Fucks sake ARM. Dick move
there's no morality here.
Has anyone checked to see who actually owns the site?
Regretfully, the result was something different, a page that wasn’t in line with Arm’s collaborative culture, so we’ve taken it down. Indeed, many of our own people also told us they didn’t like it.
QuoteRegretfully, the result was something different, a page that wasn’t in line with Arm’s collaborative culture, so we’ve taken it down. Indeed, many of our own people also told us they didn’t like it.
It’s gone here.
Fucks sake ARM. Dick move
Maybe this is a reverse psychology move by RISC-V to generate positive publicity for them and negative publicity for ARM? Has anyone checked to see who actually owns the site?
Arm told us it had hoped its anti-RISC-V site would kickstart a discussion around architectures, rather than come off as a smear attack. In any case, on Tuesday, it took the site offline by killing its DNS.
“Our intention in creating a webpage to offer key considerations around commercial RISC-V based products was to inform a lively industry debate," an Arm spokesperson told The Register.
"Regretfully, the result was something different, a page that wasn’t in line with Arm’s collaborative culture, so we’ve taken it down. Indeed, many of our own people also told us they didn’t like it.
"One thing to clear up immediately is we absolutely did not want to give the impression we were attacking open source as we are highly committed supporters of open source communities in many different areas. Our intention is to cultivate a healthy discussion around architectural choices as it is one of many subjects critical to our industry’s future.”
We need 128Bit processors! yeah ha!
Brilliant.
https://github.com/arm-facts/arm-basics.com/issues/4
Have screenshot the above and sending to simon segars, ARM CEO.
Brilliant.
https://github.com/arm-facts/arm-basics.com/issues/4
Have screenshot the above and sending to simon segars, ARM CEO.
No offense but that little issue thread comes across a little sanctimonious and self-important. We get it, you know Simon Segars.
I (and probably most others here) read the arm-basics.com site as a fun dig back at ARM for some pretty underhanded FUD. It's going to be taken down soon; there is a countdown timer on the site.
brittanic knight Old chap My good man. Jolly good. That's my lad.
lukewren: none of this is fun. It’s childish.
1. Cost
With RISC-V, you don't run the risk of getting sued out of your life savings as a result in a technicality regarding IP licensing. There are also no restrictions, and no uncertainties should the company either go out of business or be acquired by a company with questionable morals, who want to change your IP licensing agreements at a whim.
2. A large, supportive ecosystem
RISC-V is getting there, and there are now COTS development solutions in place. ARM, on the other hand, is just the ISA, and it is critical not to ignore all the surrounding support components of a system.
It will happen sooner now thanks to ARM's FUD-propaganda Streisand-effect website.
3. Fragmentation risk
Since RISC-V allows for private extensions, it would benefit those who don't intend to allow some random rinky-dink apps to run on their system as they can optimise it for their own individual use cases. The base RISC-V implementations and COTS solutions will still be available.
As for ARM's supporting infrastructure: so many combinations, so many choices, so much fragmentation.
4. Security
For ARM it's, like, totally no big deal.
5. Design assurance
Having one major company "verify" your CPU, or having a large community with plenty of eyes verify and find faults in the design. You decide.
Just LOL. You actually believe that the actual SoCs apart from the baseline reference designs will be open? Especially given the very permissive BSD license on the IP? The first thing an implementor of this will do is to take the RISC-V IP and make a closed design to protect their secret sauce. Nobody in this industry is giving away their IP for competitors to benefit from. Just look at the various '51 clones - that architecture was also free and published but pretty much none of the clones and modern chips that use it are.
Right, so RISC-V allows private extensions that will lead to various incompatible variants emerging, fragmenting the market. How is this different from ARM apart from the fact that the fragmentation possibility is written straight into the spec in the RISC-V case (where ARM specs only the core and leaves the rest to the implementors).
I am not sure whether you are trying to imply that ARM's ecosystem sucks here or that the RISC-V's is anywhere near the ARM's. In either case that's a fairly laughable assertion, IMO.
