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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

#61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Arm China majority shareholders announce the company’s corporate governance issue has been resolved https://www.arm.com/company/news/2022/04/arm-china-majority-...

Yes, that resolution has occurred in favor of the CCP. ARM Ltd folded. The person who controls the corporate seals is a CCP apparatchik.

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

#62

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".

If you're manufacturing chips under sanctions your most difficult finds are going to be the manufacturing equipment, expertise, and raw materials to produce the chips. It's not going to be an ISA - there have been a litany of "open" ISAs and well-documented industry standard ones you're likely going to do unlicensed copies of. Secondary challenge here, going beyond the ISA, are pre-defined blocks of functionality alr…

You want to have lots of software for your computer. Like Linux, Chromium, compilers, JIT, etc. It reduces the number of options.

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

#63
post #4
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.

There are server specs but embedded was the initial priority. I don't think there's been a lot of attention paid to desktop which isn't a super interesting area in general although it could of course piggyback on server work from a spec perspective if anyone were actually interested in giving it a go.

What's the difference between desktop and embedded? I reverse-engineered some medical device. It houses tiny CPU and 3" touch screen. Inside it runs Linux with X Window, Chromium, Electron and software written with JS. It's definitely embedded device, it's tiny, works from accumulator, hand-held. But its software stack is not any different from desktop.

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

#64
post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are server specs but embedded was the initial priority. I don't think there's been a lot of attention paid to desktop which isn't a super interesting area in general although it could of course piggyback on server work from a spec perspective if anyone were actually interested in giving it a go.

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…

A good example was Windows NT. Over its lifetime, NT has supported Intel i860, x86, x86-64, Itanium, MIPS, Alpha, PowerPC, ARM, and ARM64. But today it only supports x86, x86-64, ARM, and ARM64. Alpha even had a Rosetta-like JIT to run x86 applications, though it was pretty slow.

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

#65
post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are server specs but embedded was the initial priority. I don't think there's been a lot of attention paid to desktop which isn't a super interesting area in general although it could of course piggyback on server work from a spec perspective if anyone were actually interested in giving it a go.

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…

One datapoint: I don't know how popular OnShape is, but it seems to have a lot of features and I'm happy running CAD in a browser for hobbyist stuff.

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

#66
post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are server specs but embedded was the initial priority. I don't think there's been a lot of attention paid to desktop which isn't a super interesting area in general although it could of course piggyback on server work from a spec perspective if anyone were actually interested in giving it a go.

What's the difference between desktop and embedded? I reverse-engineered some medical device. It houses tiny CPU and 3" touch screen. Inside it runs Linux with X Window, Chromium, Electron and software written with JS. It's definitely embedded device, it's tiny, works from accumulator, hand-held. But its software stack is not any different from desktop.

For desktop you'd definitely want things like GPU and at least video decode. So that instantly makes it much more involved.

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

#67
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…

What are the trade-offs of PowerPC vs RISC-V?

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

#68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

What are the trade-offs of PowerPC vs RISC-V?

In addition to RISC-V being more flexible than ideal here, PowerPC is more complicated as an instruction set which is a drawback if you're a student learning to implement your first processor or in a deeply embedded role. But given the huge amount of effort that goes into a high performance core it gets lost in the noise and it lets you execute tasks in fewer instructions without crazy difficult to implement levels of instruction fusion.

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

#69
post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It may be more prudent for us to perfect our material extraction process to reuse these metals and plastics, as opposed to reusing the same piece of hardware. Once that is done, we could probably have e-cycling be picked up by trash collectors just like regular recycling.

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

#70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Does anyone outside of China want Chinese spy chips regardless of architecture?
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