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posted by Fnord666 on Tuesday January 23 2018, @10:16PM   Printer-friendly
from the open-to-the-possibility dept.

Is it time For open processors? Jonathan Corbet over at lwn.net seems to think so. He lists several ongoing initiatives such as OpenPOWER, OpenSPARC and OpenRISC, but feels that most of the momentum is in the RISC-V architecture right now.

Given the complexity of modern CPUs and the fierceness of the market in which they are sold, it might be surprising to think that they could be developed in an open manner. But there are serious initiatives working in this area; the idea of an open CPU design is not pure fantasy.

[...] Much of the momentum these days, instead, appears to be associated with the RISC-V architecture. This project is primarily focused on the instruction-set architecture (ISA), rather than on specific implementations, but free hardware designs do exist. Western Digital recently announced that it will be using RISC-V processors in its storage products, a decision that could lead to the shipment of RISC-V by the billion. There is a development kit available for those who would like to play with this processor and a number of designs for cores are available.

Unlike OpenRISC, RISC-V is intended to be applicable to a wide range of use cases. The simple RISC architecture should be relatively easy to make fast, it is hoped. Meanwhile, for low-end applications, there is a compressed instruction-stream format intended to reduce both memory and energy needs. The ISA is designed with the ability for specific implementations to add extensions, making experimentation easier and facilitating the addition of hardware acceleration techniques.

[...] RISC-V seems to have quite a bit of commercial support behind it — the RISC-V Foundation has a long list of members. It seems likely that this architecture will continue to progress for some time.


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 23 2018, @11:32PM (4 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 23 2018, @11:32PM (#626851)

    The alternative is to wait until the hammer comes down on "hacker tools." Probably one will be able to install RHEL and Ubuntu, but forget being able to compile one's own kernel. Forget about even having access to a full compiler without paying some hefty fees to the likes of Red Hat or Microsoft. Sure, hello world will probably still compile with the "community edition" of Visual C++ or Clang.

    All this out of misogynerd narrative and OMG Russia. I think the other pieces don't directly affect this part, but I wouldn't be surprised if OMG trolls or OMG dank alt-right memes plays some part. It's the only way they can make sure that throwing away net neutrality gives ISPs a stranglehold on information, only allowing access to approved propaganda outlets. Well, there will probably still be the option of coughing up big bucks to be able to connect to unapproved subnets.

    But who the hell has big bucks other than Inner Party members? I hear they can even switch off their telescreens!

    But OTOH given the funding concerns stated upthread for open hardware, maybe that's checkmate. A boot stamping on a human face forever.

  • (Score: 2) by fyngyrz on Tuesday January 23 2018, @11:49PM (3 children)

    by fyngyrz (6567) on Tuesday January 23 2018, @11:49PM (#626858) Journal

    The alternative is [optimism redacted]

    I read what you wrote, yet I see no alternative.

    Either my apps work, or you have nothing at all to offer me.

    Look, I'm a developer. I have Windows, linux and OS X machines running here, and I have to keep them all running for various reasons. But I only use one OS for 99% of what I do. Because apps. I'm completely serious: you have nothing to offer me with an alternative / incompatible OS, and that's without even bringing a new processor into the mix.

    Grandma will be even more unwilling to consider abandoning the things she knows how to use, as will office slaves Obadiah, Myrtle, and... Bob... who have all their working hours into their custom vertical applications. Then there are the gamers. Your New Hotness won't run their copy of Star Sluts XIII at 240 FPS across four monitors? Piss off, busy wearing out my... joystick... over here.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 24 2018, @12:46AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 24 2018, @12:46AM (#626886)

      I definitely hear what you're saying.

      It's depressing.

    • (Score: 4, Informative) by requerdanos on Wednesday January 24 2018, @01:19AM

      by requerdanos (5997) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday January 24 2018, @01:19AM (#626896) Journal

      The alternative is [optimism redacted]

      I read what you wrote, yet I see no alternative. Either my apps work, or you have nothing at all to offer me... I have Windows, linux and OS X machines running here, and I have to keep them all running for various reasons. But I only use one OS for 99% of what I do. Because apps.

      I can guess from this that you would be likely to choose "only Windows" if you could have only one of these operating systems. Because, you know, apps.

      But that's a thing in the culture and the habits and the institutions of the greater Windows environment, which is by far the dominant one.

      There are people--fewer in number--who would choose a unixlike OS, and a free one at that, if given the same only-one-OS choice.

      And those people have habits and a culture and institutions that mean that for them, a new architecture, a new processor, means *shrug* port and recompile everything, because the source is available for pretty much anything they would want to run. For those difficult-to-port apps, a slightly more inconvenient process of forming a porting team and solving the problems (or waiting for those who do that, to do that).

      The nice thing is that those open-unixy-compile-things people are the initial pilgrims on the shores of new architectures, and are the ones that will build infrastructure for the larger "I need my apps to just work" crowd.

      I'm completely serious: you have nothing to offer me with an alternative / incompatible OS, and that's without even bringing a new processor into the mix.

      It will take a long, long time for mainstream culture to come around to preferring free software, which confers the benefits I've mentioned and others. Fortunately that's not the culture it needs to catch on with first.

      Grandma will be even more unwilling

      She, if she's an average unsophisticated user, will run what you give her, and settle into whichever culture you place her. She isn't in that pilgrim vanguard, no, but then neither are you, and you're a developer!

      I am not a developer unless you charitably count complex scripts and websites, but I do have several ARM boards doing real work and I'd welcome the chance to start recompiling things on a free and open processor.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 24 2018, @07:32PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 24 2018, @07:32PM (#627318)

      mass consumer adoption is not a requirement for this to be a worthwhile initiative. most people don't use gnu/linux either. yet i somehow use it every day. if we could get open hardware to where people had the option, that would be good enough for me.