Android 10 ported to homegrown multi-core RISC-V system-on-chip by Alibaba biz, source code released Alibaba-owned T-Head Semiconductor says it has ported Android 10 to its own RISC-V chips, highlighting increased momentum for the open-source instruction set architecture (ISA) against proprietary alternatives. T-Head (also known as Pintouge, which translates to "honey badger") this week demonstrated the open-source base of …
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The idea is no doubt funny (like in show the fridge your id before it lets you to access the booze drawer), however porting Android to RISC-V simply means that the mature ecosystem, OS, tooling and build chain does not need to be re-invented; the huge army of Android developers can simply continue writing their apps in Android Studio as they used to.
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There are two things which will drive wider adoption of RISC-V, both of which are mentioned in the article but which deserve to be emphasised.
One is NVIDIA's acquisition of ARM. If this does go ahead then they will be looking for multiple ways in which to squeeze ARM licensees until their pips squeak.
The other reason is that NVIDIA is an American company, and the American government enthusiastically weaponise the supply chain like no other country in their quest for commercial and diplomatic dominance. China will obviously be one country looking for an escape route from this, but they won't be the only ones. India already have a national RISC-V project running, which has the goal of ensuring national independence from foreign control. With the UK gone from the EU, there is also now nothing stopping the EU from following down the same route for the same reasons. There is already a very large ITAR-free market in Europe to allow European companies escape American political control, and this would be an extension of that.
One of the things which will make an ARM to RISC-V transition difficult is software. A RISC-V port of Android is very significant because it addresses this question head on. With this in place a very broad potential market becomes immediately available.
One of the road blocks to adoption will be Google's dominance of the Android app store and services system. However, in China the Android market is run by local vendors. There is nothing to stop them from offering RISC-V phones and providing a complete Android eco-system to go along with it. Therefore, I suspect that we will see large scale adoption of RISC-V in things such as phones and tablets in China before we see it anywhere else. With a large volume market to bring prices down, expansion into other applications can follow in the same path as ARM.
Overall this is a very interesting development and bears keeping an eye on.
With the UK gone from the EU, there is also now nothing stopping the EU from following down the same route for the same reasons.
Yes! Now the UK has gone the EU can move swiftly ahead with their plans for a new common CPU by 2030, offering full compatibility with the 6502, Z80 and 6809.
Idk if you were joking about an EU common CPU, but ...
And it is RISC-V.
RISC-V is still very much an American enterprise though. Why do you think the US government wouldn't try to restrict licensing of that technology in the same way it does any other? The cat maybe out of the bag for current designs, but I wouldn't bet on the US government restricting releases of future designs if they deemed it a threat to their supposed superiority.
The RISC-V specifications are open source like Linux. Everyone is free to use it to design and manufacture cpu's using these specifications https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RISC-V
To avoid USA government influence, the RISC-V foundation is located in Switzerland.
It would be great if it picked up, leading to lower prices, Intel still must make fortunes seeing how much their CPU's cost.
It might take time, ARM had a decade to mature, so it is doubtful if RISC-V powered phones will be able to compete with modern ARM cpu's on performance and energy consumption in the short term.
Ah, fair enough. I read part of that Wikipedia page, but obviously not enough.
That said though, the US government will still be able to issue sanctions against working for, or doing business with, a company regardless of location if it deems that company to be providing or licensing technologies to certain nation states.
Regardless of where the RISC-V foundation is located on paper, all its board officers are located in the US and will potentially be subject to sanctions accordingly.
I'm not saying they ever will be, but the possibility is there.
Not to worry. The RISC-V inventors already thought of it, and have dealt with it.
"In November 2019, the RISC-V Foundation announced that it would relocate to Switzerland, citing concerns over U.S. trade regulations.[22] As of March 2020, the organization was named RISC-V International, a Swiss nonprofit business association"
source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RISC-V
Can't wait for RISC-V laptops, phones, everything. Far better performance, longer battery life, lower costs, and finally there will be an end to the ridiculous anti-innovation and exploitative monopoly of X86/Intel (computers) and ARM/Qualcomm(phones)
Unfortunately, ours is stuck on a trailer in Zeebrugge awaiting customs clearance.
We have tried filling in the forms but they are really difficult.
Also, it now attracts 20%VAT, as it is an import, and it has a WTO tariff because it is of US origin and is not covered by the agreement with the EU.
So we can’t afford it.
Both OpenRISC and IBM's Power (OpenPOWER) are royalty-free and licence-free ISAs, with the former coming with a fully open and full-featured CPU design. In the case of Power there is over half a century of experience and investment in the ISA (POWER, PPC, Power).
The thing about an ISA is also that even licencing it isn't expensive. Not even a rounding error when it comes to designing and manufacturing a CPU. That's why SiFive's RISC-V-based CPU cores are not open source, but fully closed and proprietary.
There's nothing magical about RISC-V. It's not more open or more efficient than alternatives. It's just got more hype behind it, is all.
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