Alibaba Reports Their XT910 RISC-V Core To Be Faster Than An Arm Cortex-A73

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Alibaba Reports Their XT910 RISC-V Core To Be Faster Than An Arm Cortex-A73

A few weeks back Alibaba announced the "XT910" as the fastest RISC-V processor featuring 16 cores and clock speeds up to 2.5GHz while being manufactured on a 12nm node. This by far beats most RISC-V hardware currently available and now at this week's Hot Chips conference the Chinese company is reporting that the XT910 is faster than an Arm Cortex-A73...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Alibaba-XT910-RISC-V-Speed

[CochainComplex]

does this mean it will be available as consumer product (like raspi, beagleboone etc thingy) soon? Otherwise I can not think that it will attract developers.

[juarezr]

does this mean it will be available as consumer product (like raspi, beagleboone etc thingy) soon? Otherwise I can not think that it will attract developers.

FPGA X910 already deployed in Alibaba cloud

[igxqrrl]

I've always thought that the RISC-V crowd needs something akin to a raspberry pi; a decent performing sub-$100 SBC that runs linux. SiFive's developer board was too expensive (> $1000) and availability was basically zero anyway.

That's the way to get widespread usage among hobbyists and academics, and that provides a wedge into the larger market. Right now the 'wedge' is a bunch of embedded applications, but that's honestly just not very interesting to the majority of people. Heck 680x0 variants are still used in embedded. It's just too esoteric.

[CommunityMember]

Heck 680x0 variants are still used in embedded.

And the 8051 architecture is still going strong in the embedded space too.

[milkylainen]

Claiming "faster" does not say much at all.
Assuming we have atleast one valid method of measuring...
Spent transistor budget?
Spent floorplan layout?
Spent power budget?
Etc, etc.

[pkese]

I've always thought that the RISC-V crowd needs something akin to a raspberry pi; a decent performing sub-$100 SBC that runs linux. SiFive's developer board was too expensive (> $1000) and availability was basically zero anyway.

That's the way to get widespread usage among hobbyists and academics, and that provides a wedge into the larger market.

Raspberry PI also includes a GPU and a video output, which makes it much more accessible. This thing doesn't.

[vladpetric]

Definitely good, but it's not a huge deal that it's faster than A73. It should probably be compared to more recent ARM designs, which are less toy-ish .

[vladpetric]

And the 8051 architecture is still going strong in the embedded space too.

Let's just say that it's a completely different programming experience when you only have 128 bytes of RAM

(personally I like the Atmel variants best, including 8 bit ones).

[Slartifartblast]

You've heard of Alibaba, forty thieves had he, out for what we all want, lots of LSD.