Android Ported to RISC-V(theregister.com)
theregister.com
Android Ported to RISC-V
https://www.theregister.com/2021/01/21/android_riscv_port/
84 comments
That's good though. That means they have to invest in R&D instead of depending on exploiting cheap labour to brute-force their way into the market.
If they invest in R&D, they need creative people who are up to date. Such people tend to bring change to the society at large(I'd say democracy is really good for creativeness to flourish).
Basically, the goal is not to expunge them from the market, the goal is to make them compete under the same rules.
If they invest in R&D, they need creative people who are up to date. Such people tend to bring change to the society at large(I'd say democracy is really good for creativeness to flourish).
Basically, the goal is not to expunge them from the market, the goal is to make them compete under the same rules.
Is it democracy that is good for creativeness, or capitalism?
I think what China has shown is that democracy and capitalism can be decoupled. Ive always believed that capitalism and democracy are synergistic forms of freedom. The individual freedom to own property and trade with each other on the one hand, and our freedom as sovereign individuals to have a say in the organisation of society. The CCP has established that these do not depend on each other.
I think what China has shown is that democracy and capitalism can be decoupled. Ive always believed that capitalism and democracy are synergistic forms of freedom. The individual freedom to own property and trade with each other on the one hand, and our freedom as sovereign individuals to have a say in the organisation of society. The CCP has established that these do not depend on each other.
It's much too early to say. The average Chinese citizen is poorer than the average Romanian (a relatively poor country and a democracy), let alone the average American.
China's economy is big because there are a lot of Chinese, not because the average individual is doing so well.
China's economy is big because there are a lot of Chinese, not because the average individual is doing so well.
Do you know that nothing stops them from rounding up engineers are move them to a camp with an order to develop certain technology in exchange for bread and water and that their families will live? Soviet Union for example used to build entire cities where they crammed engineers from all over the Union, however rather than being exploited, the engineers had special privileges. But that easily could change with a stroke of a pen of a dictator.
It's hard for people to be creative under pressure. Half the work in management of software companies is managing employee stress so they can do their work efficiently. My point is precisely that to get creativeness, you have to create right environment and that environment leads the way to less authoritarian rule.
> It's hard for people to be creative under pressure.
How is it then, that inventions seem to accelerate during times of war? WWII alone saw the invention of, or massive improvements to rocketry, the jet engine, cruise missiles, Radar, and the Atomic bomb
How is it then, that inventions seem to accelerate during times of war? WWII alone saw the invention of, or massive improvements to rocketry, the jet engine, cruise missiles, Radar, and the Atomic bomb
They don't, it just seems that way because everything that can be used for war is used. There's a mad rush to productize existing inventions.
People tend to focus on wars during discussions about history so their time periods are overemphasized.
People tend to focus on wars during discussions about history so their time periods are overemphasized.
That's true, but if they throw enough people at it (they have plenty), something eventually will come up...
Probably the result for them will be having a group of engineers that can be creative under extreme pressure and since they struggle with over-population, the loss of engineers and their families which couldn't keep up would have some positives for them as well.
They can also round them up and let them live lavishly.
There still are walls, limits, secrets of course.
Just saying there are any number of ways to advance and they are all available to a sovereign willing to get after advancement. Size matters too. China has size enough for these things to be true.
There still are walls, limits, secrets of course.
Just saying there are any number of ways to advance and they are all available to a sovereign willing to get after advancement. Size matters too. China has size enough for these things to be true.
There is sense of mystique associated with the Soviet Union but the best they managed to build were AKs, Soyuz, Chernobyl, all interesting and robust in its own ways but not all that competitive in terms of performance, so,
Soyuz is still, to this day in 2021, the cheapest and most reliable way to get people in LEO. By any performance metric it was and still is the best tool for the job.
Same for the AK, it was reliable and accurate at a fraction of the cost which is why it is so popular still today.
There is a lot more to engineering than top performance. Reliability and cost is just as important. When you factor that in, it's clear that Soviet engineering was excellent, and frankly could hardly have been better. Production though? Yes, not that great. But the engineers were able to meet their goals brilliantly.
Same for the AK, it was reliable and accurate at a fraction of the cost which is why it is so popular still today.
There is a lot more to engineering than top performance. Reliability and cost is just as important. When you factor that in, it's clear that Soviet engineering was excellent, and frankly could hardly have been better. Production though? Yes, not that great. But the engineers were able to meet their goals brilliantly.
