Can anyone explain the significance of this? I’m pretty technology-literate, but I am not seeing a big advantage of this over a Linux machine? Genuinely curious.
I assume you are familiar with what CPU architecture is. The famous one is x86 and ARM. This is just another one of those called RISC-V.
The significance is mostly political. US and allies have been trying to sanction China technologically. They even tried to block export of RISC-V, but since it is open source, they can just get fucked. Now, China can only get sub par GPU and limited CPU. Pushing for RISC-V means China is aiming to further develop it to be as capable as the CPU being sanctioned effectively making the sanction useless and even furthering Chinese manufacturing capabilities in the process.
The big advantage is that this is technically more standardized and free. Unlike ARM which require license, RISC-V doesn’t so anyone can make their own CPU and get the software support already in place. Hopefully more CPU manufacturers will be created from the advancement of RISC-V making more fierce competition.
RISC-V is a set of instructions implementable to processors that do not need licensing fees and controlling restrictions imposed. Due to its reduced instruction set; it uses less power in general but is harder to write compilers that work on it.
Having it more popularised opens up the doors for more enthausists to enter developing with it.
Harder to write compilers for RISC? I would argue that CISC is much harder to design a compiler for.
That being said there’s a lack of standardized vector/streaming instructions in out-of-the-box RISC-V that may hurt performance, but compiler design wise it’s much easier to write a functional compiler than for the nightmare that is x86.
One of the implications is the development and popularization of the RISC-V architecture, which is open and can open the market for more competition and less monopolies, among other things.
RISC-V is an open source chip design. As of today, it’s still worse than x86 (a CISC—“complex instruction set” design) and ARM (a proprietary RISC—“reduced instruction set” design) but if history is any indication, open source will end up overtaking them in the same way that, for instance, 98% of supercomputers today run highly customized versions of Linux.
There’s also some political connotations surrounding it because some countries don’t want high-end chip designs to be available to their perceived competitors (whether for protectionism reasons or military reasons) but it doesn’t matter.
Linux, being open, can already run on RISC-V while Windows ARM laptops are only really coming out now. Not sure if they have plans for RISC-V. Apple has long used ARM in phones and now their M chip laptops. Reduced instruction sets tend to have better battery life and (originally) worse performance so were ideal for mobile but over time, Intel/AMD (desktops/laptops) and ARM (basically all mobile chips) have borrowed ideas from each other. So, Apple’s ARM chips can be powerful and Intel/AMD chips can be power efficient if that’s the goal.
So, the main advantage of RISC-V is that there’s no royalties or, in some cases, the baggage of aging designs that need backwards compatibility. RISC-I was originally designed as a teaching tool for universities that didn’t want to pay royalties for student toy models and wasn’t really a corporate thing. RISC-V is (the fifth version as the Roman numeral V implies), got good enough to be useful in the real world. And now there’s a consortium of companies funding it and hoping to one day not have pay royalties to make chips.
So, there’s a lot of momentum behind RISC-V. It could easily be the primary architecture someday or, if nothing else, reduce the royalty rates of the other architectures.
Can anyone explain the significance of this? I’m pretty technology-literate, but I am not seeing a big advantage of this over a Linux machine? Genuinely curious.
I assume you are familiar with what CPU architecture is. The famous one is x86 and ARM. This is just another one of those called RISC-V.
The significance is mostly political. US and allies have been trying to sanction China technologically. They even tried to block export of RISC-V, but since it is open source, they can just get fucked. Now, China can only get sub par GPU and limited CPU. Pushing for RISC-V means China is aiming to further develop it to be as capable as the CPU being sanctioned effectively making the sanction useless and even furthering Chinese manufacturing capabilities in the process.
The big advantage is that this is technically more standardized and free. Unlike ARM which require license, RISC-V doesn’t so anyone can make their own CPU and get the software support already in place. Hopefully more CPU manufacturers will be created from the advancement of RISC-V making more fierce competition.
RISC-V is a CPU architecture, like AMD64 or ARM. You can run Linux on it.
This still runs Linux, or whatever else you want to run, it just has a RISC-V CPU instead of an x86 or ARM one
RISC-V is a set of instructions implementable to processors that do not need licensing fees and controlling restrictions imposed. Due to its reduced instruction set; it uses less power in general but is harder to write compilers that work on it.
Having it more popularised opens up the doors for more enthausists to enter developing with it.
Harder to write compilers for RISC? I would argue that CISC is much harder to design a compiler for.
That being said there’s a lack of standardized vector/streaming instructions in out-of-the-box RISC-V that may hurt performance, but compiler design wise it’s much easier to write a functional compiler than for the nightmare that is x86.
If that is true I don’t think it can be attributed to it being RISC
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/20298991/does-generally-risc-processors-have-lower-power-consumption-than-cisc-processors
This will give you a basic understanding. Sorry for the YouTube link. It’s from the channel called Explaining Computers.
https://youtu.be/Ps0JFsyX2fU
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
https://piped.video/Ps0JFsyX2fU
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
One of the implications is the development and popularization of the RISC-V architecture, which is open and can open the market for more competition and less monopolies, among other things.
RISC-V is an open source chip design. As of today, it’s still worse than x86 (a CISC—“complex instruction set” design) and ARM (a proprietary RISC—“reduced instruction set” design) but if history is any indication, open source will end up overtaking them in the same way that, for instance, 98% of supercomputers today run highly customized versions of Linux.
There’s also some political connotations surrounding it because some countries don’t want high-end chip designs to be available to their perceived competitors (whether for protectionism reasons or military reasons) but it doesn’t matter.
More info for anyone who wants it:
Linux, being open, can already run on RISC-V while Windows ARM laptops are only really coming out now. Not sure if they have plans for RISC-V. Apple has long used ARM in phones and now their M chip laptops. Reduced instruction sets tend to have better battery life and (originally) worse performance so were ideal for mobile but over time, Intel/AMD (desktops/laptops) and ARM (basically all mobile chips) have borrowed ideas from each other. So, Apple’s ARM chips can be powerful and Intel/AMD chips can be power efficient if that’s the goal.
So, the main advantage of RISC-V is that there’s no royalties or, in some cases, the baggage of aging designs that need backwards compatibility. RISC-I was originally designed as a teaching tool for universities that didn’t want to pay royalties for student toy models and wasn’t really a corporate thing. RISC-V is (the fifth version as the Roman numeral V implies), got good enough to be useful in the real world. And now there’s a consortium of companies funding it and hoping to one day not have pay royalties to make chips.
So, there’s a lot of momentum behind RISC-V. It could easily be the primary architecture someday or, if nothing else, reduce the royalty rates of the other architectures.