This month we reveal that we are working on a powerful and affordable RISC-V single board computer, discuss PineNote’s huge software improvements and provide updates on PinePhone…
Rather it can be, but usually it is not. The main specs are freely available, but since the design is not copyleft the actual chip designs are usually not and often even include proprietary extensions.
Yes, the ISA is open as well the reference base design. You can have a closed source implementation of the open ISA.
But with a open ISA you are free from the x86 situation where only three enterprises can make chips and have some real competition. We have some of this with ARM, but as it’s a closed ISA and controlled by one enterprise, it’s not future proof.
/me counts the number of chip producing companies…
Not really more than 3 either at semi decent node sizes.
An open ISA is certainly nice if your alternatives are owned by companies that might have to sanction you in the future, but chip production is way too complicated for an open ISA to make much difference for consumers in regards to more competion (especially outside of China).
China is leading RISC-V development, and the major Chinese designs are actually open source! The Xiangshan and Alibaba designed cores, as two examples.
Rather it can be, but usually it is not. The main specs are freely available, but since the design is not copyleft the actual chip designs are usually not and often even include proprietary extensions.
I agree that it’s not completely open, but having an open ISA is alteady a huge step forward.
Yes, the ISA is open as well the reference base design. You can have a closed source implementation of the open ISA.
But with a open ISA you are free from the x86 situation where only three enterprises can make chips and have some real competition. We have some of this with ARM, but as it’s a closed ISA and controlled by one enterprise, it’s not future proof.
/me counts the number of chip producing companies…
Not really more than 3 either at semi decent node sizes.
An open ISA is certainly nice if your alternatives are owned by companies that might have to sanction you in the future, but chip production is way too complicated for an open ISA to make much difference for consumers in regards to more competion (especially outside of China).
China is leading RISC-V development, and the major Chinese designs are actually open source! The Xiangshan and Alibaba designed cores, as two examples.