'Is It Time For Open Processors?' (lwn.net)

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."

Comments

Re:No chance of becoming mainstream

[alvinrod]

It might find some niche even if never becomes a mainstream product, much like Linux never really took off on the desktop, but became insanely important in the server space. I suspect that this could be successful for low-cost devices that need a lightweight processor. As overall device costs decrease, the extra costs from buying a third party SoC become larger and using an old process node and an open design is going to result in some potentially significant savings.

I also think something like this has some value in education even if it doesn't do much commercially.

work with the military

[Goldsmith]

DARPA had (has?) a program to try and figure out how to ensure the computer hardware DoD is purchasing is what is actually being delivered. There are more problems with hardware than simply design and the cost of buying fab time. Validation that the design was produced correctly is not trivial in complex hardware. Opening the whole process would help solve that problem, and the DoD may have the deep pockets necessary to pay for actual hardware builds.