Slashdot Mirror

lkcl writes: Phoronix and The Register have an insightful look into an effort by ARM that is reminiscent of Microsoft's "Get The Facts" campaign. RISC-V's design is a revamp of the RISC concept that is intended from the ground up to fix the mistakes and learn from the lessons of the past 30 years. Power efficiency is 40% better than ARM or Intel. Compressed instructions reduce I-cache misses by 20-25%, which is roughly comparable to the same performance that would be achieved by doubling the Instruction Cache size. Yet despite El Reg's insightful analysis,
all is not as it seems: on further investigation, some of ARM's criticism has merit, whilst some of it is clear out-and-out FUD from ARM that, being so critically dependent on free software, had its own employees complain so much that the site was pulled.

Also we cannot help but wonder which "Big Chip" company offered seven-figure salaries to try to shut down the IIT Madras Shakti Project. Most interesting however is the fact that ARM -- a $40 billion dollar company -- is rattled by RISC-V enough to use underhanded tactics, whilst Intel on the other hand is actually investing.

lkcl writes: Phoronix and The Register have an insightful look into an effort by ARM that is reminiscent of Microsoft's "Get The Facts" campaign. RISC-V's design is a revamp of the RISC concept that is intended from the ground up to fix the mistakes and learn from the lessons of the past 30 years. Power efficiency is 40% better than ARM or Intel. Compressed instructions reduce I-cache misses by 20-25%, which is roughly comparable to the same performance that would be achieved by doubling the Instruction Cache size. Yet despite El Reg's insightful analysis,
all is not as it seems: on further investigation, some of ARM's criticism has merit, whilst some of it is clear out-and-out FUD from ARM that, being so critically dependent on free software, had its own employees complain so much that the site was pulled.

Also we cannot help but wonder which "Big Chip" company offered seven-figure salaries to try to shut down the IIT Madras Shakti Project. Most interesting however is the fact that ARM -- a $40 billion dollar company -- is rattled by RISC-V enough to use underhanded tactics, whilst Intel on the other hand is actually investing.

Linux kernel developer (and LWN.net co-founder) Jonathan Corbet recently posted an essay with a tantalizing title: "Is it time for open processors?" He cited several "serious initiatives", including the OpenPOWER effort, OpenSPARC, and OpenRISC, adding that "much of the momentum" appears to be with the RISC-V architecture. An anonymous reader quotes LWN.net: The [RISC-V] project is primarily focused on the instruction-set architecture, rather than on specific implementations, but free hardware designs do exist. Western Digital recently announced that it will be using RISC-V processors in its storage products, a decision that could lead to the shipment of RISC-V by the billion. There is a development kit available for those who would like to play with this processor and a number of designs for cores are available... RISC-V seems to have quite a bit of commercial support behind it -- the RISC-V Foundation has a long list of members. It seems likely that this architecture will continue to progress for some time.
Here's some of the reasons that Corbet argues open souce hardware "would certainly offer some benefits, but it would be no panacea."

• "While compilers can be had for free, the same is not true of chip fabrication facilities, especially the expensive fabs needed to create high-end processors... It will never be as easy or as cheap as typing 'make'..."

• "Without some way of verifying underlying design of an actual piece of hardware, we'll never really know if a given chip implements the design that we're told it does..."

• "Even if RISC-V becomes successful in the marketplace, chances are good that the processors we can actually buy will not come with freely licensed designs..."

• "Finally, even if we end up with entirely open processors, that will not bring an end to vulnerabilities at that level. We have a free kernel, but the kernel vulnerabilities come just the same. Open hardware may give us more confidence in the long term that we can retain control of our systems, but it is certainly not a magic wand that will wave our problems away."

"None of this should prevent us from trying to bring more openness and freedom to the design of our hardware, though. Once upon a time, creating a free operating system seemed like an insurmountably difficult task, but we have done it, multiple times over. Moving away from proprietary hardware designs may be one of our best chances for keeping our freedom; it would be foolish not to try."

Linux kernel developer (and LWN.net co-founder) Jonathan Corbet recently posted an essay with a tantalizing title: "Is it time for open processors?" He cited several "serious initiatives", including the OpenPOWER effort, OpenSPARC, and OpenRISC, adding that "much of the momentum" appears to be with the RISC-V architecture. An anonymous reader quotes LWN.net: The [RISC-V] project is primarily focused on the instruction-set architecture, rather than on specific implementations, but free hardware designs do exist. Western Digital recently announced that it will be using RISC-V processors in its storage products, a decision that could lead to the shipment of RISC-V by the billion. There is a development kit available for those who would like to play with this processor and a number of designs for cores are available... RISC-V seems to have quite a bit of commercial support behind it -- the RISC-V Foundation has a long list of members. It seems likely that this architecture will continue to progress for some time.
Here's some of the reasons that Corbet argues open souce hardware "would certainly offer some benefits, but it would be no panacea."

