ARM Launches "Facts" Campaign Against RISC-V

[phoronix]

Phoronix: ARM Launches "Facts" Campaign Against RISC-V

It looks like Arm Limited is going on the offensive against the RISC-V open-source processor instruction set architecture...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=ARM-RISC-V-Facts

[Gymnasiast]

Launching a "get the facts" campaign about your competitor is admitting your product is dying. Microsoft infamously launched one against Linux back in 2005.

[89c51]

Is it just me or ARM seems to be worried a lot for something that is practically non existent.

[Weasel]

Launching a "get the facts" campaign about your competitor is admitting your product is dying. Microsoft infamously launched one against Linux back in 2005.

Yeah we can all see, after 13 years, how Windows is completely dead with its 90% market share on the desktop. (and no, it's not better than ever, in fact the contrary, it sucks more than ever)

[NateHubbard]

It seems to foolish to draw so much attention to your competition.

[bug77]

If their only argument is RISC-V is new, they're screwed.

[89c51]

Is it just me or ARM seems to be worried a lot for something that is practically non existent.

[Gymnasiast]

Yeah we can all see, after 13 years, how Windows is completely dead with its 90% market share on the desktop. (and no, it's not better than ever, in fact the contrary, it sucks more than ever)

The campaign revolved around the use of Windows and Linux on _servers_. Windows does not nearly have 90% of the server market, not even back in 2005.

[kpedersen]

They are worried that once a truly open-source chip becomes available, it will not only dominate the market but will also deny any proprietary system from *ever* gaining a foothold in the market again.

RISC-V is not yet fully open but once its popularity increases, it has a very good chance of the community finishing off those final (oddly pointless) closed parts.

That said. There are a lot of berks, in this world. I don't know if RISC-V will be able to hit off this time round. But something like this will come along and finally succeed.

[Weasel]

No RISC CPU will ever compete at performance, sorry to burst your guys' bubble.

ARM is not even a RISC, it's a hybrid. The only RISC things it has is the large register set (which isn't even that good after 16) and the explicit load-store model. If you compare it to MIPS you'll see what a real RISC looks like, and why it's so bad at performance.

We're in an era where more and more has to be done in the hardware to get any meaningful performance. There's a reason ASICs are much more efficient than any general-purpose processor -- specialized hardware is simply superior (which is what complex instructions are all about). You can design a CPU with just one instruction (subtraction, and ability for it to work on the instruction pointer) and it can compute anything in existence, but it will be so slow rendering it unusable for anything practical.

ARM is probably scared because they won't have anything to stand on except for "ubiquity in mobile space". Not as good as a CISC CPU (for performance) and not open like RISC-V, who would pick a middle ground that satisfies nobody? Not even in embedded applications.