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

[cjcox]

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.

Uh.... I thought that was the norm for any thread over the past several years. But I'm sure someone here will vehemently disagree with that.

[uid313]

Wait, wasn't POWER already open source since years ago?

Either way, now that POWER, SPARC, MIPS and RISC-V are all open source, I think that ARM and Intel should consider open source too. Maybe Synopsis should consider open sourcing ARC and Atmel should consider open sourcing AVR and AVR32.

Very cool, RISC-V now essentially has zero leverage over POWER. And unlike RISC-V, you can actually buy POWER hardware today.

POWER is an old architecture from the 80s.
RISC-V is a much more modern architecture from the 2000s.

[coder]

And don't forget SPARC, which is in active development, and has 3rd party (Fujitsu) implementations as well.

Not by Sun/Oracle, at least. Is anyone still doing anything high-end with it?

The last time I ran across SPARC in the wild was in an embedded chip, and only because it was royalty-free. Now, it has a lot of company.

[coder]

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.

Why? They've already invested in ARM. Wouldn't that cause a lot of confusion among their existing customers and those they have been courting, to suddenly change course and go with POWER? And it's not like you can turn on a dime and just swap out the ISA in your chips, either.

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.

Pine is a small fry. I doubt they have the resources to design POWER cores, then put them in a SoC and get it fabbed.

IBM only said it released the HDL for a soft core. It's not like you can just download the source for one of their POWER 9 CPUs from github.

[coder]

Wait, wasn't POWER already open source since years ago?

I think the specifications were open, but you still had to pay a license fee to implement it.

Either way, now that POWER, SPARC, MIPS and RISC-V are all open source, I think that ARM and Intel should consider open source too.

Why? What would they stand to gain by it?

Maybe, when ecosystems start getting seriously fragmented, I could see them do something like that to try and hold onto some mind share. But, at this stage, I'd say it'd be premature. You don't want to just invite competitors in your front door, when you still hold a very dominant position.

POWER is an old architecture from the 80s.
RISC-V is a much more modern architecture from the 2000s.

You'll have to do better than that. What's really better about RISC-V than POWER (or vice versa)? I have no stake in the matter, but I think it's a topic worthy of exploration.

[ldesnogu]

[*]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![/LIST][INDENT]Japan, can block ARM to South Korea..

Because you think that because SoftBank has bank in their name, they are a bank? Funny. Anyway ARM is being operated with a very high level of independence from the mother company.

As far as South Korea goes, Samsung are designing their own ARM CPUs.

[ldesnogu]

And don't forget SPARC, which is in active development, and has 3rd party (Fujitsu) implementations as well.

Fujitsu have dropped SPARC in favor of ARM.

[Dawn]

Fujitsu has not dropped SPARC in favor of ARM except in the HPC product line (SPARC64FX.) For general-purpose Unix servers, Fujitsu SPARC64 continues, and another generation is on the roadmap.

[tildearrow]

As far as South Korea goes, Samsung are designing their own ARM CPUs.

They still rely upon ARM for the graphics.

[ms178]

They still rely upon ARM for the graphics.

That is going to be different soon, as they do co-develop something with AMD as announced some weeks ago.