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Open Source RISC V Processor Gets Support From Google, Samsung, Qualcomm, and Tesla (seekingalpha.com)

Posted by EditorDavid on from the world-domination dept.

An anonymous reader writes: Google, Qualcomm, and Samsung "are among 80 tech companies joining forces to develop a new open-source chip design for new technologies like self-driving vehicles," writes Seeking Alpha, citing a (pay-walled) report on The Information. "Western Digital and Nvidia also plan to use the new chip design for some of their products," while Tesla "has joined the RISC-V Foundation and is considering using the tech in its new chip efforts."

MIT Technology Review adds that while Arm had hoped to bring their low-power/high performance processors to AI and self-driving cars, "The company that masterminded the processor inside your smartphone may find that a set of free-to-use alternative designs erode some of its future success."

16 of 135 comments (clear)

  1. What's so wrong about ARM? by ctilsie242 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    We went through an era of tons and tons of CPUs. An open source CPU is very nice, and would be useful for it to be adopted, but is there something wrong about ARM based CPUs that they couldn't be used for this task? ARM is no slouch when it comes to performance, and it it is pretty thrifty when it comes to wattage.

    Is there something ARM can't do that a whole new CPU design is needed?

    1. Re:What's so wrong about ARM? by religionofpeas · · Score: 2

      All depends on the ARM core and how hard you can bargain. Probably less than $1 per core. But keep in mind that you could easily have 100 individual CPU cores in a car.

      I think the biggest reason for these companies is flexibility to make their own custom designs.

    2. Re:What's so wrong about ARM? by Daemonik · · Score: 3, Interesting

      ARM licenses their core chips, where manufacturers provide all the rest of the CPU's architecture, or ARM will license their architecture where companies can create their own cores around ARM's instruction set. So you're way off base as far as customization of ARM goes.

      The interesting part of this new RISC-V chip is will all these competing companies be able to set aside their IP claims or will they bury the chip in so many patent encumbrances that it never leaves the fab.

    3. Re:What's so wrong about ARM? by lkcl · · Score: 5, Informative

      Is there something ARM can't do that a whole new CPU design is needed?

      there's two main aspects to that. firstly: RISC-V has learned from the past 30 years of RISC processor design mistakes, and is approximately half the area for an equivalent level of performance. that in turn means that RISC-V is HALF THE POWER of an equivalent ARM design.

      secondly: ARM charges royalties for licensing their proprietary design, whereas anyone may adopt the *open* RISC-V design and, apart from needing to be fully conformant with the specification, will NOT be charged any royalties.

      thirdly - and i'm following the development mailing lists so will be watching closely to see how this pans out: open design tends to have more eyes and more transparency (but the RISC-V Foundation still operates behind closed doors and a cognitively-dissonant Charter so it's not a panacea), so despite the flaws there is a higher chance that security flaws warned of by engineering will NOT be over-ridden by marketing executives.

      so it's a triple whammy.

    4. Re:What's so wrong about ARM? by Xolotl · · Score: 2

      Even at $1 per core 100 cores is $100, in a $10,000 (at least) car.

      The flexibilty is the key, like BSD vs GPL licences.

    5. Re:What's so wrong about ARM? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative

      Is there something ARM can't do that a whole new CPU design is needed?

      The problem that originally lead to creation of RISC-V is that ARM (the company) had a history of blocking university research based on ARM (the architecture). They'd let you theorize all you want, but create an actual implementation (e.g. FPGA) to test your theory, and ARM's lawyers would shut you down. Note: ARM certainly isn't unique in this -- Intel will also shut down researchers who create their own X86. The main difference is that X86 is such an awful architecture that nobody wants to do research with it!

      Berkeley needed a "real" modern architecture to experiment with. A "toy" architecture wouldn't support the type of research they wanted to do. Since they couldn't use an existing commercial architecture, they decided to create their own, and RISC-V was the result. The fact that RISC-V may now have commercial applications is a bonus, not the reason for it's creation.

