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Intel Reportedly Interested In Acquiring RISC-V Firm SiFive

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  • #21
    Originally posted by skeevy420 View Post
    Or is Intel going RISC while NVIDIA goes ARM?
    Very probably that, in my opinion too.. If ARM is going to becomesome NVidia proprietary thing, Intel might as well pre-pare some embed solution that doesn't involve paying royalties to NVidia.
    Even more so given that Intel lost the ARM game already by selling out XScale at the wrong time.

    Originally posted by juarezr View Post
    Maybe, Intel trying to enter in the smartphone cpu market again.. Who knows?
    Intel might indeed be bitter for having completely missed the smartphone boom.

    On the other hand, by now both Android and iOS ecosystems are married to ARM. There's way too much legacy prioprietary blobs for a switch to a different arch to be interesting. (Basically Android and Apple have painted themselves in the same corner where Microsoft got stuff with way too much legacy x86 code that people depend upon on Windows for any of the other architectures (several historical ports of WinNT/2000 to various RISC) to have survived).

    Linux by being opensource is much more nimble, so a Linux-running, Intel RISC-V powered smartphone is technically feasible.
    But not as much marketable as it will be missing the large app ecosystem.
    (See the success of Ubuntu Touch which still doesn't have out-of-the-box anbox, Windows whose WSL1 ancestror didn't manage to get apps running, or HP/Palm webOS who bet on the wrong horse (they put efforts into legacy PalmOS app support, which made sense when the initial effort started, but by the time the Pre started shipping, the world had shifted its focus to Android instead. Android app support came too late)
    (Contrast with stuff like Jolla's Sailfish OS which even if it has only a small niche following is still alive and going, because is offers access to the wide app ecosystem).

    It's funny though because back when Intel exited the PDA and Smartphone market, the hardware hadn't settled yet on an arch.
    Even if on the PDA front, m68k has been mostly replaced by ARM, Phones were meanwhile still powered by a diverse zoo of RISC (ARM yes, but also MIPS and PowerPC). There's a reason why Java had popularity on featurephones, and why Android initially looked very close to Java.

    Originally posted by KesZerda View Post
    nVidia is probably Intel's biggest competitor at this point for the long run; no one else has a lineup that goes from embedded to desktop to datacenter.
    Well, technically AMD is a worthy competitor, too. But their own effort at ARM (Opteron A-seires) has been pinning for the Fjords over the past 5 year (though reportedly, only being only deprioritised, not officially killed). And they sold off Adreno to Qualcomm, so their lowest end embed start at low power APUs. So they are currently less active in the embed world.
    On the other hand they hold several significant markets.
    They are making a killing in scientific clusters (Threadrippers are making a killing in HPC, and they have regularily come under the spotlight in the past)
    And they are kind in the console market (Nintendo Switch is Nvidia's fief dom. Everything else is powered by AMD),
    which could be a trigger for them resuming their ARM efforts (or other RISC efforts. RISC-V is open, afterall) depending on where the next generation of console hardware is heading.
    So I wouldn't count them out.

    Originally posted by PublicNuisance View Post
    The whole reason I want to go RISC-V is to get away from crap like the Intel ME. Right now SiFive is the only company making RISC-V boards that are a desktop standard
    Meanwhile I am typing this on Pinebook Pro, that doesn't even have a firmware (it has a NAND chip, but its currently sold blank and the maskrom loads straigth out of eMMC or SD, where you can use upstream uboot). Pine64 is also having serious looks toward RISC-V with boards coming soon.

    Originally posted by skeevy420 View Post
    If they were gonna jump the x86 ship it would make sense to go back to their RISC roots versus going to something different.
    I know that lots of forumer roasted Skeevy on that.
    But please remember that Intel had also had several attempt at RISC very early on. These just never caugh up the same way x86 did.

    Originally posted by skeevy420 View Post
    That two year planned obsolescence is the worst part about ARM/Android. Not all ARM is like that, but when it is Android is almost always the OS the ARM device came with.
    The reason I am happy for device that officially support running Linux mainline.

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    • #22
      Originally posted by vegabook View Post

      "RISC roots"? You're joking right? Intel is the very embodiment of CISC.

      "Intel going RISC while NVIDIA goes ARM" -> the clue is in the name "Advanced RISC Machines".

      Maybe it's opposite day.
      "The Pentium Pro was introduced in 1995 as the successor to the Pentium. It introduced several unique architectural features that had never been seen in a PC processor before. The Pentium Pro was the first mainstream CPU to radically change how it executes instructions, by translating them into RISC-like microinstructions and executing these on a highly advanced internal core."

