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It's TSMC N6. What does that information benefit you? We're still talking about a boutique chip that's not going to outperform anything from the past decade's

by stonogo 23d ago

It's TSMC N6. What does that information benefit you? We're still talking about a boutique chip that's not going to outperform anything from the past decade's worth of amd64 products.

ac29 23d ago
Because process affects performance per watt more than architecture so its a useful data point. Even knowing nothing about performance, knowing that it is N6 means it probably isnt particularly power efficient (as compared to leading edge x86/ARM).
- imtringued 23d ago
  That chip is actually reasonably power efficient, not very far away from leading edge x86 assuming 180W TDP. At 120W, the RISC-V server is on par or even exceeds the power efficiency of the x86 system. https://www.sifive.com/blog/sifive-empowering-a-new-era-of-data-center-innovat https://www.sifive.com/blog/sifive-empowering-a-new-era-of-d... According to that graph, the P870 has 80% of the performance of Ice Lake.
snvzz 22d ago
>It's TSMC N6. What does that information benefit you? We can compare performance with other TSMC N6 designs. Even more so if we also know the area and power. >not going to outperform anything from the past decade's worth of amd64 products. This isn't some U74. This is P870. Its published performance data is no joke.
- sylware 22d ago
  Yep, you compare chips on the same level of silicon process. I was curious to see how far RISC-V still have to go from a microarchitecture stand point, but even in the same silicon process level, there are other things to take into account: the RISC-V compiler support, and something which is really new: since RISC-V is a non-IP-lock worldwide standard, assembly writting is much more a reasonable thing.
  - snvzz 21d ago
    And not just the same level of silicon process, as with a reference point, it is possible to further extrapolate using knowledge of differences between process nodes. Knowing it is TSMC N6 unlocks at least this much.

by stonogo 23d ago

It's TSMC N6. What does that information benefit you? We're still talking about a boutique chip that's not going to outperform anything from the past decade's worth of amd64 products.

ac29 23d ago

Because process affects performance per watt more than architecture so its a useful data point. Even knowing nothing about performance, knowing that it is N6 means it probably isnt particularly power efficient (as compared to leading edge x86/ARM).

imtringued 23d ago
That chip is actually reasonably power efficient, not very far away from leading edge x86 assuming 180W TDP. At 120W, the RISC-V server is on par or even exceeds the power efficiency of the x86 system. https://www.sifive.com/blog/sifive-empowering-a-new-era-of-data-center-innovat https://www.sifive.com/blog/sifive-empowering-a-new-era-of-d... According to that graph, the P870 has 80% of the performance of Ice Lake.

snvzz 22d ago

>It's TSMC N6. What does that information benefit you? We can compare performance with other TSMC N6 designs. Even more so if we also know the area and power. >not going to outperform anything from the past decade's worth of amd64 products. This isn't some U74. This is P870. Its published performance data is no joke.

sylware 22d ago
Yep, you compare chips on the same level of silicon process. I was curious to see how far RISC-V still have to go from a microarchitecture stand point, but even in the same silicon process level, there are other things to take into account: the RISC-V compiler support, and something which is really new: since RISC-V is a non-IP-lock worldwide standard, assembly writting is much more a reasonable thing.
- snvzz 21d ago
  And not just the same level of silicon process, as with a reference point, it is possible to further extrapolate using knowledge of differences between process nodes. Knowing it is TSMC N6 unlocks at least this much.