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Alibaba Crafts A 16-Core RISC-V Chip @ 2.5GHz
Alibaba this week announced a RISC-V 64-bit processor comprised of 16 cores at 2.5GHz. The Chinese RISC-V CPU is fabbed at 12nm and this RISC-V processor supports out of order execution. This Alibaba design achieves a 7.1 Coremark/MHz rating, a great deal faster than any other publicly announced RISC-V processor. It's still not as fast as say the newest AMD Ryzen 9 or Intel Core i7/i9 parts, but it's certainly much better than all of the other RISC-V processors/SoCs we've seen announced to date. Unfortunately additional details on this Alibaba design are light.
Also at Tom's Hardware.
Related: Alibaba Cloud Climbs to Top 5
Linux Foundation and RISC-V Proponents Launch CHIPS Alliance
Qualcomm Invests in RISC-V Startup SiFive
(Score: 2) by The Shire on Sunday July 28 2019, @03:54PM (5 children)
Chinese manufacturers know their chip fabs are a decade or more behind the West so they are turning instead to a technique companies like nvidia are using by integrating bleeding edge AI circuitry with their low end RISC-v processors. That bleeding edge AI tech is coming from Google and its tech they refuse to develop in partnership with the US. So we have an American company working to advance the goals of communist China while at the same time withholding that IP from the US.
You are correct - Google/Alphabet do not design or fabricate cpus but they do develop and design the logic and processes behind their AI systems which are then used to give china a leg up on the industry. I wrongly assumed this would be common knowledge for folks on a site like this but it appears there are "anonymous cowards" out there that haven't been keeping up to date.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 28 2019, @05:43PM (4 children)
Which has nothing to do with designing a cpu like the one this article is about. Designing a TPU is not the same thing as designing a CPU or GPU.
There is a reason Intel hasn't be able to develop GPUS that are competitive with NVIDIA and AMD. The knowledge does not just transfer from one type of processor to the next.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Sunday July 28 2019, @06:30PM (3 children)
They've always had the knowledge, Intel integrated graphics is on hundreds of millions of systems and "good enough" for many users, and they are reentering the discrete GPU market [tomshardware.com] next year.
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(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 28 2019, @06:41PM (2 children)
Intel makes low tier gpus. They cannot compete with NVIDIA and AMD.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Sunday July 28 2019, @06:50PM (1 child)
We'll see next year.
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(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 29 2019, @06:31AM
Didn't Intel poach quite a few graphics people from AMD and the others recently? I wouldn't be surprised if their cards are good, and if they have good linux support I'd buy one in a heartbeat (and there's no reason to believe they wouldn't have great 1st class support).