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POWER ISA Contributed To Open-Source, OpenPOWER Joining The Linux Foundation

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  • #11
    Originally posted by Blahblah View Post
    Except that RISC-V is a nicely designed ISA that communicates its feature set very explicitly. I have no clue about POWER; point is the quality of the ISA itself can't be ignored.
    RISC-V is brand new, some extensions are not even ratified yet, e.g. the vector extension is still a draft. I've heard lots of praise for the POWER ISA from a Nvidia C++ compiler engineer. But I cannot judge it myself.

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    • #12
      Originally posted by cipri View Post

      This shows what a power-horse risc-v is, it is already changing the industry!
      Specifically it's likely a response to Alibaba's RISC-V server processors and boards.

      Originally posted by cipri View Post
      I guess their plan might be: let's destroy risc-v , and then we let power to outdate, and we catch the customers again later with a new improved isa, and this time not royalty-free.
      You could have said as much about OpenPOWER but no longer now that POWER is part of OpenPOWER. That's to say, They specifically released POWER to address that concern. Just to be clear, it's mostly a trademark/ip thing. There's no real differences between OpenPOWER and POWER aside from one or two math/crypto instructions that you could substitute with something else easily enough.

      Originally posted by cipri View Post
      Risc-V is new, build with the latest modern hardware insights and demands.
      Talos' position paper on the subject covers everything I have to say: https://www.crowdsupply.com/raptor-c...story-of-power

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      • #13
        “Talos' position paper on the subject covers everything I have to say: https://www.crowdsupply.com/raptor-c...story-of-power

        hmm... not sure that I’m gonna 100% believe a press release from a company selling Power boards....

        still a second Open ISA should be fun - would be good to also have official open Verilog to go with it like RiscV has, though.

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        • #14
          Originally posted by cipri View Post
          I would not really trust an imitator. Power could have been open sourced long time ago.
          Ok, you're in the wrong forum then. This place is for GNU / Linux. The AT&T System V UNIX forums are over there. --->
          Last edited by torsionbar28; 20 August 2019, 02:46 PM.

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          • #15
            This is one of the weirdest threads I've been on in recent memory. Basically everyone is saying the opposite of each other, and with high confidence too.

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            • #16
              Originally posted by Snaipersky View Post
              Well, the current risc-v implementations are rather low powered affairs. I envision riscV taking Arm's place, and power taking the high end.
              I think MIPS is better positioned for taking the low power market back again, at least in the US,
              Since Software Ecosystem to Vendors, MIPS, even though that is not in the headlines...it his everywhere..

              It market share is a lot bigger than Power Architecture..

              And the trigger event for MIPS to raise Again, IMO happen when Russian Baikal-T1 was released,
              It is a Silicon proven truth that MIPS can compete with ARM, toe to toe, also in low power market( with TSMC saying at the time it could achieve 2Ghz, and Baikal stating 1.5Ghz.. ), it broke the world record of ( CoreMark/Mhz/Watt ).

              MIPS ended acquired by US Wave Computing, with plans to open Source it:
              Once the MIPS Open Community is launched, registered members will have access to the following IP and technology resources:
              • The open source version of the 32 and 64-bit MIPS Instruction Set Architecture (ISA), Release 6
              I am not quite sure, if the last version is release 7, but I believe so..
              Resuming they are open-sourcing Release 6, which is already Amazing..

              AFAIK, til date only Green Waves, SiFive( CPU ) partnering with a European Graphics Company ThinkSilicon( some sort of "Tesla of mobile Graphics.." ), Alibaba, have RISC-V Silicon proven designs.
              A lot of countries are already using massively the MIPS architecture, since networking to automation, to Embedded space..

              Now,
              RISC-V could have a chance:
              • US now has MIPS( which could mean "Game Over" for Russia..?!, But Russia has its how derived MIPS/ELBRUS/Others/RISC-V designs too ),
              • Japan has ARM( ARM is a Japanese Company with headquarters still in the UK...yes is a Japanese Bank Owned Company.. ),
              • South Korea( which is in a trade war with Japan right now...), what it owns? Nothing!
              Japan, can block ARM to South Korea..

