Dr. Ian Cutress Explains The Hype Around RISC-V

RISC-V seems to get a lot of hype, so Gordon asked Dr. Ian Cutress from @TechTechPotato what the big deal is.

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[erikhendrickson]

It was a real loss to the community when Ian left Anand but I'm glad to see he's still out here making content for us.

[OptimumSlinky]

RISC-V is the Linux of CPU architecture/instruction sets. It's important.

[MMuraseofSandvich]

Years ago I took a class with Dr. Patterson, one of the guys who came up with RISC-V. I'm sure he's very pleased by the acceptance of the architecture thus far.

[barrdetwix]

For the RISC-V fragmentation bit, there are standards now!
They call them Profiles. That's what software will be expected to target in the future, if successful, and that's the minimum base that most hardware will want to support.

[Mako]

The moment you mentioned Jim Keller I know that whatever he works on will be successful . That guy has the golden touch

[JohnnieHougaardNielsen]

In the embedded MCU space, Risc-V can also be "interesting", like when Espressif is now making more and more chips based on this architecture, without involving Arm licences. Absolutely not high performance, but quite useful for IoT purposes and such. And hobbyists. I've also got a number of boards with ESP32-C3 which is the first of them, and with suitable firmware, it works great.

[coffeemaddan]

Balanced and informative. Good questions. Thanks for not talking-over the expert. :)

[toddbu-WKL]

Many years ago Intel sealed the fate of x86 by ignoring the low power processor market. They were so deep into CISC that they felt that more instructions was the way to continue capturing value. So folks like me and Apple switched to ARM. That was all well and good except for ARM's licensing games, so I've moved to RISC-V where I don't have to worry about this anymore. I currently have microcontrollers running RISC-V and it's been a seamless transition. I expect the same as we get to larger processors.

But why I really think RISC-V will win is as follows:
1. Linux has proven that open source works
2. The rate of innovation is higher with more players
3. Because of its block architecture, fabrication costs are lower because you only need transistors for the modules you include
4. No ISA licensing fees or worries about future shenanigans by the license holder as we see with ARM today
5. Greater security as fewer instructions reduce the attack surface. Generating code with compilers makes security patches easier
6. As mentioned in the video, the Chinese have an intense interest in getting away from licensing restrictions as levers to make them bend to international will

This time has been long coming for a part of the industry that still remains mostly proprietary. I first encountered RISC in the early 1980s and was immediately sold on the architecture. It's taken a long time to get RISC into the mainstream with ARM. But no one wants ARM to become the next Intel by protecting what it has from innovation. As always happens in the computer industry, once an ecosystem becomes large (Windows, x86, IBM, and now ARM) and is controlled by a few players then those entities switch from innovation to defense of their technology to retain their dominance. Open source fixes this problem. And I wouldn't worry about fragmentation. Linux has shown that good ideas stick around and bad ideas get kicked to the curb. It's market forces in action.

[ydid]

love this type of coverage, thank you pcworld channel

[microcolonel]

Google is actively pushing RISC-V enablement in Android and ChromeOS, I've been saying this is the first way it'll be in consumer products as an application processor since 2015. There are standardized platforms now with combinations of extension profiles (e.g. RVA22) and firmware platforms.

It is poised to make it into competitive consumer products as an application processor in a matter of a couple years.

[mojoNoodlz]

Not for or against RISC-V, but I think it'll be down to any adoption in China if RISC-V makes it to the big time. This is down to a move away, forced or voluntarily, from US or Western tech, hardware and software, such as x856 ARM, Microsoft Windows, maybe also Apple and Android. It will be RISC-V and some form of Linux as the OS. If China starts to mass manufacture these and begins to sell to the world, it will be a game changer. China could even donate millions of new RISC-V Linux based PCs to the developing world to kick start it too. I'm sure India could do much the same too. I give it a timeframe of about 5 years though to the mainstream consumer.

[Autotrope]

I don't watch many PC hardware videos, but I definitely enjoy videos from Gordon at PCWorld

[davidbetancourt]

Happy that Gordon is getting recommended to me more often. He's so pleasant to watch and listen to.

[teardowndan]

How fast RISC-V will gain market share in the consumer-facing space is mainly a matter of how greedy ARM will dare to get. ARM ownership changing hands every few years with the looming possibility that it may get bought out by one of your competitors and price you out of the market over the next 5-10 years would be another reason for anyone who depends heavily on ARM for their business to get RISC-V migration plans ready just in case and arrange existing work accordingly.

[narendrakrane]

Thank you Dr Ian and Thank you Cameraman!

[eggnorman]

This is the thing though, right. My LSI SATA HBA has a PowerPC core in it, because PowerPC cores are super cheap and they are a form of RISC. RISC-V may easily be what replaces small embedded cores like that for the foreseeable future, and it's going to be really interesting because RISC-V is so much more customisable.

[TechnessCorner]

Likely the role of global politics and international trade barriers will be the determining factors in if RISC-V will be a success. Open Source though, Love it! Peace.

[rursus]

So then it isn't a hype. RISC-V is cutting out its own specialized market segment.

[AndersHass]

RISC-V got the vocal minority like Linux has, very often for the same reason (they tend towards open/freedom).

Google is working on making Android to work on RISC-V so I would think that would be the earliest for it to be a thing for regular people. Otherwise perhaps small board computers like Raspberry pie will also be more RISC-V but not everyone is interested in such computer (as mentioned in the video, SiFive already got such a board with Linux being an option).

[alelondon]

I didn't expect less from PCWorld. RISC-V ISA has a very fast adoption by the industry and a free software stack. When they start fearmongering is when you know is about to happen.