      Source: http://209.68.14.80/ref/cpu/fam/g6PPro-c.html

      All Intel CPUs since then, especially the "Core" line work like this. RISC at heart, CISC to the outside.

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      • #23
        Originally posted by lyamc View Post

        That's a funny way of saying "x86 is CISC, not RISC"
        "The Pentium Pro was introduced in 1995 as the successor to the Pentium. It introduced several unique architectural features that had never been seen in a PC processor before. The Pentium Pro was the first mainstream CPU to radically change how it executes instructions, by translating them into RISC-like microinstructions and executing these on a highly advanced internal core."

        Source: http://209.68.14.80/ref/cpu/fam/g6PPro-c.html

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        • #24
          Originally posted by Alexmitter View Post

          "The Pentium Pro was introduced in 1995 as the successor to the Pentium. It introduced several unique architectural features that had never been seen in a PC processor before. The Pentium Pro was the first mainstream CPU to radically change how it executes instructions, by translating them into RISC-like microinstructions and executing these on a highly advanced internal core."

          Source: http://209.68.14.80/ref/cpu/fam/g6PPro-c.html

          All Intel CPUs since then, especially the "Core" line work like this. RISC at heart, CISC to the outside.
          We're talking Intel's "Roots". The "roots" of X86 are the 8086, the 80286 thru 80486. These were all CISC. Indeed throughout the early 90s the debate raged about Intel in the CISC corner and everyone else going RISC. Only by the time the "80586" (aka Pentium) came around did Intel embrase internal RISC but the exposed external instruction set is, was, and will be, most definitely CISC. Intel == CISC especially if you're talking about "roots".

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          • #25
            Hmm... Personally I can't see an upside.

            If Intel want to produce RISC-V chips, they have the expertise and fabs to do so. Being Open Source is one the points of RISC-V. The only purpose in buying SiFive is to slow down the main company producing RISC-V chips.

            Still could be worse: Nvidia could buy SiFive to shut it down...
            Last edited by OneTimeShot; 11 June 2021, 02:38 AM.

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            • #26
              I believe it's not about developing RISC-V processors, it's about destroying it and using it's employees to advance their current x86 processors.
              Hope it won't happen, SiFive can do a lot on their own.

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              • #27
                Originally posted by skeevy420 View Post
                Not all ARM is like that, but when it is Android is almost always the OS the ARM device came with.
                It comes down to the individual device, really. My Xiaomi Redmi 3S (2016) still got Android 11 via custom ROMs, thanks to Qualcomms open-source policy and eager volunteers that support this device. The pace is slowing though as the popularity of that device vanished over time. But five years of OS support this is still better than most other Android devices.

                Of course you need to be a bit tech savvy to root your device and learn how to flash these custom ROMs, so there is a large part of the user base that won't ever do this. I hope that Google will do something about it to get more updates in the hands of everyone...

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                • #28
                  Originally posted by vegabook View Post

                  We're talking Intel's "Roots". The "roots" of X86 are the 8086, the 80286 thru 80486. These were all CISC. Indeed throughout the early 90s the debate raged about Intel in the CISC corner and everyone else going RISC. Only by the time the "80586" (aka Pentium) came around did Intel embrase internal RISC but the exposed external instruction set is, was, and will be, most definitely CISC. Intel == CISC especially if you're talking about "roots".
                  OK, fine, "the roots of modern x86 and x86_64". Is that a bit more specific for you?

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                  • #29
                    Originally posted by skeevy420 View Post

                    OK, fine, "the roots of modern x86 and x86_64". Is that a bit more specific for you?
                    Well not really 'cos you're still trying to qualify, say, the x86 latest iteration, AMD64 instruction set, as "RISC". The implementation may be use RISC concepts inside but to the outside world, this remains a quintessentially CISC instruction set and the last one really remaining of its kind so it's kind of a stretch to call it RISC.

                    It's a bit like saying because HACK, the facebook modern iteration of PHP, now uses a JIT, it's Java.

                    Alternatively, we can swing your argument around. Okay, let's assume modern x86 is RISC. That means there is no CISC anywhere anymore. So why are we talking about RISC as a demarcator of difference, if everything is RISC? The entire argument becomes moot.

                    yeah I'm being slightly pedantic about this but really x86 is not RISC unless you really stretch the definition down to deeply buried logic paths which nobody can see.
                    Last edited by vegabook; 11 June 2021, 06:36 AM.

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                    • #30
                      Originally posted by jamesblacklock View Post
                      Hot take: the world would be a better place if companies simply could not buy other companies. It should be seen as an anti-trust violation.
                      Hotter take: the world would be a better place if the workers owned the means of production.

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