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Amid chip shortages, companies bet on RISC-V
- tregoning 4y ago"Yeah. RISC is good" .... https://twitter.com/Hackers_bot/status/1547829853231075331 https://twitter.com/Hackers_bot/status/1547829853231075331
- nikolay 4y agoRussia's new main arch, I guess.
- worldofmatthew 4y agoI 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".
- packetlost 4y agoMaybe. It's not like sanctioned countries tend give a shit about copyright law, so how would sanctions prevent the use of something they already know how to make and use? I'm just not convinced this idea holds any water.
- worldofmatthew 4y agoNot breaking copyright makes it easier for a eastern block to form around RISC-V fabrication.
- pdimitar 4y agoCan you explain how? I'm not seeing it.
- fakeslimshady 4y ago
- conradev 4y agoI don’t know if sanctions are the reason, but moving away from foreign-controlled IP is certainly a thing. Chinese companies make STM32 clones (even fixing the errata in the original): https://hackaday.com/2020/10/22/stm32-clones-the-good-the-bad-and-the-ugly/ https://hackaday.com/2020/10/22/stm32-clones-the-good-the-ba...
- justahuman74 4y agoI think it's more about a potential future usage of ARM in a sanctions package. Somewhat similar to how Hauwai was was hit with a list of narrow prohibitions like access to the android store. Having an openly implementable ISA is just one less thing to worry about
- oneplane 4y agoI doubt that matters considering China stole a complete copy of ARM (the company) and has already released new IP under their rebranded name.
- pclmulqdq 4y agoThe stolen architectures cannot be legitimately sold outside of China, due to patents held by ARM ltd. RISC-V avoids these headaches.
- oneplane 4y agoIndeed, but conversely, China will have access to ARM no matter what. This also means that we can sanction all we want, they locally have the fabs and IP to create ARM, RISC-V, MIPS and even x86 CPUs (and they are already doing all of that). Granted, their fabs can't do top-of-the-line lithography (yet?) but since they have already created 64-core ARM server CPUs and some custom AI silicon they can get horizontally scaled performance regardless. This is of course their focus: make sure they can make computers and related equipment domestically no matter what.
- spamizbad 4y agoIf 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 already implemented (eg: an ethernet controller, internal CPU busses, memory controllers, etc). Even in the RISC-V world many of these are commercial and require a license.
- vbezhenar 4y agoYou want to have lots of software for your computer. Like Linux, Chromium, compilers, JIT, etc. It reduces the number of options.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- notsapiensatall 4y agoMost hardware is not field-programmable. You can't update a CPU's DDR3 PHY to DDR4, or switch to DDR3L if your needs change. The single-purpose nature of ASICs and hardware blocks is what makes them fast and power-efficient.
- nomel 4y agoYeap! I've worked with analog and digital chip designers, along with some digital designers that now work on fundamental IP for an FPGA company. One thing they all had in common was "we avoid all abstractions". It's all as direct as possible. You don't use extra silicon to appease some tidy block diagram that makes the problem easier to reason about, because the silicon isn't made for humans to reason about, it's made for holes and electrons to do their thing!
- mrweasel 4y agoI doubt that countries like Iran, North Korean and now Russia care much about the legality of implementing a ARM processor without a license. Or did you mean more in terms of a chip that can be sold to those countries without risk? In that case you just sacrion the sale of the equipment required to make the chip, or block the manufacturer from your markets.
- throwaway4good 4y agoYes. The (commercial) interest in riscv comes from China and is driven by the us china tech war. The riscv foundation moved to Switzerland as a reaction to the initial round of Huawei sanctions. You will find Chinese companies at forefront of riscv development (ie Alibaba) and Huawei harmonyos supports riscv. I don’t know why the article doesn’t mention this aspect.
- tyingq 4y agoWestern Digital was probably more excited about the no-royalties model.
- Reitet00 4y agoVery 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.
- ghaff 4y agoThere 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.
- mistrial9 4y ago> super interesting area in general deterred by the size of the profits for the winners, and the losses for those who do not compete in global markets.. yet I suggest there are few things more interesting than a personal, general purpose computer
- packetlost 4y agoWithout 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 of a desktop (that is not programming) basically needs to use Windows or Mac OS (think CAD, professional video editing, etc.) so you're not just convincing hardware manufacturers: you're convincing thousands of app vendors, and that's just not going to happen.
- dontlaugh 4y agoTrue. But I think more importantly, there will be no demand until someone makes a RISC-V CPU that can actually compete with Intel, AMD and Apple on performance.
- baybal2 4y agoI found it to be completely orthogonal how switching to a different ISA will solve the issue of lack of underlying physical semiconductor manufacturing capacity.
- mlindner 4y agoUsing RISC-V doesn't let you bypass chip shortages... Do they actually understand what they're talking about?
- worldofmatthew 4y agoAny fab is allowed to produce a RISC-V CPU. You will also have far more core designs that can work across different fabrication possess.
