On Fri, Feb 2, 2024 at 11:38 AM D. Hugh Redelmeier via talk <
talk@gtalug.org> wrote:
For serious applications, the openness RISC-V helps but doesn't make everything you need open and free. Or even available. You actually need chip designs -- what SiFive sells.
If the RISC-V design is open source, what is SiFive selling? Something easily copyable? Support and documentation?
ARM has a vibrant ecosystem with all these things available for licensing. And ARM doesn't seem to be too greedy. Even so, it has taken a long time to get ARM processors that match x86 at the high end.
Assuming that ARM's time to implement was not a matter of laziness, doesn't its experience suggest that RISC-V will take similarly long -- or longer -- to evolve from low-level SBCs to high-end computing?
So: if you want a short time to delivery, ARM is way ahead.
Plus, ARM has clients such as Qualcomm and Samsung and Apple that have decades of experience in implementation of the architecture and lots of high-quality fabs.
So the definition of "short" here could be an understatement.
If you think more strategically, RISC-V has some advantages.
Not sure I gather this conclusion from the rationale.
The US used a foot-gun on Huawei by banning ARM from dealing with Huawei. The largest damage is to ARM: China can no longer think of ARM as a reliable partner. So China will switch to RISC-V (there really isn't
a better choice).
Sure, this means that Chinese R&D will focus on RISC-V. As will that of its military clients and other lesser-aligned countries such as Pakistan, Russia and Brazil. OTOH, US allies won't be sinking much into RISC-V for fear of running afoul of the same embargoes and sanctions that have hit AMD, TSMC etc. As a result you have Western R&D entrenching around ARM, such as the recent move by Nvidia to start making PC-speed ARM designs.
China is wary of buying from a US company like SiFive.
So, yeah, geopolitics have intervened to retard the progress of perhaps the best-ever shot at major open hardware goodness. Shame.