On: Amid chip shortages, companies bet on RISC-V

[worldofmatthew]

Any fab is allowed to produce a RISC-V CPU. You will also have far more core designs that can work across different fabrication possess.

[SV_BubbleTime → worldofmatthew]

How many fabs are sitting around doing nothing saying "Oh gosh, I wish we were allowed to make something!". Less than zero, because new fabs being built already have orders and plans for what they'll be making Day1.

[cptskippy → worldofmatthew]

The limiting factor of a Fab is the process node. RISC-V doesn't magically boost the capability of large process nodes.

[yywwbbn → worldofmatthew]

It’s not obvious that any RISC-V CPUs that might be able to compete with ARM/x86 will be free in the future. It would take a lot of money to design them, why would the company that does that just give it away for free?

[brucehoult → yywwbbn]

https://github.com/MoonbaseOtago/vroom

One-man project. It works, right now, at A76 levels. The aim is M1 level, and the bottlenecks to that are known and being addressed.

There is NO WAY one person could do with with a complex ISA such as x86, ARM, or POWER.

[yywwbbn → brucehoult]

> It works, right now, at A76 levels

That’s hard to believe. Are there any benchmarks?