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Amid chip shortages, companies bet on RISC-V

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Re: Amid chip shortages, companies bet on RISC-V

#31

Post by mysterydip »

fipar wrote: post #30
mysterydip wrote: post #29

What I don't get is there's millions of "good enough" e-waste motherboards, RAM, CPUs etc. out there. Wouldn't recycling be better than having nothing or waiting indefinitely? Are there that many workloads that can only run on brand new hardware?

I think that's a good idea but then companies doing that wouldn't be able to sell their products as new, and we probably need a cultural shift before widespread adoption of refurbished and used products is doable. Additionally, and not knowing much about the hardware side of things, if I put myself in the shoes of a manufacturer, it seems challenging to ship a product where the expected lifetime of some of its compon…

Those are fair points. With the amount of e-waste currently in existence I'd think we would want to address those sooner rather than later, but it's easy for everyone to just kick the can down the road.

Re: Amid chip shortages, companies bet on RISC-V

#32

Post by SV_BubbleTime »

worldofmatthew wrote: post #16
mlindner wrote: post #11

Using RISC-V doesn't let you bypass chip shortages... Do they actually understand what they're talking about?

Any fab is allowed to produce a RISC-V CPU. You will also have far more core designs that can work across different fabrication possess.

How many fabs are sitting around doing nothing saying "Oh gosh, I wish we were allowed to make something!". Less than zero, because new fabs being built already have orders and plans for what they'll be making Day1.

Re: Amid chip shortages, companies bet on RISC-V

#33

Post by SV_BubbleTime »

sremani wrote: post #28
xadhominemx wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

High purity quartz is definitely not a bottleneck in the electronics industry.

May be you are right, but can you add some color and context to your commentary. Like a good article link etc. I am more than happy to chance my mind, if provided evidence.

Considering that quartz has a ton of limitations, MEMS and other digital oscillators are ready to step in the moment that quartz is cost prohibitive.

We're already at a breaking point for low frequency quartz. You literally can't get it small enough for modern packages until you up the frequency. Find a 2x2mm 8Mhz part, I'll wait while you fail.

We're JUST NOW starting to get standardization on SMD oscillators in common packages, and these packages have typically pin incompatible (an enable pin instead of a two pin pierce oscillator setup) but same footprint digital alternatives about.

Maybe you read an article, but is incorrect to say we're being held up by quartz availability.

Re: Amid chip shortages, companies bet on RISC-V

#34

Post by MobiusHorizons »

cestith wrote: post #15
packetlost wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Without a company like Apple to put in the resources and engineering effort for something like Rosetta, there's really going to be next to no demand for a RISC-V based desktop computer outside of specialized development and maybe competing with ARM-based Chromebook-likes. Desktop systems are absolutely beholden to their platform and architecture because that's what determines which apps you can run. Any serious use o…

It's not the biggest subsegment of the desktop space, but there are a good number of people using Pi-level devices as a second desktop. RiscOS, Linux, NetBSD, and even Windows run on Raspberry Pi. Some of those run on several other similarly powered boards. In the open source space, plenty of apps already support AMD64, ARM32 and ARM64 and the distros distribute for them. If I can get Debian or Ubuntu on a system wit…

> Exynos Chromebooks and such led the way to ARM Macbooks the same way the IBM PC led to displacing DEC and Sun workstations

I think chrome books had very little to do with it. A lot of the work had already happened with the PowerPC switch. On the processor front, Apple’s arm processors aren’t at all like exynos chips that use standard arm cores. I would say that the apple silicon macs are more influenced by iPhone and iPad success than anything else, especially since iOS already runs a lot of macOS

Re: Amid chip shortages, companies bet on RISC-V

#35

Post by throwaway4good »

worldofmatthew wrote: post #3

I suspect most of RISC-V development is more towards moving away from western controlled ISA's that can be sanctioned for any reason. Points about avoid shortages from any fab being allowed to fabricate RISC-V CPUs is just the "cherry on top".