There are some companies like SiFive which are doing fully open designs and taping them out. I think one of their employees is a member here. I still haven't grasped the business model (i.e. what's stopping someone from downloading the design and taping it out themselves), but I'm watching it with interest
One difference between RISC-V and ARM here is that RISC-V explicitly allocates opcode space for non-standard extensions, so that they can break each other, but not future standard extensions.
There is also a review path through the foundation for non-standard extensions to become standardised if they turn out to be widely applicable. This doesn't solve my general concern of how shrinkwrapped software distributors are going to (not) handle the various possible ISA configurations, but it's also not exactly the same situation as ARM
I have no stake in neither RISC-V or ARM, but let's get a bit real here, shall we?1. Cost
With RISC-V, you don't run the risk of getting sued out of your life savings as a result in a technicality regarding IP licensing. There are also no restrictions, and no uncertainties should the company either go out of business or be acquired by a company with questionable morals, who want to change your IP licensing agreements at a whim.
Only until the first patent lawsuit hits. I guess that is actually the idea of that website - to instill fear of this (fairly real - just look at Microsoft extracting royalty fees from companies using the FAT filesystem) threat. The IP licensing is all for naught if you can get sued out of business by a deep pocketed competing vendor having a patent on a key part of your tech.
There are some companies like SiFive which are doing fully open designs and taping them out. I think one of their employees is a member here. I still haven't grasped the business model (i.e. what's stopping someone from downloading the design and taping it out themselves), but I'm watching it with interest
Right, so RISC-V allows private extensions that will lead to various incompatible variants emerging, fragmenting the market. How is this different from ARM apart from the fact that the fragmentation possibility is written straight into the spec in the RISC-V case (where ARM specs only the core and leaves the rest to the implementors).
One difference between RISC-V and ARM here is that RISC-V explicitly allocates opcode space for non-standard extensions, so that they can break each other, but not future standard extensions.
There is also a review path through the foundation for non-standard extensions to become standardised if they turn out to be widely applicable. This doesn't solve my general concern of how shrinkwrapped software distributors are going to (not) handle the various possible ISA configurations, but it's also not exactly the same situation as ARM
Yeah it's quite odd that most RISC-V SoC projects are developing their own bus standards rather than using AMBA. Anyone can freely implement AMBA masters and slaves, and IMO that seems like a better way of leveraging existing infrastructure
Hi :-) I've been a member here longer than I've been at SiFive. I'm not a founder or manager or spokesperson or anything like that, just a pleb programmer. All opinions are most definitely my own. I liked the tech and its possibilities so much I joined the company.
The business model is, I would say, something like RedHat. Nothing stops you putting together your own Linux distro or using one of the many free ones, but some people prefer to pay money for a supported version, with components and versions of components that have been tested and certified to work together.
AMBA has a free license but it's not unlicensed. You have to agree to the license terms, and it seems possible ARM could decide to withdraw a license.
There is particular confusion around whether you can use AMBA with non-ARM CPU cores. Some people interpret the wording to mean you can't have a non-ARM CPU in your AMBA system. Others interpret it to mean if your core executes ARM instructions then it must have a paid-for license from ARM.
None of which has I think been tested in court.
Using AMBA in a RISC-V system might be low risk, but could still be the largest risk of getting sued.
SiFive uses Berkeley's "TileLink" point to point interface. I think it's roughly equivalent to AXI4 ACE. We have high performance adaptors to AXI if you need them.
I think some others are using WishBone? I'm not aware of anyone rolling their own from scratch.
1. Subject to the provisions of Clauses 2 and 3, ARM hereby grants to LICENSEE a perpetual, non-exclusive, non-transferable, royalty free, worldwide licence to:
(i) use and copy the AMBA 3 Specification for the purpose of developing, having developed, manufacturing, having manufactured, offering to sell, selling, supplying or otherwise distributing integrated circuits which may or may not include a CPU but which incorporate a bus which is compatible with the AMBA 3 Specification, provided that where such integrated circuits incorporate a CPU then either: (a) such CPU is manufactured under licence from ARM; or (b) such CPU is neither substantially compliant with nor marketed as being compliant with the ARM instruction sets licensed by ARM from time to time;
So I don't believe AMBA is restricted to ARM only.