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Europe bets once again on RISC-V for supercomputing

theregister.com

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Re: Europe bets once again on RISC-V for supercomputing

#51

Post by simne »

matt-p wrote: post #7

Surely arm is a better choice?

When making sophisticated big projects, usually weighting many considerations, not just architecture.

Even more, some considerations could have more weight then architecture for particular case.

Examples are good compiler/libs/frameworks, some specific software, good support, experience on similar contracts, big number of professionals with military clearance.

That's why some long time IBM won most govt contracts on supercomputers.

But once IBM decided, govt is not interest enough client and after that moment, most contracts won by Intel.

Re: Europe bets once again on RISC-V for supercomputing

#52

Post by turtletontine »

muxamilian wrote: post #15
qwerty456127 wrote: post #13

Everybody who "bets on RISC-V for supercomputing sovereignty" will probably end up buying Chinese anyway.

Why? Genuinely curious

(Jumping to assume what the original commenter meant:)

China is pushing RISC V aggressively, and might be a lot more likely to succeed in making competitively powerful cores than €240M pounds spent in Europe, where money won’t go nearly as far.

I imagine one of the biggest constraints on success here is just expertise. If Apple’s hardware team, or Qualcomm’s Oryon team were tasked with making a high performance RISC V CPU, I’m sure they could crank out something incredible pretty quick. But I have a feeling practical expertise on this sort of cutting edge hardware design is a rare thing. Frankly no idea how this human capital compares between Europe and China, but I’ll be excited to see progress and genuine competition on open architectures like this

Re: Europe bets once again on RISC-V for supercomputing

#54

Post by blackeyeblitzar »

tgv wrote: post #43
rapsey wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

That's not true. If only because the EU cannot cancel elections. I suppose you're referring to Georgescu?

The EU certainly called for the Romania elections to be annulled and almost certainly interfered with the democratic process by pressuring the court. See these comments by Thierry Breton who was until recently a high ranking EU leader:

“We have to prevent interferences and make our laws apply,” Breton said, referring to the alleged Russian involvement before admitting actual EU interference. “We did it in Romania, and we will obviously have to do it in Germany, if necessary.”

Source: https://europeanconservative.com/articles/news/former-censor...

Re: Europe bets once again on RISC-V for supercomputing

#56

Post by 6SixTy »

Someone wrote: post #34
6SixTy wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Choosing RISC-V here is more about how much soverienty a country has over the IP than anything else here. The US can probably consider most-all ARM IP to be dual use technology and immediately deny use of it. RISC-V being based out of Switzerland, the ISA being under a permissive Creative Commons license, and most software tools being FOSS is definitely why it's being adopted here. It's completely isolated from all g…

> The US can probably consider most-all ARM IP to be dual use technology and immediately deny use of it. The US (certainly the current US) can do that, but ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arm_Holdings ): “Arm Holdings plc (formerly an acronym for Advanced RISC Machines and originally Acorn RISC Machine) is a Japanese-owned British semiconductor and software design company based in Cambridge, England”

There are still ARM offices in the US in which their work, IP, etc would be subject to export restrictions.

Re: Europe bets once again on RISC-V for supercomputing

#57

Post by simne »

simne wrote: post #51
matt-p wrote: post #7

Surely arm is a better choice?

When making sophisticated big projects, usually weighting many considerations, not just architecture. Even more, some considerations could have more weight then architecture for particular case. Examples are good compiler/libs/frameworks, some specific software, good support, experience on similar contracts, big number of professionals with military clearance. That's why some long time IBM won most govt contracts on…

Also in Intel case at 8086 years, very important was large number of support chips, greatly surpass any concurrent.

Examples was video chips, io chips, MMU, numerical coprocessor.

At that time (8086) Intel produced even RAM and ROM chips, so govt could buy all from one contractor, and this is also good in some cases.

Re: Europe bets once again on RISC-V for supercomputing

#59

Post by hulitu »

tux1968 wrote: post #6
mrweasel wrote: post #2

If we want this to go anywhere, not just super computing, the first step is to get devices, useful devices, in the hands of enthusiast. That means funding projects similar to the Raspberry Pi, but for RISC-V, and perhaps mini-itx boards. We need these cheap-ish computers in the hands of people who will port software to the platform. Without a good selection of ready to go software, the hardware is pretty irrelevant.

https://milkv.io/duo Gives you something to play around with, very inexpensively. But really, virtual machines may be preferable; at least to get started.

> But really, virtual machines may be preferable; at least to get started.

And what shall one emulate in a VM ? A nonexisting physical processor ? /s

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