Yes. The (commercial) interest in riscv comes from China and is driven by the us china tech war. The riscv foundation moved to Switzerland as a reaction to the initial round of Huawei sanctions.

You will find Chinese companies at forefront of riscv development (ie Alibaba) and Huawei harmonyos supports riscv.

I don’t know why the article doesn’t mention this aspect.

Re: Amid chip shortages, companies bet on RISC-V

#36

Post by cptskippy »

worldofmatthew wrote: post #16
mlindner wrote: post #11

Using RISC-V doesn't let you bypass chip shortages... Do they actually understand what they're talking about?

Any fab is allowed to produce a RISC-V CPU. You will also have far more core designs that can work across different fabrication possess.

The limiting factor of a Fab is the process node. RISC-V doesn't magically boost the capability of large process nodes.

Re: Amid chip shortages, companies bet on RISC-V

#37

Post by digitallyfree »

cestith wrote: post #15
packetlost wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Without a company like Apple to put in the resources and engineering effort for something like Rosetta, there's really going to be next to no demand for a RISC-V based desktop computer outside of specialized development and maybe competing with ARM-based Chromebook-likes. Desktop systems are absolutely beholden to their platform and architecture because that's what determines which apps you can run. Any serious use o…

It's not the biggest subsegment of the desktop space, but there are a good number of people using Pi-level devices as a second desktop. RiscOS, Linux, NetBSD, and even Windows run on Raspberry Pi. Some of those run on several other similarly powered boards. In the open source space, plenty of apps already support AMD64, ARM32 and ARM64 and the distros distribute for them. If I can get Debian or Ubuntu on a system wit…

I would imagine that "good number of people" are mostly Linux hobbyists, and from my personal experience most people use them as a tinkering or IOT device rather than a full-blown desktop due to the lack of performance. If you're mostly in the terminal that's fine, but for running complex web apps a used x86 would make more sense.

I can definitely see that hobbyist market and future Pi-like devices moving to RISC-V, but I'm less certain about mainstream use unless Windows and Mac (or maybe even Android and ChromeOS) really decide to move over.

Re: Amid chip shortages, companies bet on RISC-V

#38

Post by cptskippy »

mysterydip wrote: post #29

What I don't get is there's millions of "good enough" e-waste motherboards, RAM, CPUs etc. out there. Wouldn't recycling be better than having nothing or waiting indefinitely? Are there that many workloads that can only run on brand new hardware?

You can't really slap an AT motherboard in an LED light bulb and call it a day. Fabs produce all manner of chips, not just GPUs and CPUs.

Over the last 40 years all manner of circuits composed of discrete components have been replaced with chips. Voltage regulation is a chip, battery protection is a chip, rectification is a chip.

Re: Amid chip shortages, companies bet on RISC-V

#39

Post by Symmetry »

Reitet00 wrote: post #2

Very nice to see RISC-V growing like that and being in the area of interest by big names such as Google and Intel. Open solutions are critical for risk management but I wonder if desktop/server RISC-V processors are also planned.

The flexibility that makes RISC-V so compelling in embedded roles (what if I want 64 bit address but don't need hardware floating point?) makes it a harder target for the sort of workloads that you'd usually run on a server or desktop. If I were going to create an open high performance core to challenge x86 and ARM's A series cores I'd probably use PowerPC as a base rather than RISC-V. But I do think that RISC-V has a bright future in other segments.

Re: Amid chip shortages, companies bet on RISC-V

#40

Post by pclmulqdq »

oneplane wrote: post #27
justahuman74 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's more about a potential future usage of ARM in a sanctions package. Somewhat similar to how Hauwai was was hit with a list of narrow prohibitions like access to the android store. Having an openly implementable ISA is just one less thing to worry about

I doubt that matters considering China stole a complete copy of ARM (the company) and has already released new IP under their rebranded name.

The stolen architectures cannot be legitimately sold outside of China, due to patents held by ARM ltd. RISC-V avoids these headaches.
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