    6. Re:What's so wrong about ARM? by tepples · · Score: 2

      Unless I'm misreading rv8's description, it looks like rv8 works the other way around, to run RISC-V code on x86-64, not to run x86-64 on RISC-V.

    7. Re:What's so wrong about ARM? by spth · · Score: 2

      By now, the patents for the ARM architectures up to ARMv5 should indeed have expired (current is ARMv8). ARM needs to keep extending the instruction set with new patented stuff to keep control. So I guess you could make a free ARM-compatible code as long as you either always stay 20 years behind on the current ARM version, or try to come up with an incompatible extension of the ARM architecture. The first doesn't look good if you want to have free cutting-edge technology. The second one looses most of the benefits of ARM compability, so you'd better choose some other established architecture, such as RISC-V instead.

  2. Bizarre article by Richard+W.M.+Jones · · Score: 5, Informative

    I've been working for a couple of years on Fedora and Linux on RISC-V and the "Seeking alpha" article is the strangest thing. The RISC-V Foundation offers BSD-licensed specs and multiple CPU designs (and a lot more besides). WD, Google, and many more are members. But they are not in any real sense "joining forces to develop a new open-source chip design". The design and chips are already out there, you can make your own FPGA or (if you're very rich) ASIC and have been able to for years. WD are going to switch all their hard drives to RISC-V soon. Google are likely interested because it could be used for their TPUs of their own design. "Joining forces" just means the companies subscribed to the Foundation for a very nominal fee, back-of-the-sofa loose change for these companies.

    --
    libguestfs - tools for accessing and modifying virtual machine disk images
  3. Re:DIY by Richard+W.M.+Jones · · Score: 2

    I haven't looked but probably all you get is the layouts

    Pro-tip: Look at what you're posting about before posting such nonsense.

    --
    libguestfs - tools for accessing and modifying virtual machine disk images
  4. Re:DIY by religionofpeas · · Score: 2

    So where are they? I mean this is open source right, and they aren't just throwing that around as a buzzword so where is the website for it, where are the specs, where is the 'how to' articles or anything else.

    I don't know. Impossible to find anything.

    https://riscv.org/

  5. Re:DIY by RhettLivingston · · Score: 3, Informative

    Uhh. This is not exactly new. The foundation has been around a few years and designs have already been made. Their easily identified website is https://riscv.org/.

  6. Re: This is about cutting development costs... by Aighearach · · Score: 2

    They're both correct, and English is an open language so if you already observed a thousand examples of a construction that means you already have evidence of its use, and therefore its correctness.

    Stop blathering like an ignoramus and learn you an English.

    If you want rules, switch to French. They have rules. English only has style guides and known constructions.

  7. So, the dime processor isn't paying out. by Darkness+Of+Course · · Score: 2

    ARM generally makes nearly nothing on a CPU/SoC. Some were less than a penny (US) and the max were closer to a dime. Many companies, Intel, Apple, and such have paid their fee and they're done.

    So exactly WTF was ARM expecting long run? ARM is very good at low power. Very, very good in fact. But high functioning isn't their forte. ARM core designs are slow moving beasties. If a company needs a faster solution they need to be as heavy into the solution as building their own 64bit ARM a full year before anyone else, e.g. apple.

    RISC V will allow faster design cycles. RISC V will let those champing on the bit to move forward without their high demand sitting on ARM's low power bus. One doubts they will all agree to use the same version of the silicon, just as one wouldn't expect them to share an ARM solution.

  8. Re:DIY by HotNeedleOfInquiry · · Score: 2

    Yes, fabbing a chip is somewhere between expensive and astronomical. OTOH, you can design your own medium size CPU and program it into a FPGA for $1000. Or a small one into a CPLD for $100. So yeah, you can build a working CPU in your home. Just not 1000 of them.

    --
    "Eve of Destruction", it's not just for old hippies anymore...
  9. Re: This is about cutting development costs... by not+flu · · Score: 2

    How very german.