              For South Korea,
              I don't know what strategy they will follow..,
              But Maybe the US could restrain Japan from blocking ARM-IP to them.. it could also appears a RISC-V there too on phones, this subject will approximate China and South Korea, they share the same problem..
              • China which is in a trade war with US, what it owns?
              MIPS based LoongSon, which seems to be great for servers, and desktops( I will get the last version that will pop out of France in October.. ).
              But for Mobile Phones, seems UK/Japan/US can block them to have access to ARM devices..
              So,
              China and South Korea, are in a difficult position..
              Alibaba, Launching a super RISC-V CPU, could be the beginning of something..because in Risc-v China can compete with the rest of the World..
              For Now, CPU will be ARM based..

              With multiple accelerators for HPC and AI:
              Such a vector processing unit (VPU), a stencil/tensor accelerator (STX) and a variable precision co-processor (VRP), RISC-V made.
              For Automotive massive processing, will be the French based KalRay's design Accelerators..

              The LEON4, a openSparc V8, I think will continue for Space applications, ...don't know?!


              So... RISC-V will pop out,
              In my Opinion from Europe generally speaking( Europe has 51 Countries.. ),
              from China because it needs too set itself free of the blockade system( even tough it has a CSKY embedded arch, but I think more lower end.. ),
              maybe from South Korea too, because it also wants to be free of Japan Hands..
              Ho I forgot,
              It will pop out from India too, search about the Madras project something like that..

              What we don't know is in what terms it will pop out..
              This uncertainty, could lead to a greater market share for MIPS,
              Which is already established in Software and Hardware, and has IMO, the most beautiful SIMD implementation I saw til date..)

              Last edited by tuxd3v; 20 August 2019, 02:55 PM. Reason: Complement..

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              • #17
                Originally posted by L_A_G View Post
                I guess this is one way to try to make Power relevant again, but it's also a pretty hopeless effort when x86 and ARM have pretty much cornered pretty much everything from ultra-low voltage applications to high end servers.
                Except that POWER is generating revenue into the $Billions for IBM, and RHEL on POWER is a significant part of that. The top500 supercomputer list shows POWER running 3 of the top 10 supercomputers, including the #1 and #2 largest.

                Now that the long slow sinking of intel's Itanic is done, there is an opening for a high end chip to replace it. HP-UX and OpenVMS still run on Itanium exclusively. And don't forget SPARC, which is in active development, and has 3rd party (Fujitsu) implementations as well.

                Too many people wrongly assume AMD64 processors (including the intel clones) are the only relevant thing out there, but the market says otherwise.
                Last edited by torsionbar28; 20 August 2019, 03:05 PM.

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                • #18
                  Originally posted by Ipkh View Post
                  I keep seeing the phoronix test suite numbers and just don't see how power isa competes with AMD/Intel in the server space. Must be a mainframe thing.
                  Well in Mainframes for sure it compete, but only in performance, not in cost..
                  Its for heavy loads, and heavy threaded Environments..
                  Even though that Power8, and I think Power9, are different from Power6/7( I have no experience with Power8/9..) ?

                  Power 6/7 can work with lightweight threads( CMT+{ SMT2_power6, SMT4_power7 } ),
                  x86 works with heavy threads SMT2,
                  Power8/9, I think its SMT4, so its closer to x86, but also more threads( double, ..which mean lighter threads than x86..but a lot heavier than power6/7..).

                  That has to do with the fact that x86 dominate the market, and so software is tailored for it, so power6/7 to benefit from its architecture needs to be done programming in mind for that arch..

                  That dominance problem, lead IBM to increase weight of each thread,
                  So that it could be more competitive( because of the way software is developed, but still with STM4, so that if you need parallelization, you could take advantage of it..)..

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                  • #19
                    “This is one of the weirdest threads I've been on in recent memory. Basically everyone is saying the opposite of each other, and with high confidence too.”

                    yeah - it’s almost like an interesting discussion with lots of valid and sensible points of view for the pros and cons of a subject Many years ago it’s how we used to have political discussions, before the world went crazy!

                    I’m for RiscV as they have the open ethos from the start. I’m for Power because they have instant business credibility. Basically it’s win-win in my book!

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                    • #20
                      If I was Ampere (or someone like them), I would take that POWER9, run right over to TSMC and get it on a new node toot sweet. Use that assembly agreement with Lenovo and start marketing product.

                      As for Talos, they now have a fully open platform, from Coreboot to the CPU.

                      As for any other cross impacts of open sourcing the ISA, I would like to see it foster more software development, specifically anything not a database (like DB2 or Oracle), and grow the ecosystem.

                      If someone could create a 2C/8T ULV POWER ISA CPU wimpy enough for the hobbyist board world (Hello, Pine?), then you can get some organic level visibility.

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