Price per seat to NASA on Soyuz was $90m each, while per seat on Falcon 9 it works out at about $55m under the current contract. Bear in mind that contract was signed before SpaceX had recovered any first stage boosters, so that's not taken into account in the pricing yet. Soyuz certainly had a good run though.
This was just Roscomos nickel and diming NASA. The actual cost per seat to Roscomos from the factory is around 19-22 million.
Ok, I suppose on those terms we'd need to know the real cost to SpaceX after they have recovered the first stages and used them for a dozen satellite launches each. The fact is on commercial terms SpaceX has been undercutting the Russians for years now, and were doing so even before first stage and fairing recovery.
Edit: It looks like NASA has already agreed to allow SpaceX to re-use first stages and Crew Dragon capsules for crew flights as well, starting this year.
Edit: It looks like NASA has already agreed to allow SpaceX to re-use first stages and Crew Dragon capsules for crew flights as well, starting this year.
We really don't. Roscomos doesn't make the rockets, it's the Russian NASA. The cost here is because of the middle man and the US having been dependent.
Be that as it may, today in 2021, the cheapest and most reliable way we have to send someone to LEO is to make a Soyuz and use that to send them.
Maybe eventually SpaceX will catch up in cost. But in 2021 it hasn't yet.
Be that as it may, today in 2021, the cheapest and most reliable way we have to send someone to LEO is to make a Soyuz and use that to send them.
Maybe eventually SpaceX will catch up in cost. But in 2021 it hasn't yet.
I doubt making a Soyuz and throwing it away is cheaper than building an F9 and reusing the first stage and booster 10 times. At that point the second stage would have to cost almost as much as an entire Soyuz stack.
Making a Soyuz is really, really cheap. Something around 5 million dollars for the rocket. Most of the cost in a Soyuz launch isn't from building the rocket.
If it is the case then we will see SpaceX charging NASA less than a Soyuz launch amortized over the number of passengers per launch. But in 2021 it still isn't the case.
If it is the case then we will see SpaceX charging NASA less than a Soyuz launch amortized over the number of passengers per launch. But in 2021 it still isn't the case.
So you're arguing it's cheaper in the case where nobody openly knows Roscosmo's numbers, nobody can obtain the services at those numbers, then comparing the cost at the FACTORY for Soyuz to the price of LAUNCH for SpaceX - before accounting for using the same rocket TEN TIMES - and still claiming Soyuz is cheaper?
Edit: Parent filled in data below, it looks like Soyuz in cheaper. :)
Edit: Parent filled in data below, it looks like Soyuz in cheaper. :)
We actually can optain the numbers. Roscomos is a public agency. They buy the rockets from the Progress join venture, and a public the exact cost of both the rocket and the launch. The cost of only the rocket is around 5 million dollars.
The total cost in 2018 for a Soyuz launch to Roscosmos is 3.5 to 4 billion 2018 rubles, which is around 20-23 million dollars per seat.
The cost is kind of at the factory because Roscomos partially builds some systems of Soyuz. But in the end it costs Roscosmos 20 million to put someone into space using a Soyuz, and it costs NASA 55 million to do it via SpaceX.
I'm comparing the cost of launching an astronaut to the ISS. For Soyuz, since the rocket is not reusable, this is the cost of the rocket plus capsule plus payload plus préparation, tracking, etc.. For SpaceX, it is just the cost of their launch. Soyuz is simply so well engineered that it still is cheaper, even though the SpaceX rocket is reusable.
The total cost in 2018 for a Soyuz launch to Roscosmos is 3.5 to 4 billion 2018 rubles, which is around 20-23 million dollars per seat.
The cost is kind of at the factory because Roscomos partially builds some systems of Soyuz. But in the end it costs Roscosmos 20 million to put someone into space using a Soyuz, and it costs NASA 55 million to do it via SpaceX.
I'm comparing the cost of launching an astronaut to the ISS. For Soyuz, since the rocket is not reusable, this is the cost of the rocket plus capsule plus payload plus préparation, tracking, etc.. For SpaceX, it is just the cost of their launch. Soyuz is simply so well engineered that it still is cheaper, even though the SpaceX rocket is reusable.
> even though the SpaceX rocket is reusable.
As I pointed out already, the original NASA contract was signed long before SpaceX recovered a single core. Tose prices don't take into account reusability at all. SpaceX already has two pre-flown crew rated first stages ready to fly again. NASA has recently approved using them, and refurbished capsules, for upcoming missions. The cost calculation today is nothing like 2014 when SpaceX signed Commercial Crew.
