Comment by utopiah

19 days ago

At the pace every PC component is becoming quite expensive it's not entirely out of the realm of possibilities that my next CPU will be RISC-V based. /s (kind of)

PS: for those still hesitating to tinker with RISC-V the workflow is becoming quite convenient already, to the point you can "just" boot and install Linux (as mentioned in the article) on it to get a headless server running in minutes.

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utopiah

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embedding-shape  18 days ago

> to the point you can "just" boot and install Linux (as mentioned in the article) on it to get a headless server running in minutes.

This is basically what I've been waiting on. Besides the mentioned Milk-V Titan, what are some other good boards people here tried out and could vouch for being good? Ideally European, but happy to receive any recommendations as long as you've actually tried it yourself :)

dietr1ch  18 days ago

Maybe the open/free part will help with slightly better prices.

What a sad world to live in, stochastic bullshit machines and exploding drones get more computers than I

  • goku12  18 days ago

    You may know this already, but here's the obligatory clarification. The open/free part is the RISC-V ISA. The actual implementation, the microarchitecture IP, may not be. Most of the higher end RISC-V IPs are proprietary.

    It may still have a slight price advantage compared to proprietary ISAs like ARM, due to the latter's ISA licensing costs. But it remains to be seen how much of this advantage will be passed to us, the end users.

    • LeFantome  18 days ago

      I am a pretty big RISC-V booster but RISC-V is going to cost way more for a while. It is simple economics of scale.

      The license cost of the ISA is not that much per chip. It is not nearly enough to equal the extra cost per unit that is going to be added to any upcoming RISC-V chip due to the small production runs compared to x86-64 or ARM.

      On the microcontroller side, we are seeing what you are saying. RISC-V has taken over the microcontroller world and chips are being produced in the billions. Scale, combined with the lack of licensing, means that you can get RISC-V microcontrollers for a couple of bucks.

      The other thing is that there will still be license fees for RISC-V. You are not paying RISC-V International. But somebody designed the RISC-V chip and board you are buying and they will want to get paid. Instead of paying ARM, you will be paying SciFive, or SpaceMIT or Andes, or Tenstorrent, or UltraRISC (for the Titan board this story is about).

      But compare this to ARM where your choices are licensing from ARM or purchasing hardware from Qualcomm or Apple. Or compare to x86-86 where there is only Intel and AMD to choose from. There will be dozens of RISC-V suppliers and competition will drive innovation up and prices down.

      Of course, you can of course always design your own! Or use an Open Source design. No license fees required. But the chips you will actually want to use as a consumer will probably come with licensing fees.

      But 3-5 years from now, things may be different. I hope and believe that RISC-V will be successful. As RISC-V chips with competitive performance appear, volumes will go up and we will see the same pattern we have seen in microcontrollers. Many of the niches that are currently filled by ARM will start to be filled by RISC-V. This will include the SBC space and the server space for sure. We may see tablets and phones. With luck, it will also start to fill the periphery of the laptop and desktop space. Prices will be higher at first and then come down.

      RISC-V is inevitable. And the competition that will bring will pay dividends to all of us.

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