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The OpenPOWER ISA EULA Draft Published - Generous For Libre Hardware

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  • #11
    Originally posted by Luke_Wolf View Post

    That's not really accurate. RISC-V ships today as the Falcon co-processor on all Nvidia GPUs, and as the microcontroller on Western Digital HDDs as confirmed products, and while I can't confirm it the RISC-V foundation at least throws around the idea that it's heavily used in In-Car-Infotainment and IoT devices. Regardless that's literally millions of units shipping with RISC-V CPUs within them just between Nvidia and WD, many millions more if the RISC-V foundation's website is accurate. It's true you can't really buy any of the products you've listed, but RISC-V seems to be well on its way in Microcontroller and embedded roles.
    Two embedded devices for a captured market is not success in my book.

    likewise I don’t see the ARM vendors going after the server market having great success either. The market is too narrow to sustain a company.

    This is one of the reasons why I believe AMD is having so much success lately. They have moved to a Chiplet based architecture which allows them to apply their limited engineering capability’s across many market segments. This drives volume, hopefully drives innovation and puts customers at ease.

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    • #12
      Originally posted by elatllat View Post
      I'm just betting the first thing they make will have barely enough to run Linux at which point I call it on microcontroller.
      So next time the semiconductor industry needs a definition of what a microcontroller is, they should just ask you, because the Dunning-Kruger inside you appears to know better.

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      • #13
        Originally posted by wizard69 View Post
        On the other hand why would the RISC-V group be considering power for a graphics engine??
        What "RISC-V group" are you talking about?

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        • #14
          Originally posted by pkese View Post
          ...the semiconductor industry needs a definition of what a microcontroller is...
          Currently it's just "small computer" like the 32MB Cortex-M55,
          which is close to a "not-small computer" like the 256MB Raspberry Pi 1,
          That's closer than a "large computer" like the 2,000,000MB Talos II.
          That's a memory comparison but flops etc have a similar range.
          anyway point is like most definitions it's vague / fuzzy, and I expect the first version to be close to the lower end.

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          • #15
            Originally posted by wizard69 View Post
            On the other hand why would the RISC-V group be considering power for a graphics engine??
            The Libre RISC-V project, which has nothing to do and actually had a fallout with the RISC-V Foundation, is looking into it, and yes, they will soon change their name.

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            • #16
              Originally posted by pkese View Post

              I don't think OpenPOWER is really suitable for microcontrollers.


              anton blanchard's microcontroller would tend to suggest otherwise! anton i hear wanted to learn VHDL. hey, why not?

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              • #17
                Originally posted by stormcrow View Post

                Bull. RISC-V hasn't gone anywhere. There's a few companies that are getting their toes wet and that's about it. It's not used in any consequential products.

                POWER on the other hand is used in real world systems in SMP servers, mainframes, supercomputers, and workstations and these systems exist right now. You can buy fully open workstations based on POWER9 right now from Raptor Computing. Where are the fully functional RISC-V desktops? Laptops? Servers? Phones? Oh right... there aren't any.
                yyyeah, you noticed that, huh? and that debian has had a ppc port for what.. 20 years? and that its highest usage is in japanese industry?

                RISCV is very popular in proprietary systems where the augmentations, firmware, modified toolchains etc never see the light of day. Western Digital, Trinamic, NVIDIA, they are all using RISCV... *internally*...

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                • #18
                  Originally posted by Luke_Wolf View Post

                  That's not really accurate. RISC-V ships today as the Falcon co-processor on all Nvidia GPUs, and as the microcontroller on Western Digital HDDs as confirmed products, and while I can't confirm it the RISC-V foundation at least throws around the idea that it's heavily used in In-Car-Infotainment and IoT devices. s.
                  where's the source code? where is the HDL? where are the Board Support Packages allowing people to program these milions of devices?

                  sorry to have to point this out. proprietary, secret anr closed systems, no matter how many hundreds of millions of units are sold, do not make a thriving open user and developer community.
                  Last edited by lkcl; 15 February 2020, 09:47 PM.

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                  • #19
                    Originally posted by ms178 View Post
                    I'd say RISC-V is still in its infancy, e.g. their vector extension is still not ratified (and still just at v0.8). And at the current speed it will still need at least another two years down the road. Also the software infrastracture is a very early WIP. OpenPOWER on the other hand still needs more momentum to gain more mindshare and traction, software wise it is also way behind ARM in terms of ISA optimizations. POWER could have been the ISA of choice for the European Processor Initiative if they had opened up their ISA two years earlier and it is late, but not too late. The Libre project is a good example that people do have a look on the POWER ISA now who originally considered the RISC-V route and it could make sense if the timeline and projects suits that ISA better.
                    we have such a ridiculous amount to do, and do does OPF. Hugh is keenly aware that they have a Compliance Test Suite to write, and set up forums, and sort out the processes for formally submitting extensions and so on.

                    however the fact that Hugh has been part of the Libre and Open communities for over 25 years really says it all. On a *long term* basis, we can see that the RISC-V Foundation is just yet another example of "Fake Oern Source", where by contrast because IBM takes this very seriously, they are willing, with Hugh's help, to take the time to get it right.
                    Last edited by lkcl; 15 February 2020, 09:43 PM.

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                    • #20
                      Did I hear a call for forums? As an OPF member we've set up a public forum here, originally intended to facilitate user interaction with various POWER hardware offerings (both our own and other OpenPOWER ecosystem vendors -- we all need and run the same basic software, i.e. software compiled for / available for ppc64[el], so it makes some sense to do this):


                      We'd be honored to host discussion on the ISA, etc. as well. Check out the dedicated board category for it near the bottom of the list.

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