(Top posting because unmangling Evan's message is hard.)
For serious applications, the openness RISC-V helps but doesn't make
everything you need open and free. Or even available. You actually need
chip designs -- what SiFive sells. You also need a lot of other modules
for things like USB, PCIe, Power Management, ...
ARM has a vibrant ecosystem with all these things available for licensing.
And ARM doesn't seem to be too greedy. Even so, it has taken a long time
to get ARM processors that match x86 at the high end.
So: if you want a short time to delivery, ARM is way ahead.
If you think more strategically, RISC-V has some advantages.
The US used a foot-gun on Huawei by banning ARM from dealing with Huawei.
The largest damage is to ARM: China can no longer think of ARM as a
reliable partner. So China will switch to RISC-V (there really isn't
a better choice). RISC V International is in Switzerland to try to evade
US games.
Space stuff has long term horizons. That's another area that has shown
RISC-V interest. But that's not a business that uses a large number of
processors. Space designs rarely feed back into the mainstream.
China is wary of buying from a US company like SiFive. Chinese companies
are developing their own expertise and products. So SiFive is surely
suffering from the above-mentioned foot-gun blast.
As a software guy, I don't actually have a horse in this race. Linux runs
on all these platforms. I like "open" and RISC but my desktop is going to
be x86 for some time.
There are RISC-V Single Board Computers in the Raspberry Pi space but they
are inferior to the the Raspberry Pi line and other ARM-based SBCs.
Mostly based on the open Alibaba processor designs
<https://www.cnx-software.com/2021/10/20/alibaba-open-source-risc-v-cores-xuantie-e902-e906-c906-and-c910/>
Seagate disks have RISC V processors but the consumer would never know.
ESP32-Cx chips/modules/boards have RISC-V processors. Not powerful enough
for Linux.
| From: Evan Leibovitch via talk <[email protected]>
|
| Interesting.
|
| Of course it is always useful to read beyond the cheery predictions.
| Buried under all the positive upward chart lines is the news (from the same
| publication) that a major RISC-V "pioneer" has just undergone layoffs (20%
| of engineering) and restructuring
|
<https://www.eetimes.eu/risc-v-pioneer-sifive-takes-stock-realigns-moves-forward/>
| .
|
| - Evan
|
| On Thu, Feb 1, 2024 at 11:23 AM Ivan Avery Frey via talk <[email protected]>
| wrote:
|
| > https://www.eetimes.eu/navigating-the-risc-v-revolution-in-europe/
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