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

ARM: “RISC-V Architecture: Understand the Facts”

riscv-basics.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 123 posts

Re: ARM: “RISC-V Architecture: Understand the Facts”

#81

Post by SlowRobotAhead »

IDK...

Everyone freaking out about how "disruptive" an open source core would be... You still need someone to place it on silicon (unless you want to waste most of your FPGA on a soft core) and you need someone to make peripherals which lets be honest is 80%-95% of what Cortex M-type embedded processors are doing at any given time. These seem like the major barriers that aren't solved by removing a licensing fee for the core.

Maybe I just don't get it, but it seems a LONG way out for RISC-V powered top tier phones.

Re: ARM: “RISC-V Architecture: Understand the Facts”

#82

Post by _chris_ »

SlowRobotAhead wrote: post #81

IDK... Everyone freaking out about how "disruptive" an open source core would be... You still need someone to place it on silicon (unless you want to waste most of your FPGA on a soft core) and you need someone to make peripherals which lets be honest is 80%-95% of what Cortex M-type embedded processors are doing at any given time. These seem like the major barriers that aren't solved by removing a licensing fee for…

Let's say I'm making an SoC and I need an always-on service processor. It's a waste of effort for me to make it myself, so I'll either license one or grab one off the internet, if I could trust it.

In the past, people just threw a little bit of money to ARM and called it a day.

But now, I could grab picorv32 or rocket for free off the internet. Both have been taped out in this capacity before, both speak standard bus interfaces, and the former has been fully(?) formally verified.

Sure, it's not a resounding success story, but it helps me get my SoC to market sooner and at a lower cost (no need to even spend time negotiating with anybody).

Re: ARM: “RISC-V Architecture: Understand the Facts”

#84

Post by cwzwarich »

_chris_ wrote: post #82
SlowRobotAhead wrote: post #81

IDK... Everyone freaking out about how "disruptive" an open source core would be... You still need someone to place it on silicon (unless you want to waste most of your FPGA on a soft core) and you need someone to make peripherals which lets be honest is 80%-95% of what Cortex M-type embedded processors are doing at any given time. These seem like the major barriers that aren't solved by removing a licensing fee for…

Let's say I'm making an SoC and I need an always-on service processor. It's a waste of effort for me to make it myself, so I'll either license one or grab one off the internet, if I could trust it. In the past, people just threw a little bit of money to ARM and called it a day. But now, I could grab picorv32 or rocket for free off the internet. Both have been taped out in this capacity before, both speak standard bus…

> But now, I could grab picorv32 or rocket for free off the internet. Both have been taped out in this capacity before, both speak standard bus interfaces, and the former has been fully formally verified.

What do you mean by "fully formally verified"? My understanding is that picorv32 has been verified by riscv-formal, and riscv-formal performs bounded model checking, which is not full formal verification unless you otherwise establish an upper bound on trace lengths that must be considered to find a bug.

Re: ARM: “RISC-V Architecture: Understand the Facts”

#85

Post by cpeterso »

flyinghamster wrote: post #31
MisterTea wrote: post #23

I call shenanigans, this is a fake page. First off the page isn't coming from arm's own domain yet it appears to mimic the look and feel of the arm site. No cookie acceptance policy and the missing links from the bottom of the page are further proof.

Not to mention the domain's registration is anonymized.

whois says arm.com is registered through Com Laude and hosted on Akamai while riscv-basics.com is registered through Wild West Domains and hosted on Azure.

https://whois.domaintools.com/arm.com

https://whois.domaintools.com/riscv-basics.com

Re: ARM: “RISC-V Architecture: Understand the Facts”

#86

Post by SlowRobotAhead »

_chris_ wrote: post #82
SlowRobotAhead wrote: post #81

IDK... Everyone freaking out about how "disruptive" an open source core would be... You still need someone to place it on silicon (unless you want to waste most of your FPGA on a soft core) and you need someone to make peripherals which lets be honest is 80%-95% of what Cortex M-type embedded processors are doing at any given time. These seem like the major barriers that aren't solved by removing a licensing fee for…

Let's say I'm making an SoC and I need an always-on service processor. It's a waste of effort for me to make it myself, so I'll either license one or grab one off the internet, if I could trust it. In the past, people just threw a little bit of money to ARM and called it a day. But now, I could grab picorv32 or rocket for free off the internet. Both have been taped out in this capacity before, both speak standard bus…

>Sure, it's not a resounding success story, but it helps me get my SoC to market sooner and at a lower cost (no need to even spend time negotiating with anybody).