- SV_BubbleTime 4y agoHow many fabs are sitting around doing nothing saying "Oh gosh, I wish we were allowed to make something!". Less than zero, because new fabs being built already have orders and plans for what they'll be making Day1.
- cptskippy 4y agoThe limiting factor of a Fab is the process node. RISC-V doesn't magically boost the capability of large process nodes.
- yywwbbn 4y agoIt’s not obvious that any RISC-V CPUs that might be able to compete with ARM/x86 will be free in the future. It would take a lot of money to design them, why would the company that does that just give it away for free?
- brucehoult 4y agohttps://github.com/MoonbaseOtago/vroom https://github.com/MoonbaseOtago/vroom One-man project. It works, right now, at A76 levels. The aim is M1 level, and the bottlenecks to that are known and being addressed. There is NO WAY one person could do with with a complex ISA such as x86, ARM, or POWER.
- yywwbbn 4y ago> It works, right now, at A76 levels That’s hard to believe. Are there any benchmarks?
- sremani 4y agoAccess to high purity quartz is the real bottle neck. You can have your own fabs and designs.. but if America and Russia refuse to sell you some Quartz.. you are out of luck! https://www.persistencemarketresearch.com/market-research/high-purity-quartz-market.asp#:~:text=One%20of%20the%20most%20significant%20factors%20impeding%20industry,for%20more%20than%2095%25%20of%20global%20HPQ%20production https://www.persistencemarketresearch.com/market-research/hi....
- xadhominemx 4y agoHigh purity quartz is definitely not a bottleneck in the electronics industry.
- sremani 4y agoMay be you are right, but can you add some color and context to your commentary. Like a good article link etc. I am more than happy to chance my mind, if provided evidence.
- SV_BubbleTime 4y agoConsidering that quartz has a ton of limitations, MEMS and other digital oscillators are ready to step in the moment that quartz is cost prohibitive. We're already at a breaking point for low frequency quartz. You literally can't get it small enough for modern packages until you up the frequency. Find a 2x2mm 8Mhz part, I'll wait while you fail. We're JUST NOW starting to get standardization on SMD oscillators in common packages, and these packages have typically pin incompatible (an enable pin instead of a two pin pierce oscillator setup) but same footprint digital alternatives about. Maybe you read an article, but is incorrect to say we're being held up by quartz availability.
- crote 4y agoBest I can do right now is TXC AV08000301, which is 3.2x2.5mm. I'm surprised you even need one like that. Most modern electronics to use clock dividers or multipliers anyways, especially once your chip is small enough that you need a 2x2mm xtal. Or they just have an internal low-accuracy oscillator. In my experience one of the plentiful 4-pin 2520 or 3225 ones usually does the job, and the market has done a decent job standardizing their footprint.
- mysterydip 4y agoWhat I don't get is there's millions of "good enough" e-waste motherboards, RAM, CPUs etc. out there. Wouldn't recycling be better than having nothing or waiting indefinitely? Are there that many workloads that can only run on brand new hardware?
- fipar 4y agoI 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 components is unknown. Support and warranties would be affected too.
- mysterydip 4y agoThose 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.
- galleywest200 4y agoIt 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.
- cptskippy 4y agoYou can't really slap an AT motherboard in an LED light bulb and call it a day. Fabs produce all manner of chips, not just GPUs and CPUs. Over the last 40 years all manner of circuits composed of discrete components have been replaced with chips. Voltage regulation is a chip, battery protection is a chip, rectification is a chip.
- kyaghmour 4y agoThere's so much more to a chip than its ISA. I'm not sure how the ISA changes anything. If I design a board around an STM32, for instance, even within that family I'd have to find a chip that has the same exact footprint to be able to replace one that I couldn't find. And even then, I'd like have to reconfigure the software ... So unless there was a pin-for-pin/electrical standard for chips, the ISA is of no effect.
- Lind5 4y agonot just the chip shortage. The rise of RISC-V coincides with a couple of other events in the industry. The first is the slowing of Moore’s Law, meaning that increases in total processing power no longer comes along with each new fabrication node. The second is the meteoric rise in machine learning, demanding massive increases in processing power. https://semiengineering.com/why-risc-v-is-succeeding/ https://semiengineering.com/why-risc-v-is-succeeding/
- joe_the_user 4y agoHmm, Is there any discussion of how RISC-V designs could be incorporated into a GPU or TPU that could train deep learning systems? Your link doesn't say anything about that but it's an interesting question.
- arnaudsm 4y agoLanguage models and image generation make fun demos, but do we have transformative use cases that'll actually require large ML compute in the future ? Voice recognition and translation are the only ones that comes to mind, yet don't require that much power.
- mise_en_place 4y agoI am personally very excited for RISC-V. I like the boot process of OpenSBI/U-Boot, can also directly boot a Linux kernel. So far I have only used the qemu virt machine w/ riscv64 cpu. OpenBSD and Debian/Ubuntu have great support, I have ordered a VisionFive board, curious to see how well it runs on physical hardware