back to article The ‘substantial contributions’ Intel has promised to boost RISC-V adoption

Here's something that would have seemed outlandish only a few years ago: to help fuel Intel's future growth, the x86 giant has vowed to do what it can to make the open-source RISC-V ISA worthy of widespread adoption. In a presentation, an Intel representative shared some details of how the chipmaker plans to contribute to RISC …

  1. DS999 Silver badge

    "vowed to do what it can to make the open-source RISC-V ISA worthy"

    But only to the point of hurting ARM, not to the point of hurting x86, of course.

    1. NeilPost Silver badge

      Re: "vowed to do what it can to make the open-source RISC-V ISA worthy"

      There is nothing noble about Intel’s actions. Fox in the hen-house territory.

      1. Emulate Samsung/TSMC with being the supply chain to drive volume, expertise and revenue

      2. Undermine ARM

      15 years too late mea culpa from the Ideology driven sale of XScale business in 2006.

    2. Bruce Hoult

      Re: "vowed to do what it can to make the open-source RISC-V ISA worthy"

      It's not like Intel has a choice in that. The best they can do is try to have a cut of it.

      Someone -- possibly several someones -- will have RISC-V competitive with x86 and Apple M in 3-5 years. Quite likely including Rivos who Apple are suing for taking too many of their M1 engineers with too much knowledge about how it works. Interestingly Apple isn't trying to stop them -- they're not asking for an injunction or damages, but for royalties.

      1. DS999 Silver badge

        Re: "vowed to do what it can to make the open-source RISC-V ISA worthy"

        Someone -- possibly several someones -- will have RISC-V competitive with x86 and Apple M in 3-5 years

        Personally I think the chance of that is approximately 0%. Given that so far there is only one company that has managed to make ARM competitive with x86, after a decade of massive investment funded by the world's most profitable product and a very profitable line of PCs, what makes you think all this investment to bring RISC-V to the high end will magically appear?

        Where is the profit motive for all this investment to scale RISC-V up to that level? Who is going to fund that, and what products are they going to sell containing those high performing RISC-V CPUs to make a return on that investment? You think RISC-V PCs are coming? What's the point, what OS are they going to run? Microsoft only half heartedly supports ARM Windows, you think there will be a RISC-V Windows? Or that RISC-V coming along will magically break the Windows/Mac PC OS duopoly? Wishful thinking to the extreme!

        1. Hi Wreck

          Re: "vowed to do what it can to make the open-source RISC-V ISA worthy"

          The Chinese are very motivated to not be beholden to Intel's processors, and for that matter, anything made in the west. They have boatloads of money to invest.

          1. DS999 Silver badge

            Re: "vowed to do what it can to make the open-source RISC-V ISA worthy"

            They won't be investing in RISC-V though, they have their own home grown Loongson architecture that is already getting the investment to turn it into an HPC contender.

            They will only be using RISC-V for embedded stuff to replace the embedded uses of ARM and remove any possible source of western arm twisting. They won't be needing, let alone creating, any high performance RISC-V cores.

    3. druck Silver badge

      Re: "vowed to do what it can to make the open-source RISC-V ISA worthy"

      By the time Intel have helpfully contributed to standardising RISC-V they will have stuffed it full of more extraneous instructions than a CISC.

    4. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: "vowed to do what it can to make the open-source RISC-V ISA worthy"

      > But only to the point of hurting ARM [ ... ]

      Intel doesn't give a shit about ARM. They don't compete.

      This is all about AMD.

      Intel can afford to pretend they're doing something with RISC-V. They might even contribute some stuff to RISC-V. Eventually.

      This will force AMD to start doing something with RISC-V as well. Because AMD is Intel's perennial copycat, and they can't afford to be seen as left behind. Or not playing with the cool kids.

      Problem is: AMD doesn't have Intel's money, or resources.

  2. amanfromMars 1 Silver badge

    Virtually Augmented Realities .... The Next Logical Steps .... Quantum Communications Leaps

    Q: ... Does everyone realise where everything is going with the likes of an Intel Foundry Services/RISC-V flirtation/penetration?

    A: .... A Wild and Beautiful LOVE Child and Virtually Advanced IntelAIgent Machine Operating Systems with Novel Instruction Set Architectures ...... Very Long Instruction Words ..... although of course many of those words be also very short energising quantum leaping communications.

