Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

What is RISC-V and why it matters to Canonical

ubuntu.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 129 posts

Re: What is RISC-V and why it matters to Canonical

#51

Post by loloquwowndueo »

ddtaylor wrote: post #23

I stopped listening to what Canonical says. They often get involved in things and disturb the ecosystem then abandon stuff or dig a "not invented here" hole. Unity, Bazaar, Mir, Upstart, Snap, etc. All of them had existing well established projects they attempted to uproot for no purpose other than Canonical wanted more control but they can't actually operate or maintain that control.

The project bzr was trying to uproot may not be the one you’re thinking of. First release of Bzr predates git by about a month.

Re: What is RISC-V and why it matters to Canonical

#52

Post by loloquwowndueo »

unethical_ban wrote: post #28
ddtaylor wrote: post #23

I stopped listening to what Canonical says. They often get involved in things and disturb the ecosystem then abandon stuff or dig a "not invented here" hole. Unity, Bazaar, Mir, Upstart, Snap, etc. All of them had existing well established projects they attempted to uproot for no purpose other than Canonical wanted more control but they can't actually operate or maintain that control.

Not sure on the timelines, but snap, upstart and Mir were all attempts at evolving Linux ecosystem that lost to RedHat-backed systems. Unity was legit abandoned, and bazaar... Not sure what they were trying to solve there with git and forges already existing.

> Not sure what they were trying to solve there with git and forges already existing.

What?

Bzr predates git (by a few days but still). Launchpad predated GitHub by a lot. canonical just played those cards horribly and lost.

Re: What is RISC-V and why it matters to Canonical

#53

Post by themafia »

aappleby wrote: post #17
mcdow wrote: post #2

I’m looking forward to using a RISC-V computer in 20 years

You're probably already using a RISC-V computer, it's just embedded as a supervisor in some other gadget (or vehicle) you own.

I look forward to running my _own_ software on a RISC-V computer.

Re: What is RISC-V and why it matters to Canonical

#54

Post by foresto »

unethical_ban wrote: post #28
ddtaylor wrote: post #23

I stopped listening to what Canonical says. They often get involved in things and disturb the ecosystem then abandon stuff or dig a "not invented here" hole. Unity, Bazaar, Mir, Upstart, Snap, etc. All of them had existing well established projects they attempted to uproot for no purpose other than Canonical wanted more control but they can't actually operate or maintain that control.

Not sure on the timelines, but snap, upstart and Mir were all attempts at evolving Linux ecosystem that lost to RedHat-backed systems. Unity was legit abandoned, and bazaar... Not sure what they were trying to solve there with git and forges already existing.

> bazaar... Not sure what they were trying to solve there with git and forges already existing.

You are mistaken here. Bazaar, Mercurial, and Git appeared at about the same time, and I think Bazaar was released first.

IIRC, Bazaar tried to distinguish itself by handling renames better than other version control systems. In practice, this turned out not to be very important to most people.

(Tangent: It wasn't clear at the time whether Mercurial or Git was the better pick. Their internal design was very similar. Mercurial offered a more pleasant user interface, superior cross-platform support, and a third advantage that I'm forgetting at the moment. Git had unbeatable author recognition. Eventually, Git's improved Windows support and the arrival of GitHub sealed its victory in the popularity contest. But all of that came to pass well after Bazaar was released.)

Re: What is RISC-V and why it matters to Canonical

#55

Post by bobmcnamara »

Joker_vD wrote: post #29
stuxnet79 wrote: post #10

Not my area of expertise but what exactly is the difference between RISC-V and Power PC? Didn't Power-PC get a good run in the 90s and 2000s? Just wondering why there's renewed interest in RISC-like architectures when industry already had a good exploration of that area.

Ah, PowerPC. For a RISC processor it surely had a lot of instructions, most of them quite peculiar. But hey, it had fixed-length instruction encoding and couldn't address memory in instructions other than "explicit memory load/store", so it was RISC, right?

Also load/store backwards, but no reverse the register instructions

Re: What is RISC-V and why it matters to Canonical

#56

Post by bobmcnamara »

Chyzwar wrote: post #12
stuxnet79 wrote: post #10

Not my area of expertise but what exactly is the difference between RISC-V and Power PC? Didn't Power-PC get a good run in the 90s and 2000s? Just wondering why there's renewed interest in RISC-like architectures when industry already had a good exploration of that area.

[flagged]

Really? Didn't China pirate the entire ARM China company and start spamming cores like Star1

Re: What is RISC-V and why it matters to Canonical

#57

Post by gggmaster »

hajile wrote: post #39
wk_end wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ARM isn't US controlled, is it? British and also now Japanese since it's owned by SoftBank. Meanwhile, wouldn't China be more heavily invested in Longsoon?

ARM is British (America’s closest ally) and proprietary. If you’re swapping, just eliminate the risk and cost entirely. LoongArch is 32-bit instructions only. This means no MCUs due to poor code density. That forces them into RISCV anyway at which point, you might as well pour all your money and dev time into one ISA instead of two. RISCV has way more worldwide investment meaning LoongArch looks like a losing horse i…

Quite the contrary, the fragmented ecosystem is holding RISC-V back.

There are currently 3 variants of LoongArch ISA. The reduced 32-bit version targets MCUs. And LoongArch64 ATX/MATX motherboards with UEFI support is readily available. This makes it far more easier to develop with LoongArch.

Re: What is RISC-V and why it matters to Canonical

#58

Post by avadodin »

topspin wrote: post #14
Chyzwar wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

"It is Chinese companies looking for ARM alternative" The V in RISC-V represents iteration of the ISA, over the last 46 years, most of which occurred in the US, mainly at Berkeley.

They push it to save a couple nickels per core on the ARM licenses, not out of nationalistic fervor.

And it is the Chinese doing it because virtually 100% of all chips are made in China and Taiwan.

Re: What is RISC-V and why it matters to Canonical

#59

Post by charcircuit »

topspin wrote: post #14
Chyzwar wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

"It is Chinese companies looking for ARM alternative" The V in RISC-V represents iteration of the ISA, over the last 46 years, most of which occurred in the US, mainly at Berkeley.

[flagged]

Re: What is RISC-V and why it matters to Canonical

#60

Post by topspin »

charcircuit wrote: post #59
topspin wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"It is Chinese companies looking for ARM alternative" The V in RISC-V represents iteration of the ISA, over the last 46 years, most of which occurred in the US, mainly at Berkeley.

[flagged]

Maybe. People are free to partake in whatever cognitive misadventures they wish. I merely cite the incontrovertible fact that Berkeley RISC predates essentially all of the modern economic history of China, and also the rise of ARM. It came from academe in the US, for better or worse, whether it's crap or the finest ISA ever, and for whatever purpose these US academics had or or have. That is all anyone can truthfully say about its pedigree. The rest is just bullshit from the internet.
Post reply on HN