RISC-V: The New Architecture on the Block
klarasystems.com
RISC-V: The New Architecture on the Block
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Re: RISC-V: The New Architecture on the Block
#2Lately I find myself upvoting every submission from Klara Systems[0]. Focus of the articles seems to be consistently good. I'm not affiliated with them, just an impressed onlooker.
Re: RISC-V: The New Architecture on the Block
#3At least one of the points in this article isn't true. The article states "RISC-V is not affected by the Meltdown and Spectre vulnerabilities... [because it does] not perform any speculative memory accesses" -- but that's only true for some designs, not anything done by the ISA.
Many of the higher performance RISC-V designs do, in fact, do speculation. RISC-V BOOM[0], by Berkeley, is vulnerable to Spectre[1][2]. One of the attempts to create an extension to the RISC-V ISA that has integrated security features (CHERI, [3]) itself was shown to be vulnerable to Spectre-like attacks[4].
The fact that most RISC-V chips were not vulnerable to Spectre is simply because they hadn't implemented a particular kind of performance optimization, not because there was anything intrinsic to the ISA that prevented them from being so.
[1]: https://github.com/abejgonzalez/boom-attacks
[2]: https://boom-core.org/docs/replicating_mitigating_spectre_ca...
[3]: https://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/research/security/ctsrd/cheri/cheri...
[4]: https://kth.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:1538245/FULLTEXT...
Re: RISC-V: The New Architecture on the Block
#4I’ve recently gained an interest in computer architecture and systems programming in general after some high performance computing projects. Have been hearing about RISC-V from a distance, and am wondering if delving into it would be one of the best ways to satisfy this interest and gain some valuable knowledge/skills at the same time.
Re: RISC-V: The New Architecture on the Block
#5At least one of the points in this article isn't true. The article states "RISC-V is not affected by the Meltdown and Spectre vulnerabilities... [because it does] not perform any speculative memory accesses" -- but that's only true for some designs, not anything done by the ISA. Many of the higher performance RISC-V designs do, in fact, do speculation. RISC-V BOOM[0], by Berkeley, is vulnerable to Spectre[1][2]. One…
Yes, it is a fundamentally misleading assertion.
Re: RISC-V: The New Architecture on the Block
#6Lately I find myself upvoting every submission from Klara Systems[0]. Focus of the articles seems to be consistently good. I'm not affiliated with them, just an impressed onlooker. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=klarasystems.com
I do not. This article is fluff, with at least one glaring falsehood noted in a sibling comment.
Re: RISC-V: The New Architecture on the Block
#7I’ve recently gained an interest in computer architecture and systems programming in general after some high performance computing projects. Have been hearing about RISC-V from a distance, and am wondering if delving into it would be one of the best ways to satisfy this interest and gain some valuable knowledge/skills at the same time.
RISC-V is an OK design, but quite atypical. So, being simpler than others, it will be easier to understand; but for the same reason, does not acquaint you with details seen in designs currently used industrially.
Some of the design decisions, and their expressed rationale, are considered unpersuasive by many involved with other architectures. For example, a status register, cited as interfering with optimal out-of-order execution, turns out not to be a problem in actual chips (where they rename it like other registers), so was omitted from the RISC-V design on what amounts to superstition. Some instruction sequences that would need to be "fused" to match performance of common chips involve many more instructions than are fused in any extant design, so it is unclear that such fusion would be practically achievable.
Re: RISC-V: The New Architecture on the Block
#8I’ve recently gained an interest in computer architecture and systems programming in general after some high performance computing projects. Have been hearing about RISC-V from a distance, and am wondering if delving into it would be one of the best ways to satisfy this interest and gain some valuable knowledge/skills at the same time.
Depends on your background I guess? If you've taken a course like Computation Structures sure!
https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/electrical-engineering-and-compu...
Re: RISC-V: The New Architecture on the Block
#9I’ve recently gained an interest in computer architecture and systems programming in general after some high performance computing projects. Have been hearing about RISC-V from a distance, and am wondering if delving into it would be one of the best ways to satisfy this interest and gain some valuable knowledge/skills at the same time.
RISC-V is an OK design, but quite atypical. So, being simpler than others, it will be easier to understand; but for the same reason, does not acquaint you with details seen in designs currently used industrially. Some of the design decisions, and their expressed rationale, are considered unpersuasive by many involved with other architectures. For example, a status register, cited as interfering with optimal out-of-or…
If you're working on a student or hobby project then simplifying the scoreboard or whatever OoO scheduling structure you use by having all instructions be 2 inputs and 1 output is a big help. Compared to the complexity of a modern core that's a drop in the bucket but for a single person or a few friends or grad students it can be a big deal. And by doing that project you're still learning the important things. So for someone in the position OP is in I'd certainly recommend RISC-V. Don't ask "Is RISC-V good or bad?" but rather "For what purposes is RISC-V suited?"
Re: RISC-V: The New Architecture on the Block
#10I’ve recently gained an interest in computer architecture and systems programming in general after some high performance computing projects. Have been hearing about RISC-V from a distance, and am wondering if delving into it would be one of the best ways to satisfy this interest and gain some valuable knowledge/skills at the same time.
Depends on your background I guess? If you've taken a course like Computation Structures sure! https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/electrical-engineering-and-compu...
That class looks amazing. Took a higher level computer systems course in undergrad that roughly followed http://csapp.cs.cmu.edu/ (great course).