Posted on 05/11/2021 3:25:10 AM PDT by SunkenCiv
RISC-V is a processor architecture and instruction set developed at UC Berkeley. It's attracted huge interest from everyone from startups to tech giants because it's entirely free and open source. Most current processors come with license agreements and are proprietary intellectual property, but anyone can manufacture a RISC-V chip, or design their own new processor. Big companies like Western Digital are already announcing a switch to RISC-V, and others like Google and Nvidia have partnered with them.
There's a lot of ways this project could fail, but it also has the potential to make custom processor design available to a lot of people. You probably won't be getting a RISC-V PC anytime soon, and chip makers like Intel or Apple probably aren't about to switch to RISC-V but expect these chips to start showing up in all kinds of devices very soon.
(Excerpt) Read more at youtube.com ...
RISC-V is trying to launch an open-hardware revolution | Engadget | Upscaled
I miss Ernest.
PicoRio is an Open Source, RISC-V Alternative to the Raspberry Pi (Overview and Thoughts)
TheOmnitubers | September 12, 2020
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LZr5Cgl5xmc
The company was successful enough to be bought out by Siemans {I think}.
Most computer start ups that are successful sell out within the first 10-15 years because the founders and investors want the millions that come with a sell out.
No harm there, but the technology gets swallowed up and disappears within a few short years.
The idea if a RISC computer is over 50 years old but different implementation will keep people poking around at it forever.
“RISC {reduced instruction set computer} - UNIX computer”
I didn’t know that a processor architecture was glued to an operating system.
I think some CDC computers back in the 60s or 70s had risc architecture.
It’s not. M$ is trying to get winders 10 running (well) on ARM (ARM=Advanced RISC Machines)
“M$ is trying to get winders 10 running (well) on ARM (ARM=Advanced RISC Machines)”
Aren’t they pursuing an ARM version of Windows because of the ARM processors’ lower power consumption?
I’m using an ARM processor in embedded work I’m doing. Can’t remember which one. Using the mbed.com development environment. There’s a huge community doing work using that site.
That’s one of the reasons. That and intel seems to be having problems getting their chips to work well, on mobile platforms.
RISCy!
Western Digital believes it will soon have shipped 1 billion RISC-V processors in its disk drives. They are a big believer in RISC-V. Many companies are evaluating it as an alternative to ARM. ARM has large licensing costs. RISC-V does not.
How do you compare Intel’s 80xx chips with those from AMD?
AMD sued intel and won the right to produce x86 compatible chips of their own design.
Intergraph announced that they would port Windows NT to SPARCv9. That was in 1993, but nothing came out of it. There was a NeXTSTEP for SPARC along with several *BSD flavors.
For me it seems like ARM is taking over the world. Also innovation in the chip space is way harder than in the software space things are much more entrenched. I don’t see this beating out ARM.
You are correct, but at the time UNIX was the only open OS available, which was the reason the company selected UNIX.
Major computer companies all had their own proprietary operating systems, which gave them exclusivity as to who could use it.
UNIX was available for almost nothing from AT&T, as Johnson and Ritchie re-wrote UNIX in C and gave it a real commercial start.
It had been bouncing around in labs and in colleges since the late 60s.
My first encounter with UNIX was in the late 70s when I was selling CRTs to AT&T into the labs in North Carolina and they were running a version of UNIX on both DEC and UNIVAC systems and making them communicate and share both programs and data.
I was a sales guy, not a techy, but even I knew the major implications of this beginning of open operating systems across the entire industry.
It was the beginning of the end for all major computer companies, Burroughs, NCR, UNIVAC, Honeywell, RCA and many that I can't remember became the walking dead.
“It was the beginning of the end for all major computer companies, Burroughs, NCR, UNIVAC, Honeywell, RCA and many that I can’t remember became the walking dead.”
I remember those guys dying out but it wasn’t because of UNIX, was it?
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