I am amazed to see so many activities for open hardware. If the idea of collaboration is really taken up, this can be a success and realistic way out of the current IP misery with only closed hardware.
I don't think we should overstate (or understate) the significance of RISC-V. Without a doubt, industry is putting lots of time and effort towards RISC-V.
Everyone who manufactures electronic devices that includes some kind of CPU (hard drive manufacturers, cell phone manufacturers, GPU manufacturers, etc) -- they're all paying some royalty to someone for that CPU, even if they designed it themselves. Eliminating those royalties is a great way to get ahead because you can take $1 out of your bottom line -- if you're shipping 100k or 10 mil devices this year, that's definitely worth the design effort. It's this marketplace that is fueling RISC-V.
> ... this can be a success ...
I have no doubt that RISC-V will succeed in the microcontroller/embedded device space.
> ... realistic way out of the current IP misery with only closed hardware ...
I wonder, are you referring more to frustrations with things like Intel's ME or frustrations with devices that ship without documentation/open source software details? I fear that RISC-V will likely not change much in either space. Yes, it will lower the bar for new devices that can be fully open. And with fully open devices we could hopefully audit and trust them more. But I think change here will be very slow. The ultimate consumer of these devices just doesn't care much about fully open devices and it's extra work to shepherd open source software/hardware. I hope I'm just being too pessimistic.
It's true that there's folks like SiFive who are making boards that integrate RISC-V cores. They seem like they are ramping up to make general computer boards that would be pretty useful. But I doubt we'll see them end up in mass market desktop/laptop/server/tablet/etc devices any time soon.
I fully agree, but as Hacker News is a hotbed of pedantry, I must point out that a royalty of $1 per device isn’t ”taking $1 out of your bottom line”: it’s taking $1 out of your unit contribution, and simply adding all those dollar-per-unit x units back in does not add number-of-units$ back into your bottom line (because of tax effects).
Also, forfeit and bulk contracts mean that firms pay less than unit cost per unit, but probably don’t have the flexibility of starting to save right away as they gradually phase away. Also, the reaction by existing IP owners (ARM?) will be punitive, i.e, will involve hiking residual amounts on those who adopt a policy of moving away, on the pretext of low units, and with the hidden but transparent aim of favouring producers that are staying ’faithful’ to them.
That $1 you pay to other IP companies, like Arm, gives you access to a fully verified design with support from the best engineers in the field. And those companies want you to succeed because they will only those royalties if your device reaches the market.
By saving that $1 and by not buying IP from other, you will need to invest it in time, in engineers, in know-how, in support, in verification and so on, all by yourself.
It might not necessarily be a good cost-benefit situation.
The IP academics keep making on the cheap is always compared to ARM cores in similar class to prove them out. They always come out superior. So, Im doubting best engineers or product. Since they do have good engineers, ARM must be intentionally underdoing their designs to maximize their cash or something. Maybe make a lot of them. Idk how much IP they actually have.
I agree it's beneficial that it's already silicon-proven by time most customers get it. The biggest selling point, though, was what ARM themselves said when open ISA topic first came up: the massive ecosystem, esp software and dev tools, makes the licensing worth the money. Im not sure how true that is. Probably varies a lot depending on who is using it but might be true for many. RISC-V needs to get its ecosystem super-strong to challenge ARM in general sense on top of pre-proven IP customers can trust. Ecosystem is the bigger issue, though.
I like to point out the difference between having the best engineers money can buy versus having the best engineers no money can buy.
People who work in open source software are usually the second kind. I expect open hardware to attract people with the same motivation to push boundaries regardless of any other factor.
There are some natural limits on how open cutting edge semiconductors can be, particularly at the foundry/process level. As foundries start more or less giving up on smaller features (at least in silicon), I think we'll see more opportunities for openness at that level.
If the foundry stands to gain more by publishing the price list, cell library, and toolchain than they do by keeping it secret, that'll be the time for it to happen.
