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RISC-V technology emerges as battleground in US-China tech war (www.reuters.com)
submitted 3 years ago by to c/technology@beehaw.org
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[–] 15 points 3 years ago (3 children)

I don't understand what you mean. Why does ARM hardware become obsolete after a few years? Lacking ongoing software support and no mainline Linux?

What does that have to do with the instruction set license? If you think RISC-V implementors who actually make the damn chips won't ship locked hardware that only run signed and encrypted binary blobs, you are in for a disappointing ride.

Major adopters, like WD and Nvidia didn't pick RISC-V over arm for our freedoms. They were testing the waters to see if they could stop paying the ARM tax. All the other stuff will stay the same.

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  • [–] [S] 34 points 3 years ago* (2 children)

    Why does ARM hardware become obsolete after a few years? Lacking ongoing software support and no mainline Linux?

    Correct. (And firmware support.)

    What does that have to do with the instruction set license?

    Barrier to entry (cost) and license restrictions (non-disclosure) are generally problematic for anyone wanting to ship open hardware.

    If you think RISC-V implementors who actually make the damn chips won’t ship locked hardware that only run signed and encrypted binary blobs, you are in for a disappointing ride.

    I don't think anyone expects existing ARM device makers to change their behavior with RISC-V. Rather, RISC-V opens the door to new players who do things differently.

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  • [–] 3 points 3 years ago (1 child)

    Seeing the runaway succes of others like Nvidia, Apple, Mediatek, do you think any meaningful new entries are going to deviate from their playbook?

    Being a good citizen with regards to transparency in firmware and Linux support is not a proven differentiator for these vendors and shown time and time again not to be a requirement for success.

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  • [–] [S] 6 points 3 years ago* (last edited 3 years ago)

    I see steadily increasing interest in privacy, data security, repairability, and e-waste reduction. The markets for these things may be relatively small today, but they are growing, and open hardware can address all of them.

    do you think any meaningful new entries are going to deviate from their playbook?

    Curious choice of words. I suppose it depends on how we define "meaningful". There are measures of success other than becoming a trillion-dollar market capitalization tech giant. There are many businesses that succeed despite being different, in some cases because they are different.

    More concretely, we have already been seeing new entries for several years. (Purism and Raptor Computing Systems, for example.) They have thus far been limited in what they can offer, partly due to the lack of truly open and affordable components, and partly because the demand for products like theirs is just getting started. But both of those hindrances are changing.

    I think how much this area will develop and grow depends on how we either support it or impede it with obstacles. I hope attempts at short-term defence against a rival won't lead us to shoot ourselves in the foot.

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