> Can you explain more of what you mean? What generalizations are you talking > about and how are they preventing work on RISC-V?
I merely meant that they dealt with what they had. Nothing is prevented. I think it'd make sense to treat RISC-V as what it is, a modular ISA; so per-profile toolchains would do for a general purpose OS. The exact ISA is mostly interesting when it comes to performance (the little fractions of percentage) or special applications. > All hardware has some amount of suck. Same with software. Nothing is perfect. > The amd64 ISA has some warts, but I think the pain is way overblown, most > users do not have to care at all the ISA their system runs. Just like any other ISA, I'd argue. I am pledging for a little less ranting and more kindness. Thanks. > The idea of writing a bunch of code to support a constantly rotating list of > chips is not attractive, that's why I stopped working on the risc-v userspace > for 9front. Fair. It's a lot of work for little gain, kind of. I acknowledge that. > But this is just like my opinion man, and I'm a bit of a hypocrite > considering I have a half finished power64 port I did for nothing but novelty. I'll just leave that with a ":)". On Mon, Sep 21, 2026 at 5:19 AM <[email protected]> wrote: > > Frankly, that is how Plan 9 was initially created; they looked at the > > existing ISAs and machines they had, and generalized over those. > > Can you explain more of what you mean? What generalizations are you talking > about and how are they preventing work on RISC-V? > > > There is a software abstraction to cater for general purpose software: SBI. > > If you don't like it, ignore it and create your own stuff. It's trivial to > > do, just tedious. > .. snip ... > > Feel free to design your own chip if you know better and want to prove it, > > or join RISC-V International to try to steer it in whatever way you want. > > All hardware has some amount of suck. As you have correctly stated, hardware > vendors give little care to how easy it is to implement support for OS > developers. However typically there is some other factors which push down the > scales in the favor of supporting it. Hardware availability, cool-ness > factor, performance, etc. Chip producers getting to run amok in > implementation details and saving 0.0005 cents per chip does not sound "cool" > to me, the performance is nothing really to write home about, and no one has > these things that didn't go out specifically to find them. An old thinkpad / > shitbox amd64 OEM is going to be: more standardized, more performant, and > typically does not require a custom kernel (or modifications to an existing > one) to get booting. The amd64 ISA has some warts, but I think the pain is > way overblown, most users do not have to care at all the ISA their system > runs. I would much rather folks grab these older amd64 OEM's that are on > their way to the dump (because of the new Windows11 hardware depreciation > timeline), then buy some risc-v chip that is barely more than a toy and > conversation piece. > > I am being a bit tongue in cheek here, I know there are use cases for these > tiny chips in terms of power draw, size, etc However in my experience of > watching people walk in to 9front over the past couple years, this is a very > small percentage of use cases. I see people ask about running on pi's not > because they like the pi but because the thing has been collecting dust in > their drawer otherwise. The idea of writing a bunch of code to support a > constantly rotating list of chips is not attractive, that's why I stopped > working on the risc-v userspace for 9front. > > TLDR > Sure RISC_V can suck as much as it wants, and its does not have to be for OS > developers, but if it brings nothing worth of interest to OS developers then > why should anyone bother? At its current state, it seems like just another > axis for more soon-to-be-ewaste toys. > > But this is just like my opinion man, and I'm a bit of a hypocrite > considering I have a half finished power64 port I did for nothing but novelty. > 9fans / 9fans / see discussions + participants + delivery options Permalink ------------------------------------------ 9fans: 9fans Permalink: https://9fans.topicbox.com/groups/9fans/Tbf390d3a51f65cdf-M7e9069cd6d11c89a5dbd155f Delivery options: https://9fans.topicbox.com/groups/9fans/subscription