As I pointed out already, the original NASA contract was signed long before SpaceX recovered a single core. Tose prices don't take into account reusability at all. SpaceX already has two pre-flown crew rated first stages ready to fly again. NASA has recently approved using them, and refurbished capsules, for upcoming missions. The cost calculation today is nothing like 2014 when SpaceX signed Commercial Crew.
I understand the sentiment you are trying to express and to some degree I agree but I would argue that the AK is a really bad example that actually is probably the greatest example of the Soviet simple utilitarian technology. Out of all of the battle rifles designed (The big three being the AR, AK and FAL/SCAR) the AK has gone under the least amount of revisions, the biggest revision being the AK-74 where the Soviets decided to go to a smaller caliber to compete with the introduction of the AR and more importantly, really the only revision functionally was the 74 went to a short stroke vs the 47's long stroke. The AK platform has not only survive the test of time, but is probably the most reliable battle rifle built, it is a testament to the genius of Kalashnikov that the AK produced today is functionally the same design as built in 1947. It is also very emblematic of the Soviet thought process in design.
> of all of the battle rifles designed (The big three being the AR, AK and FAL/SCAR)
To be pedantic about terminology the Kalashnikov family of rifles are generally not Battle Rifles. Of your listed examples only the FN FAL and some models of the FN SCAR are considered Battle Rifles.
Battle Rifles as a term came out in the 80s to distinguish between autoloading rifles soldiers had fielded since WW2 that weren't assault rifles. Assault rifles are defined as a selective fire rifle using an intermediate cartridge with a detachable magazine.
An intermediate cartridge being one that is more powerful than a pistol but less so than a traditional rifle cartridge. Germany pioneered, or at least mass-adopted, this concept with the 7.92 Kurz [short] round in WW2. The USSR ran with this concept - through seeing the STG-44 (German 7.92 kurz assault rifle), capturing some German weapon designers and following the train of thought of the period. This ended up with the AK-47, then later variants on this pattern.
NATO countries generally also wanted to do this, see the .280 British - the original cartridge of the FAL (and the EM-2). With one big exception - the US Army Ordnance Corps pushed for adoption of a traditional cartridge, and NATO bowed (in part as the US agreed to adopt the FAL) and everyone ended up with the full powered 7.62 NATO round.
Despite pushing for it, the US soon found out that having a high powered cartridge (and the sort of weapon that goes with it) wasn't what they actually needed, and they chose the 5.56 NATO round as used in the original M16 rifle (AR-15 platform). The rest of NATO caught up soon enough, often with platforms based of the AR-18/AR-180. This left them in the 80's with a new type of rifle that we would call an Assault Rifle but they also needed to refer to the (more) modern rifles they'd been fielding since the 2nd World War.
This resulted in the term Battle Rifle being created to refer to a self-loading rifle using a full power cartridge with a slew of (optional) features like full auto (the SLR [UK's inch pattern FAL] was semi-auto only), pistol grips (the M14 had a traditional stock) and the like. The 7.62 NATO calibre versions of the FN SCAR are generally considered Battle Rifles, whereas the 5.56 NATO versions aren't.
To be pedantic about terminology the Kalashnikov family of rifles are generally not Battle Rifles. Of your listed examples only the FN FAL and some models of the FN SCAR are considered Battle Rifles.
Battle Rifles as a term came out in the 80s to distinguish between autoloading rifles soldiers had fielded since WW2 that weren't assault rifles. Assault rifles are defined as a selective fire rifle using an intermediate cartridge with a detachable magazine.
An intermediate cartridge being one that is more powerful than a pistol but less so than a traditional rifle cartridge. Germany pioneered, or at least mass-adopted, this concept with the 7.92 Kurz [short] round in WW2. The USSR ran with this concept - through seeing the STG-44 (German 7.92 kurz assault rifle), capturing some German weapon designers and following the train of thought of the period. This ended up with the AK-47, then later variants on this pattern.
NATO countries generally also wanted to do this, see the .280 British - the original cartridge of the FAL (and the EM-2). With one big exception - the US Army Ordnance Corps pushed for adoption of a traditional cartridge, and NATO bowed (in part as the US agreed to adopt the FAL) and everyone ended up with the full powered 7.62 NATO round.
Despite pushing for it, the US soon found out that having a high powered cartridge (and the sort of weapon that goes with it) wasn't what they actually needed, and they chose the 5.56 NATO round as used in the original M16 rifle (AR-15 platform). The rest of NATO caught up soon enough, often with platforms based of the AR-18/AR-180. This left them in the 80's with a new type of rifle that we would call an Assault Rifle but they also needed to refer to the (more) modern rifles they'd been fielding since the 2nd World War.