Ok, but you're then dumping what at least a million dollars into someone else's firmware that is unsupported if there is an issue? IDK. I can think of lots of cases where it might make sense for the hobbiest, or for softcores or for weird applications - but...

There are engineers from STM with desks at ARM, and engineers from ARM with desks at STM. I just don't see STM saying "fuck it, let's just spool up some core we contributed to as a fully in house project". They already need to support their peripherals and production, maybe they are paying enough to ARM to make it worth it to add core code to that list, maybe not.

ARM makes a ton of money, but they also assume all of the contractual obligations for issues and support. I'm not sure the entire industry would be using ARM if it made sense to spool up your own, even as open source. But again, IDK.

Re: ARM: “RISC-V Architecture: Understand the Facts”

#87

Post by _chris_ »

cwzwarich wrote: post #84
_chris_ wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's say I'm making an SoC and I need an always-on service processor. It's a waste of effort for me to make it myself, so I'll either license one or grab one off the internet, if I could trust it. In the past, people just threw a little bit of money to ARM and called it a day. But now, I could grab picorv32 or rocket for free off the internet. Both have been taped out in this capacity before, both speak standard bus…

> But now, I could grab picorv32 or rocket for free off the internet. Both have been taped out in this capacity before, both speak standard bus interfaces, and the former has been fully formally verified. What do you mean by "fully formally verified"? My understanding is that picorv32 has been verified by riscv-formal, and riscv-formal performs bounded model checking, which is not full formal verification unless you…

Apologies, I may be speaking out of my $(# on that. I'm aware Clifford has used it to demonstrate formal method techniques, but I don't know the full extend to it. Caveat Emptor to anyone who decided to rush out and add it to their SoC. ;)

Re: ARM: “RISC-V Architecture: Understand the Facts”

#88

Post by _chris_ »

SlowRobotAhead wrote: post #86
_chris_ wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's say I'm making an SoC and I need an always-on service processor. It's a waste of effort for me to make it myself, so I'll either license one or grab one off the internet, if I could trust it. In the past, people just threw a little bit of money to ARM and called it a day. But now, I could grab picorv32 or rocket for free off the internet. Both have been taped out in this capacity before, both speak standard bus…

>Sure, it's not a resounding success story, but it helps me get my SoC to market sooner and at a lower cost (no need to even spend time negotiating with anybody). Ok, but you're then dumping what at least a million dollars into someone else's firmware that is unsupported if there is an issue? IDK. I can think of lots of cases where it might make sense for the hobbiest, or for softcores or for weird applications - but…

I think you underestimate just how many hardware startups there are and how many of them are NOT going to license an ARM core for their service core.

Re: ARM: “RISC-V Architecture: Understand the Facts”

#89

Post by FullyFunctional »

dtech wrote: post #76
deepnotderp wrote: post #52

Yes, it's from arm, who has a vested interest, yes it's in poor taste, and yes, it's stretching in some places, but it's not necessarily inaccurate...

I do not understand the commotion either. As far as attack ads go, this keeps very close to the truth and points out legitimate concerns. This so far away from the early 00's Microsoft anti-Linux campagin that you can't even really call it FUD

Because it's fud. Each of the five points are either lies or stretching the truth, and is missing a key element: RISC-V allows people to innovate (on the implementation, not necessarily adding instructions to the ISA). To do this for Arm requires an architectural license which is insanely expensive (you can start many start ups for just this alone).

Re: ARM: “RISC-V Architecture: Understand the Facts”

#90

Post by convolvatron »

graycrow wrote: post #45
snvzz wrote: post #5

ARM is apparently and unsurprisingly scared shitless about the RISC-V threat.

They may be scared and this is completely normal. What is not normal - it's the fact that there is a person placed high enough in the ARM's chain of command, who sanctioned this dumb page - like "oh, that's really nice - it will help us a lot, publish it".

maybe the world would be better off if we treated marketing as a sunk cost and stopped encouraging them to actually try to control the narrative.
Post reply on HN