LLVM Clang Lands Targeting Support For The SiFive P550 RISC-V Performance Core

[phoronix]

Phoronix: LLVM Clang Lands Targeting Support For The SiFive P550 RISC-V Performance Core

Upstreamed to LLVM/Clang overnight is now targeting support for the SiFive P550 RISC-V core with the "-mcpu=sifive-p550" option...

https://www.phoronix.com/news/LLVM-Clang-SiFive-P550

[dev_null]

Am I wrong or the board (i.e. HiFive Premier P550 RISC-V) has no source code for the firmware ? What makes it any kind better than Banana PI for example ? there is even a complain about this https://github.com/sifive/hifive-pre...ools/issues/11

[Gamer1227]

Am I wrong or the board (i.e. HiFive Premier P550 RISC-V) has no source code for the firmware ? What makes it any kind better than Banana PI for example ? there is even a complain about this https://github.com/sifive/hifive-pre...ools/issues/11

This is pretty much a given in the hardware world, the firmware is where the secret sauce is stored, even open source friendly companies like AMD only ship firmware blobs.

So a 100% open hardware still far away.

[dev_null]

But again, RISC-V is sort of open platform, i.e. I potentially want it and not ARM because of this. and because I can be sure I control hardware and not hardware controls me, as well as I can customize it. Now it turns out that even if it's seems so - it is not, then question why to use it if it's slower and more expensive and SW support is worse. I.e. what is the main benefit or target audience ?

[Akiko]

But again, RISC-V is sort of open platform, i.e. I potentially want it and not ARM because of this. and because I can be sure I control hardware and not hardware controls me, as well as I can customize it. Now it turns out that even if it's seems so - it is not, then question why to use it if it's slower and more expensive and SW support is worse. I.e. what is the main benefit or target audience ?

Well, RISC-V is an open an free ISA, aka the opcode part. But everything behind it can be proprietary, means the complete implementation and firmware, microcode and so on. You can even put the RISC-V ISA as a frontend on ARM or x86 cores. Which is quite funny, because since the 80686 (aka Pentium Pro), the x86 is a CISC-like frontend on a RISC core.

[bytemaniak]

But again, RISC-V is sort of open platform, i.e. I potentially want it and not ARM because of this. and because I can be sure I control hardware and not hardware controls me, as well as I can customize it. Now it turns out that even if it's seems so - it is not, then question why to use it if it's slower and more expensive and SW support is worse. I.e. what is the main benefit or target audience ?

The only open thing about RISC-V as a platform is the core ISA, manufacturers are free to go as proprietary as they want on CPU extensions etc. GPUs are obviously almost entirely uncoupled from the CPU and there's no incentive to open source firmware for an existing product just because said GPU is coupled with a RISC-V CPU.