This resulted in the term Battle Rifle being created to refer to a self-loading rifle using a full power cartridge with a slew of (optional) features like full auto (the SLR [UK's inch pattern FAL] was semi-auto only), pistol grips (the M14 had a traditional stock) and the like. The 7.62 NATO calibre versions of the FN SCAR are generally considered Battle Rifles, whereas the 5.56 NATO versions aren't.
I tend to use the term battle rifle as representing rifles utilized by world militaries, I fully yield that you are correct, but I tend to try to stay away from the word assault rifle when trying to convey what I am saying due to it being an extremely loaded word now. Because the conversation can devolve into weather the AR-15, civilian AK etc. are classified in that group, by utilizing the term battle while not technically correct, infers meaning to the reader that I am specifically talking about rifles utilized by the military. That being said, I acknowledge that there is a stricter classification for the two groups and that my utilization of the term is not technically correct.
What is, or is not, an Assault Rifle is clearly defined, whereas a lot of the confusion comes from the use of the similar term Assault Weapon which is less well defined/defined by cosmetic characteristics.
Perhaps using something like Military Rifle would allow you to refer to such without being technically wrong?
Perhaps using something like Military Rifle would allow you to refer to such without being technically wrong?
Good suggestion, I will utilize it in the future.
>all interesting and robust in its own ways but not all that competitive in terms of performance, so,
Really? The most performing rocket-engine for a long time was the Russian RD-170. The most impressive performing Fighter (aeronautic wise the Su-27) The fastest Sub also Russian, the biggest ICBM (R-36M) too and so on.
>best they managed to build were AKs, Soyuz, Chernobyl
The US did Agent Orange, Fat Man and Apollo 1, was that the best the US manged to build?
Really? The most performing rocket-engine for a long time was the Russian RD-170. The most impressive performing Fighter (aeronautic wise the Su-27) The fastest Sub also Russian, the biggest ICBM (R-36M) too and so on.
>best they managed to build were AKs, Soyuz, Chernobyl
The US did Agent Orange, Fat Man and Apollo 1, was that the best the US manged to build?
Most Soviet computers were shoddy copies of Western models. DEC even left Easter eggs in Cyrillic on their silicon to Russian reverse-engineers:
https://micro.magnet.fsu.edu/creatures/pages/russians.html
https://micro.magnet.fsu.edu/creatures/pages/russians.html
But Computers are not everything. The US did some good tec but the SU too, it's not just black and white.
SU indeed had bright minds who had clever ideas, but its economy favored copying over own innovation. So outside of military field SU didn't have much to boast. "Made in USSR" was used mostly in sarcastic phrases by its own population.
>So outside of military field SU didn't have much to boast.
Well that was more or less the only field where money and researchers where available in huge quantities.
That's kind of a interesting article:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_Russian_innovation
Well that was more or less the only field where money and researchers where available in huge quantities.
That's kind of a interesting article:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_Russian_innovation
The Soviets almost built their own internet before the U.S. It was ironically killed by the bureaucrats that it would have largely made redundant.
https://strelkamag.com/en/article/what-happened-to-the-sovie...
https://strelkamag.com/en/article/what-happened-to-the-sovie...
That's not true on any reasonable scale. One just can't claim 'almost built X' for every failed attempt to secure financial support for a research institute to work in more, or less X direction.
The Soviets didn't actually round their scientists up and force them to work. That's basically just US propaganda version of Soviet system.
Not to say that never happened, but its incredibly reductionist and inaccurate.
Not to say that never happened, but its incredibly reductionist and inaccurate.
The chief designer of the Soviet space program, Sergei Korolev, was imprisoned on false charges and sentenced to slave labor. This sentence was later reduced to 'merely' eight years in a sharashka, a labor camp for scientists. That's the way to do it: first, show the victim how bad it really can be, then reduce the sentence and the severity, but only on cooperation and good behavior. "Produce or you go back to the mines to die horribly".
In a totalitarian regime the stick goes a long way.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sergei_Korolev
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sergei_Korolev
> exploiting cheap labour to brute-force their way into the market.
Do you mean like slavery in the United States?
Do you mean like slavery in the United States?
