Reply to post: Re: Probably a pass for most

Re: Probably a pass for most

RISC-V, the ISA that still doesn't have vector instructions? The ISA that you have to keep various compilers around for due to the incompatible silicon between vendors? The ISA that has its best cores topping out below even decent ARM cores in performance?

Does anyone remember the DOS days when software ran on some PC clones but not others, and everything was a fragmented mess? I suspect the current RISC-V proponents do not, or they wouldn't be pushing things like "modular ISA" or "fork and make proprietary silicon for vendor-specific software" as positives.

I also take some issue with Rome being used as the comparison. Its true competition is Power10, not the older Power9 CPU that is currently somewhere in middle age. The releases have been staggered to make AMD look good, and it *is* fundamentally a good core on a leading manufacturing node, but it has two serious drawbacks:

- It implements the closed, proprietary, x86_64 instruction set

- AMD forces you to blindly trust their massive, binary only firmware, which exists primarily for DRM purposes and to fundamentally limit what you can do with the system (a digital nanny)

I may be in the minority, but those two issues alone are deal breakers for me. Why would I want to work with something as closed and locked as the x86_64 ISA when I don't need to? So that leaves ARM, RISC-V, and now Power as fairly available candidates -- of those three, I can buy good enough CPUs for daily work that implement ARM and Power. The ARM ISA requires licensing and ARM can deny access if they want for basically any reason (ask Huawei how that's working out for them!), so basically that means Power is most interesting to me right now.

By all means, downvote me to oblivion for daring to say anything bad about Team Red. They became another Intel years ago, and the fan base just won't see it. Must be the same human factors at work that keep people frothing at the mouth defending a mediocre sports team, or more to the point one that keeps cheating.

Icon 'cause that's where we go if people choose to keep Intel/AMD on top despite the decent alternatives that have appeared in the past 5 years.