremental cost to adding more cores of different designs.

Re: Western Digital Plans to Ship More Than One Billion RISC-V Cores a Year

#32

Post by mtgx »

sverige wrote: post #6

I haven't been following the RISC-V story too closely, possibly because I didn't want to get my hopes up only to be dashed. From the article, it sounds like these cores will be developed solely for use in data storage. Can someone with more knowledge tell whether this will help provide the kind of production volume needed to make consumer products (like laptops and desktops) more likely to be viable? Are general purp…

It helps that the ISA is supported in more places, even if for awareness alone. Compare where ARM was 10 years ago, where it was 5 years ago, and now we're discussing having competitive alternatives to Intel and AMD in servers.

As new developments seem to happen at an accelerated pace, RISC-V should also see more accelerated adoption. It won't take 30 years to get get to where ARM is today. Maybe only 10, or less.

Re: Western Digital Plans to Ship More Than One Billion RISC-V Cores a Year

#33

Post by ac29 »

garmaine wrote: post #22
sverige wrote: post #6

I haven't been following the RISC-V story too closely, possibly because I didn't want to get my hopes up only to be dashed. From the article, it sounds like these cores will be developed solely for use in data storage. Can someone with more knowledge tell whether this will help provide the kind of production volume needed to make consumer products (like laptops and desktops) more likely to be viable? Are general purp…

You should read up on SiFive.

Specifically their Freedom products [0], which are multicore, 1GHz+ CPUs, with support for standard interfaces like PCIe 3.0, USB 3.0, GbE, DDR3/4.... and ship with Linux support.

Not about to disrupt Intel, AMD, or ARM in the laptop/desktop/server space just yet, but relatively high performance, modern RISC-V SoCs are definitely out there.

[0] https://www.sifive.com/products/freedom/

Re: Western Digital Plans to Ship More Than One Billion RISC-V Cores a Year

#35

Post by wmf »

garmaine wrote: post #29
pjc50 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a lot of wishful thinking involved in this. It's like Linux on the desktop: doable but very much a fringe thing.

Why is it any more fringe than, say, hoping for an ARM laptop?

ARM laptops already exist BTW using smartphone SoCs. The R&D has already been done and paid for.

A RISC-V server or desktop processor would have to be created essentially from scratch.

Re: Western Digital Plans to Ship More Than One Billion RISC-V Cores a Year

#36

Post by kmicklas »

jstewartmobile wrote: post #23

I guess this will be nice for industry, which may pass the savings along to the consumer, but as far as having auditable hardware that you have some control over, I don't see how this is any better than the ARM SoCs we already have--unless you're going to roll your own system on an FPGA. That, and I'm kind of disappointed everyone has drunk the RISC kool-aid. I think a lot of RISC "performance" has more to do with co…

Interesting that they relate this to linear logic. Of the various sub-structural logics I'm pretty sure ordered logic (no exchange) is much more similar to stack machines than linear logic (no contraction or weakening but still exchange).

Re: Western Digital Plans to Ship More Than One Billion RISC-V Cores a Year

#37

Post by jstewartmobile »

pkaye wrote: post #30
jstewartmobile wrote: post #23

I guess this will be nice for industry, which may pass the savings along to the consumer, but as far as having auditable hardware that you have some control over, I don't see how this is any better than the ARM SoCs we already have--unless you're going to roll your own system on an FPGA. That, and I'm kind of disappointed everyone has drunk the RISC kool-aid. I think a lot of RISC "performance" has more to do with co…

RISC-V benefits is mostly an open source license that is free of patents. I think the biggest reason for it is academic... there needs to be an open platform for academic research. I'm sure it is next to impossible for an average university to do that on ARM or x86 architecture.

Were there any academic obstructions to OpenRISC or OpenSPARC?

Re: Western Digital Plans to Ship More Than One Billion RISC-V Cores a Year

#38

Post by microcolonel »

wmf wrote: post #11
sverige wrote: post #6

I haven't been following the RISC-V story too closely, possibly because I didn't want to get my hopes up only to be dashed. From the article, it sounds like these cores will be developed solely for use in data storage. Can someone with more knowledge tell whether this will help provide the kind of production volume needed to make consumer products (like laptops and desktops) more likely to be viable? Are general purp…

whether this will help provide the kind of production volume needed to make consumer products (like laptops and desktops) more likely to be viable? It probably won't, despite a lot of wishful thinking to the contrary. Are general purpose chips likely to be one result of the development of RISC-V, or have I missed something fundamental? Out of the whole RISC-V ecosystem it looks like only SiFive is working on that, so…

> Out of the whole RISC-V ecosystem it looks like only SiFive is working on that, so it will take time.

If you look at Qualcomm's strategy with x86 competition (using Dynamic Binary Translation), it's not hard to imagine that they might consider building RISC-V application processors; especially once they've proven their ability to deliver enough compatibility and performance with DBT to compete on ISAs for which their device is not licensed (and especially if they are sued by Intel and win, one of those things where you'd jump for joy if you saw a C&D in the mail).

Re: Western Digital Plans to Ship More Than One Billion RISC-V Cores a Year

#39

Post by nabla9 »

pkaye wrote: post #30
jstewartmobile wrote: post #23

I guess this will be nice for industry, which may pass the savings along to the consumer, but as far as having auditable hardware that you have some control over, I don't see how this is any better than the ARM SoCs we already have--unless you're going to roll your own system on an FPGA. That, and I'm kind of disappointed everyone has drunk the RISC kool-aid. I think a lot of RISC "performance" has more to do with co…

RISC-V benefits is mostly an open source license that is free of patents. I think the biggest reason for it is academic... there needs to be an open platform for academic research. I'm sure it is next to impossible for an average university to do that on ARM or x86 architecture.

RISC-V is just ISA. I don't think ISA's can be patented. Just some specific instructions.
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