Slavery resulted in zero pressure to innovate and industrialize and was the number 1 reason why the South had a garbage economy.
was the number 1 reason why the South had a garbage economy
I am not sure what the implication of garbage economy is, but the south was fairly wealthy antebellum. So much so that they supported a large tax base for the federal government which they resented, it lead to the nullification crisis in 1832 and started the long road to the civil war. Southern universities where also considered to be some of the best in the nation pre-war.
If you where referring to an economy based on the backs of slaves then yes it could be labeled a garbage economy but if it is in reference to the poverty seen across the south in modern day, the antebellum south was a totally different economy and honestly an entirely foreign culture a culture that was decimated (the bad and good parts) in Reconstruction.
I am not sure what the implication of garbage economy is, but the south was fairly wealthy antebellum. So much so that they supported a large tax base for the federal government which they resented, it lead to the nullification crisis in 1832 and started the long road to the civil war. Southern universities where also considered to be some of the best in the nation pre-war.
If you where referring to an economy based on the backs of slaves then yes it could be labeled a garbage economy but if it is in reference to the poverty seen across the south in modern day, the antebellum south was a totally different economy and honestly an entirely foreign culture a culture that was decimated (the bad and good parts) in Reconstruction.
There is a contemporary books that explains this called The Impending Crisis of the South[1]. It was banned throughout the south and men were executed for distributing it in Arkansas.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Impending_Crisis_of_the_So...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Impending_Crisis_of_the_So...
> the south was fairly wealthy antebellum.
Not so much when you properly account for the enslaved population. It's just not sensible to only count free citizens, that's clearly a misleading impression.
Not so much when you properly account for the enslaved population. It's just not sensible to only count free citizens, that's clearly a misleading impression.
It is not a misleading impression, the south as a territory was fairly wealthy for much the same reason that todays California is fairly wealthy, that does not mean that the wealth distribution was good, nor does it mean that I advocate for a return to that system as it was abhorrible. The south was a shining example of wealth concentration and the ability to control that it brings. But economically it was strong, so strong that they had a slogan that cotton was king. The implication was that the European powers and their need for the souths exports would drag them into the war on the souths side. It was prides folly to think ]their economic hand was that strong, and they certainly overplayed it, but it was strong and that is why they felt they could play it.
Its worse than that, its not about not counting the slaves, the slaves literally are the wealth they were counting, and were the largest capital asset in the country.
Let’s make a compromise and count three-fifths.
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ISA's are to hardware what API's are to software. They simply provide a spec to conform to. ISA's say little to nothing about the hardware implementation itself. That's the real value and something that every firm that has CPU IP guards.
And sadly China isn't lacking in stolen valuable CPU IP. The Chinese branch of ARM went rogue last year. I think its a safe assumption that any sensitive information they may have had is no in the hands of the CCP and will be used to its full potential.
And sadly China isn't lacking in stolen valuable CPU IP. The Chinese branch of ARM went rogue last year. I think its a safe assumption that any sensitive information they may have had is no in the hands of the CCP and will be used to its full potential.
Yeah, will NVidia's acquisition result in a real push to RISC-V?
The problem is that restrictions are not thought through. If they were banned from using Android altogether, they wouldn't be able (legally) to port it on that architecture in the first place. The same goes with the RISC-V as well - the law could be written to allow only certain countries to use it freely.
These obstacles are kind of similar to patents. When you discover something and then you learn someone was first to patent it, you have to invent your own thing, so in this regard these embargos are just an inconvenience rather than a real instrument to force another country to behave in a civilised way.
I wonder how authors of RISC-V must feel when their architecture is being appropriated by a country that violates human rights. Is that in the spirit of the free license?
You cannot legally ban them from using Android. Google play store and other proprietary apps, sure, but the actual android OS is free software.
> The same goes with the RISC-V as well - the law could be written to allow only certain countries to use it freely
And how would the US enforce such a law abroad? Even admitting that European countries (UK included), Japan, South Korea, and most of latin America decided to pass similar laws to pleasure the US, how are the US supposed to enforce that in China (and their growing area of influence, in Africa and Central Asia)?
> I wonder how authors of RISC-V must feel when their architecture is being appropriated by a country that violates human rights. Is that in the spirit of the free license?
Unfortunately, countries not violating the human rights are too few to be a viable market (and the US is definitely not one of them).
Also, what zamadatix said.
> The same goes with the RISC-V as well - the law could be written to allow only certain countries to use it freely
And how would the US enforce such a law abroad? Even admitting that European countries (UK included), Japan, South Korea, and most of latin America decided to pass similar laws to pleasure the US, how are the US supposed to enforce that in China (and their growing area of influence, in Africa and Central Asia)?