• "While compilers can be had for free, the same is not true of chip fabrication facilities, especially the expensive fabs needed to create high-end processors... It will never be as easy or as cheap as typing 'make'..."

• "Without some way of verifying underlying design of an actual piece of hardware, we'll never really know if a given chip implements the design that we're told it does..."

• "Even if RISC-V becomes successful in the marketplace, chances are good that the processors we can actually buy will not come with freely licensed designs..."

• "Finally, even if we end up with entirely open processors, that will not bring an end to vulnerabilities at that level. We have a free kernel, but the kernel vulnerabilities come just the same. Open hardware may give us more confidence in the long term that we can retain control of our systems, but it is certainly not a magic wand that will wave our problems away."

"None of this should prevent us from trying to bring more openness and freedom to the design of our hardware, though. Once upon a time, creating a free operating system seemed like an insurmountably difficult task, but we have done it, multiple times over. Moving away from proprietary hardware designs may be one of our best chances for keeping our freedom; it would be foolish not to try."

Linux kernel developer (and LWN.net co-founder) Jonathan Corbet recently posted an essay with a tantalizing title: "Is it time for open processors?" He cited several "serious initiatives", including the OpenPOWER effort, OpenSPARC, and OpenRISC, adding that "much of the momentum" appears to be with the RISC-V architecture. An anonymous reader quotes LWN.net: The [RISC-V] project is primarily focused on the instruction-set architecture, rather than on specific implementations, but free hardware designs do exist. Western Digital recently announced that it will be using RISC-V processors in its storage products, a decision that could lead to the shipment of RISC-V by the billion. There is a development kit available for those who would like to play with this processor and a number of designs for cores are available... RISC-V seems to have quite a bit of commercial support behind it -- the RISC-V Foundation has a long list of members. It seems likely that this architecture will continue to progress for some time.
Here's some of the reasons that Corbet argues open souce hardware "would certainly offer some benefits, but it would be no panacea."

• "While compilers can be had for free, the same is not true of chip fabrication facilities, especially the expensive fabs needed to create high-end processors... It will never be as easy or as cheap as typing 'make'..."

• "Without some way of verifying underlying design of an actual piece of hardware, we'll never really know if a given chip implements the design that we're told it does..."

• "Even if RISC-V becomes successful in the marketplace, chances are good that the processors we can actually buy will not come with freely licensed designs..."

• "Finally, even if we end up with entirely open processors, that will not bring an end to vulnerabilities at that level. We have a free kernel, but the kernel vulnerabilities come just the same. Open hardware may give us more confidence in the long term that we can retain control of our systems, but it is certainly not a magic wand that will wave our problems away."

"None of this should prevent us from trying to bring more openness and freedom to the design of our hardware, though. Once upon a time, creating a free operating system seemed like an insurmountably difficult task, but we have done it, multiple times over. Moving away from proprietary hardware designs may be one of our best chances for keeping our freedom; it would be foolish not to try."

DeviceGuru (1136715) writes "A non-profit company is developing an open source 64-bit system-on-chip that will enable fully open hardware, 'from the CPU core to the development board.' The 'lowRISC' SoC is the brainchild of a team of hardware and software hackers from the University of Cambridge, with the stated goal of implementing a 'fully open computing eco-system, including the instruction set architecture (ISA), processor silicon, and development boards.' The lowRISC's design is based on a new 64-bit RISC-V ISA, developed at UC Berkeley. The RISC-V core design has now advanced enough for the lowRISC project to begin designing an SoC around it. Prototype silicon of a 'RISC-V Rocket' core itself has already been benchmarked at UC Berkeley, with results results (on GitHub) suggesting that in comparison to a 32-bit ARM Cortex-A5 core, the RISC-V core is faster, smaller, and uses less power. And on top of that it's open source. Oh, and there's a nifty JavaScript-based RISC-V simulator that runs in your browser."

DeviceGuru (1136715) writes "A non-profit company is developing an open source 64-bit system-on-chip that will enable fully open hardware, 'from the CPU core to the development board.' The 'lowRISC' SoC is the brainchild of a team of hardware and software hackers from the University of Cambridge, with the stated goal of implementing a 'fully open computing eco-system, including the instruction set architecture (ISA), processor silicon, and development boards.' The lowRISC's design is based on a new 64-bit RISC-V ISA, developed at UC Berkeley. The RISC-V core design has now advanced enough for the lowRISC project to begin designing an SoC around it. Prototype silicon of a 'RISC-V Rocket' core itself has already been benchmarked at UC Berkeley, with results results (on GitHub) suggesting that in comparison to a 32-bit ARM Cortex-A5 core, the RISC-V core is faster, smaller, and uses less power. And on top of that it's open source. Oh, and there's a nifty JavaScript-based RISC-V simulator that runs in your browser."