Alibaba’s research arm teases server-class RISC-V processor
www.theregister.com
And teases a laptop to show off its current silicon – running the open edition of Huawei’s CentOS spinout
  • Crackhappy@lemmy.worldEnglish
    151·
    8 months ago

    That’s an admirable goal, and I applaud the immense effort undertaken to make the OSS dream true.

    • Alex@lemmy.ml
      13·
      8 months ago

      The ISA may be open but I’m pretty sure the microarchitecture will be totally proprietary. Even with a kick ass microarchitecture they may still struggle if they can’t use the latest process nodes to actually manufacture the chips.

      Having said that I suspect the main challenge RISCV is going to face is the software ecosystem. That stuff can take a decade to build and requires a degrees of cooperation between all the companies building chips.

    • Moonrise2473@feddit.it
      7·
      8 months ago

      I don’t think they’re doing this for oss reasons

      I don’t think they’re even required to publish the design, they could keep it proprietary

      • timbuck2themoon@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        1·
        8 months ago

        They’re not. They’re doing it because they fear being SOL if America/the West enforces more sanctions on things like ARM chips/designs or Intel, etc.

        And yes, IIRC RISC-V is MIT licensed or something close. Basically companies can take it and implement whatever on top and not have to contribute back.