> I wonder how authors of RISC-V must feel when their architecture is being appropriated by a country that violates human rights. Is that in the spirit of the free license?
Unfortunately, countries not violating the human rights are too few to be a viable market (and the US is definitely not one of them).
Also, what zamadatix said.
They could copy and paste laws that are used for illegal drugs enforcement - just replace drugs with Android from China and then force other countries to support that.
> They could copy and paste laws that are used for illegal drugs enforcement
Given how well it worked, I'm not sure it's a great path to follow…
> then force other countries to support that.
Well, that's where it becomes interesting. Where are those countries supposed to get their Android phones from? Samsung cannot double their Android phone production.
And what if China responded by not allowing the China-made iPhones to be shipped abroad?
Geopolitics is a tough topic, and even as powerful as they are, the US can't just control everything directly. And on most actions, they can only pull the trigger once.
Given how well it worked, I'm not sure it's a great path to follow…
> then force other countries to support that.
Well, that's where it becomes interesting. Where are those countries supposed to get their Android phones from? Samsung cannot double their Android phone production.
And what if China responded by not allowing the China-made iPhones to be shipped abroad?
Geopolitics is a tough topic, and even as powerful as they are, the US can't just control everything directly. And on most actions, they can only pull the trigger once.
Just to be clear - I am not advocating that, just I am thinking out loud what not-right-in-the-head politicians (as they usually are) could do to get that way. The easiest way is to apply the same framework to a different thing and then hope it will come to an equilibrium by itself eventually.
For that you would also need a good chunk of propaganda in the tune of drugs are bad, just say no, saying phones from China are bad and then subsidise companies who are manufacturing in the west and heavily tax stuff with Chinese origin and so on. I am talking about about decade worth of slow transformation.
Fortunately for China they are so corrupt just like our politicians, that any attempt to do this could be thwarted with money under the table. They managed to do this with drugs because you had no cartels and any organisation selling or manufacturing drugs wouldn't have enough money to influence the government (and ironically they got so rich because of essentially tax free high margin product that they pay for "war on drugs" to continue). Try that with Apple that essentially can do whatever they like.
The only reason China follows the patent and copyright system even somewhat is because of international agreements. There is no international agreement that allows for this.
As a result China will simply ignore the US and do whatever they want.
As a result China will simply ignore the US and do whatever they want.
China actually supports these laws for their own reasons as well. If China made all drugs legal there would be nothing anybody could do to stop them selling or buying drugs.
So you want the US to nationalize Android.
Its copyrighted software, how is this supposed to work? What are the implications for other copyrighted works?
Its copyrighted software, how is this supposed to work? What are the implications for other copyrighted works?
I don't want that, I am only saying how this could be done. For example certain technologies could be permitted only in NATO countries and if you want to market your product that uses it you will have to prove it that it does not originate from China.
If a country isn't willing to honor human rights why do you think they'll honor some foreign group's license.txt when it comes down to it?
The products containing code or chips that are not allowed could be incorporated in the same regime as illegal drugs - so trading or possessing a device with such operating system or technology could be deemed illegal.
I'm more talking the 1.4 billion people in China that need CPUs when you try to tell them they can't use ARM or RISC or etc. not the 330 million in the US that want something manufactured. We've already import restricted Android devices from e.g. Huawei, it has had no impact to their need for CPU
designs for them though.
So if it is their internal market, because of how big they are, there is nothing that you can do unfortunately. Only impose further sanctions that will eventually escalate to a war. In that sense China won, because no country can afford to stand up against them in a meaningful way.
>The same goes with the RISC-V as well - the law could be written to allow only certain countries to use it freely.
Luckily, the people behind RISC-V were smart enough to protect it as well as they could against politicians using this open technology as a political tool. Not only it uses an open license, but also IP is owned by entity registered in Switzerland, so people and organizations all around the globe can collaborate and use results without being afraid to fall under yet another sanctions, which more often than not are simply a salvo in an ongoing economic warfare.
Luckily, the people behind RISC-V were smart enough to protect it as well as they could against politicians using this open technology as a political tool. Not only it uses an open license, but also IP is owned by entity registered in Switzerland, so people and organizations all around the globe can collaborate and use results without being afraid to fall under yet another sanctions, which more often than not are simply a salvo in an ongoing economic warfare.
Pedophiles use computers, the internet, encryption, cars, roads, and the products and services of various business to sexually abuse children.