    And in the Rise of the Virtual Machine Worlds, where/when One sees/thinks a Singularity Path, do A.N.Others realise/imagine Parallel Trails in Enlightening Noblesse Oblige Tales bordering on Almost Pretty Perfect Almighty Instructions.

    The Human Dilemma and Diabolically Masked Heavenly Task to Undertake and Complete in Order to be in any Powerful and Energising Position of Future Command in Controlling Events, is to Simply Believe what others before you and now way out far ahead of you know to be honestly true as a fact for fiction to present as an Alternate Viable Reality/Augmented Virtual Reality.

    What do El Regers think ...... a perfect fit for RISC-V Developer Boards

    1. amanfromMars 1 Silver badge

      Well, what do you think for Internetional Internets Internetworking WWWeb Embedding Defences

      amanfromMars [2205191005] ....... shares more than just a tad freely on https://www.nationaldefensemagazine.org/articles/2022/5/17/special-ops-tech-priorities-include-protected-comms-counter-uas

      Future overwhelming and almighty advantage in any military and/or all civil operational environments is both provided and guaranteed by effective PACTivity broadbandcasting/beaming surreal instruction sets for SMARTR* world wide web browsers utilisation from Remote Secure Spaces with Really Simple Syndication exercising quantum leap communications on Earth.

      A Persistent Advanced Cyber Treat more fully revealed in one particular guise via The Register [Biting the hand that feeds IT] and a post entitled "Virtually Augmented Realities .... The Next Logical Steps .... Quantum Communications Leaps" ....... https://forums.theregister.com/forum/all/2022/05/17/intel_riscv_contributions/#c_4460997

      SMARTR* .... SMARTR Mentoring Analysis Reporting Titanic Research

      And I suppose the National DEFENSE Industrial Association and the likes of the Pentagon are similarly smitten with The Human Dilemma ....... "to Simply Believe what others before you and now way out far ahead of you know to be honestly true as a fact for fiction to present as an Alternate Viable Reality/Augmented Virtual Reality."

      PS ..... What else do you imagine happens to information and intelligence freely shared here on National DEFENSE whenever it doesn't appear, other than it being shared freely elsewhere for A.N.Others to make greater use of?

      Would you like to make great use of that facility, Arm SystemReady SR certified to AIMaster Pilot Right Royal Standards ‽ Per Ardua ad Astra are essentially also its credentials for provenance of future source from generations of past iterations rooted in flight operations ........ on Secure AIR Mail Led Missions.

      You might like to ask the UKGBNI MoD and the Royal Air Force if they know anything more they wish to share to ensure no catastrophic scare should anyone dare to not be aware and fully mindful of the implications and noblesse oblige obligations to Arm SystemReady SR Certifications ........ which at Pyramid Peak Levels deliver Cartes Blanches and Unlimited Wealth for EMPowering Fields of Superb Almighty Play and Almighty Superb Global Operating Device Work.

      You know, the sort of toil that keeps everyones’ lights on and lit and the world still turning to present today as a tomorrow from yesterday which now is fast approaching an ignominious past moment in time in a new vast open space of future viable immaculate sources with the cream of the crop from a great pool of deep see ideas for Current Running Visions Streaming Advanced Mainline Programs.

      Who/What does that for you?

  3. 3arn0wl

    RISC-V is 12 today

    ... and its progress since its inception is nothing short of astonishing.

    Long may that continue.

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Devil

    Intel published a PDF ...

    ... about RISC-V.

    It's full of happy statements about the future.

    Awesome.

  5. JohnSheeran

    This actually makes sense for Intel. IF RISC-V is a superior instruction set to x86 and there is a groundswell of support building then it makes sense for Intel to fabricate a processor platform based on it. They don't have exclusive rights to x86 so it's not like they are abandoning a crown jewel. It just has a large base of support. They have wanted it to go away for a very long time and may have finally realized that having a proprietary processor instruction set just isn't going to happen.

  6. Henry Wertz 1 Gold badge

    On-chip use?

    I'm wondering if they're even looking into a play like years back when they were making ARMs (when there were loads of devices with a 206mhz StrongARM), or if it's for on-chip use. These modern CPUs have the infamous Management Engine (ME) on them, some on-die CPU to do the TPM rights restriction stuff to keep Win11 happy or whatever; a core for power and clock management type functionality; there's probably some core in there coordinating the PCIe lanes, memory access, etc. too. There'll be embedded CPUs in the USB 3 controllers, Ethernet, wifi, and to coordinate things on the GPU as well.

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