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i guess two major microarchitectural optimization patent holders on core risc-v technology wasn't enough

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Intel has been a leader in microprocessor innovation for decades and today’s announcements signal that massive investment in #opensource has the power to change the course of history. Welcome Intel as #RISCV newest Premier member! riscv.org/whats-new/2022

Ariadne Conill

@ariadneconill

Feb 10

(if you were wondering: sifive and imagination, and no, you don't get those patents for free because they are out of the scope of the risc-v ISA patent grant)

Ariadne Conill

@ariadneconill

Feb 10

i for one, am just waiting for the new risc-v intel ME that is surely going to come out as a result of this

Vlad the Inhaler

(AlgoCompSynth by znmeb)

@znmeb

Feb 10

Replying to

@ariadneconill

TBH I see the phrase "RISC-V" go by and I wonder what problem it solves, given that every device I own contains either an arm64 or amd64 CPU, including my digital synthesizers. And all my GPUs are NVIDIA except my Android phone.

Replying to

and

NVIDIA has shipped billions of RISC-V cores in their GPUs. You probably own other hardware with RISC-V cores. It avoids paying licensing fees and can be extended into a custom ISA rather than being beholden to what ARM feels like permitting you to do, potentially for more money.

Replying to

and

Pixel 6 uses RISC-V for the secure element instead of licensing a secure element design from ARM and customizing it. ARMv9 is a nicer ISA than RISC-V but it's not something you can use for free and how you want. RISC-V has some odd design decisions and annoyances but it's free.

Replying to

and

Why pay ARM licensing fees for 30 different cores when you can stick to paying for the 6 main CPU cores in the SoC? Entirely possible that RISC-V is DOA for broad adoption as the main CPU cores in personal computing devices but it's very useful for small and special purpose use.

Replying to

and

but that's the problem, risc-v is now going to be stuck to small cores that go slow, because of the growing microarch patent issue

Replying to

and

But small cores go the fastest (per watt which is what matters). All the dominant big core design is rotten in fundamental ways whereby having to start over will ultimately be an advantage.

Replying to

and

That makes small cores best for many server and workstation use cases but no good for most of what people do with personal computing devices. Apple's advantage on mobile is largely that they have everything scaled up so much for the big cores compared to even the new X2 cores.

12:05 PM · Feb 10, 2022Twitter Web App

Replying to

and

That's a consequence pretty much entirely of bad software though not anything inherent to the workload.