How should all the people who built those things feel?
How should all the people who built those things feel?
> I wonder how authors of RISC-V must feel when their architecture is being appropriated by a country that violates human rights.
Like the US? Yeah that probably does bother them.
I mean the US has killed 1000x more people and was engaged in far, far more wars in the last 50 years. Destabalisng whole regions, overthrowing governments all over the place, supported some of the most vile people ever (and still do).
But I guess morality only matters if you are bad to your own population.
Like the US? Yeah that probably does bother them.
I mean the US has killed 1000x more people and was engaged in far, far more wars in the last 50 years. Destabalisng whole regions, overthrowing governments all over the place, supported some of the most vile people ever (and still do).
But I guess morality only matters if you are bad to your own population.
The irony is that the Chinese strategy is the make the West dependent on it for various goods, while the US strategy is to ensure China is not dependent on it for the key goods the US has a competitive advantage over.
Given that necessity is the mother of invention you can imagine that with China's economies of scale and cheap labor that they will have a competitive advantage sooner than later and the US will become dependent on them for advanced semiconductors.
Given that necessity is the mother of invention you can imagine that with China's economies of scale and cheap labor that they will have a competitive advantage sooner than later and the US will become dependent on them for advanced semiconductors.
China is dependent on the US for food. China was able to use Brazil for the past few years to work around Trump's trade policies (lets not get into that issue), but Brazil depleted their stores to do so, and in some cases had to import food from the US to replace the the food they exported the China.
That's a good thing though. More processors/hardware means more competition and it spurs innovation as opposed to one state committing espionage to get another state's industrial R&D! It leads both to being more independent in case of a war between them which is almost inevitable at this point (probably a proxy war)
I expect RISC-V to match Apple's ARM implementations efficiency/speed within the decade. This is a long time but it is a very lofty goal as Apple's ARM implementation is a moving target to RISC-V has to move faster.
But it likely will come close to converging around 5 years from now -- at least somewhat competitive in core count and single core performance.
Interesting times.
I look forward to the first AMD Ryzen-like chipset designs for ARM and RISC-V. That is an innovation that is just waiting to be taken advantage of by these newer architectures.
But it likely will come close to converging around 5 years from now -- at least somewhat competitive in core count and single core performance.
Interesting times.
I look forward to the first AMD Ryzen-like chipset designs for ARM and RISC-V. That is an innovation that is just waiting to be taken advantage of by these newer architectures.
That might be true, but I wouldn't expect the microarchitectures that achieve this performance to be free (in either the "gratis" or "libre" senses of that word). Designing a superscalar application processor requires an enormous amount of work by engineers who are experts in their field, and that work needs to be compensated somehow.
The ISA may be open, but there is no requirement for the microarchitecture implementing the ISA to be, and it's hard to imagine anyone doing the work to produce a performance-competitive chip and then giving it away. Even if there is a "consortium" model where multiple companies benefit from a single design, they would likely set up some sort of licensing arrangement to prevent free-riding by companies that did not contribute to the design.
The ISA may be open, but there is no requirement for the microarchitecture implementing the ISA to be, and it's hard to imagine anyone doing the work to produce a performance-competitive chip and then giving it away. Even if there is a "consortium" model where multiple companies benefit from a single design, they would likely set up some sort of licensing arrangement to prevent free-riding by companies that did not contribute to the design.
There are benefits to having an Open ISA even without all cores being open.
> I wouldn't expect the microarchitectures that achieve this performance to be free (in either the "gratis" or "libre" senses of that word)
I agree with you on this as an eventuality of risc-v. But my casual following of the space leads me to believe that a high-performance open baseline of these architectures will be available and customization/special purpose of these archs will be for purchase.
I'm hopeful some of the benefits will be contributed upstream.
As long as there is some competition in the architecture space (ARM, x86, risc-v), the more likely builders will share gains upstream to compete against rival platforms.
That's my wishful thinking at least.
I agree with you on this as an eventuality of risc-v. But my casual following of the space leads me to believe that a high-performance open baseline of these architectures will be available and customization/special purpose of these archs will be for purchase.
I'm hopeful some of the benefits will be contributed upstream.
As long as there is some competition in the architecture space (ARM, x86, risc-v), the more likely builders will share gains upstream to compete against rival platforms.
That's my wishful thinking at least.
I think you’re likely underestimating how complex a modern microarchitecture like the A78 or X1 is compared to the RISC-V cores that have been open sourced so far. It’s unclear to me what organizations would have the resources to develop something like the A78 for RISC-V and would also be happy giving it away for free.
Note that in the ARM world everyone except Apple and Nvidia have given up on developing their own microarchitectures - they all just license one from ARM and maybe apply some customizations on top.
Note that in the ARM world everyone except Apple and Nvidia have given up on developing their own microarchitectures - they all just license one from ARM and maybe apply some customizations on top.
,,Compatibility with graphically intensive apps, like games, will be a problem as many game engines are written natively in C and C++, and specifically target the Arm architecture.''
I'm quite OK with that if I get a better battery life in return. I depend on Google services though.
I'm quite OK with that if I get a better battery life in return. I depend on Google services though.
I doubt they have the AOT compiler working. So it is probably interp-only. Combine that with the low clock speeds a d less-than-stellar IPC, I'd imagine this is a cool demo and little more.
I'm not very familiar with Android but it looks like they've ported the dex2oat compiler to RISCV.
[Warning, large text file] https://raw.githubusercontent.com/T-head-Semi/aosp-riscv/mai...
[Warning, large text file] https://raw.githubusercontent.com/T-head-Semi/aosp-riscv/mai...
It is actually worrying that there will be a push to run a Google-dependent platform on RISC-V's. After all, we know that a lot of functionality is closed into Google Play Services, so that AOSP is to a great extent a bait for being fully tied to Google. Even without relying on closed-source components, you're still relying on Google's interest and good will in maintaining that project.
Instead, it's much more important to promote the "porting", or rather the adaptation, of Linux and *BSD distributions to work on RISC-V. Like with the Raspberry PI I suppose.
Instead, it's much more important to promote the "porting", or rather the adaptation, of Linux and *BSD distributions to work on RISC-V. Like with the Raspberry PI I suppose.
Is there really any risk of Linux not becoming common on RISC-V as soon as a few devices get popular enough? Isn't Debian already there? And won't this help that?
There is Huawei HarmonyOS which I believe aims to be compatible with Android mobile apps but has a different kernel and is not reliant on Google mobile services.
HarmonyOS has nothing to do with Android, besides also supporting Java (proper Java not Android Java dialect), among its official languages.
https://developer.harmonyos.com/en/docs/documentation/doc-gu...
https://developer.harmonyos.com/en/docs/documentation/doc-gu...
wrong according to wikipedia, its a direct rip off of android
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HarmonyOS
Huawei claimed that HarmonyOS is a microkernel-based, distributed OS that is completely different from Android and iOS. [23] However, it was later revealed that HarmonyOS 1.0 was based on Android 9 and supported ADB, the Android Debug Bridge. [24] In September 2020, it was found that HDC, the debug bridge in HarmonyOS 2.0, was again based on ADB. [25][26] A video of HarmonyOS 2.0 developer beta running on mobile was then posted, showing that the beta was just the same as Android 10 and no significant changes have been made in the name of HarmonyOS operating system. [27][28][29][30]
The future architecture, however, would be based only on HarmonyOS microkernel, according to the HarmonyOS roadmap.
Huawei claimed that HarmonyOS is a microkernel-based, distributed OS that is completely different from Android and iOS. [23] However, it was later revealed that HarmonyOS 1.0 was based on Android 9 and supported ADB, the Android Debug Bridge. [24] In September 2020, it was found that HDC, the debug bridge in HarmonyOS 2.0, was again based on ADB. [25][26] A video of HarmonyOS 2.0 developer beta running on mobile was then posted, showing that the beta was just the same as Android 10 and no significant changes have been made in the name of HarmonyOS operating system. [27][28][29][30]
The future architecture, however, would be based only on HarmonyOS microkernel, according to the HarmonyOS roadmap.
This is what matters when the devices hit the road, "The future architecture, however, would be based only on HarmonyOS microkernel, according to the HarmonyOS roadmap".
I'm excited to see where HarmonyOS goes. If google had to compete with another mobile OS it would be interesting to see what they do.
From the article, I assume T-Head only ported the open-source Android operating system to RISC-V and not the closed-source Google Play Services. Android itself is not dependent on GPS, although it is certainly less useful - even with a replacement like MicroG.
Unsurprisingly, this has been done by Alibaba-owned T-Head Semiconductor. The obvious result if Chinese vendors start facing obstacles to obtain licenses to manufacture ARM-based chips (or any other non-Chinese architecture).
How can anyone expect that software/hardware-bans to global superpowers can result in anything but their software/hardware-independence in the long run?