It will be interesting to see if say a Google will move its custom SOC from ARM to RISC-V at some point. I think that would be a turning point for RISC-V wider adoption.

ARM suing Qualcomm is like AT&T suing BSD. It is going to give RISC-V an opportunity.

Very useful to bring forward a sobered view on things. The invention of the wheel was nice. However, it was the applications of the wheel which made it worthwhile. Same things with RISC-V or other innovations. Thank you for this video.

Great points made & also ARM aren't standing still, so however well RISC-V develops - it's playing catch-up with a still evolving (and well resourced) target!

While i agree with all your points objectively. There is one real thing that is carrying RISC-V and giving it momentum, and its simply based on the fact that its an open source instruction set. As a result, a big majority of the new innovations in computing hardware and architecture is happening on RISC-V. I am working directly with the instruction set to develop hardware, and the amount of resources, tools are growing at a crazy fast pace. For sure the juggernauts will continue to innovate on ARM, x86 as well, I don't expect that to change, what i think changes is all the cool new innovations comming more from RiSCV based projects

My enthusiasm about RISC-V is partially about the open standard and mostly about it being another competitor in the CPU market. More competition is better. I like Windows on ARM for the same reason, plus the potential for better power efficiency compared to x86-64

Thanks for explaining!

Possible Google will make ARM to RISC V translation layer but it likely won’t make everything work well but could be huge step to make it possible for lots of ARM apps to work on RISC V. Outside of China I would think low end devices would be where RISC V would start to get market share which the ARM equivalent wouldn’t be able to run these high demanding apps such as video games (which doesn’t use javaruntime).

I think people are checking for alternatives once a chip architecture matures and usually licensing or IP usually pulls down most of them. Not sure if arm would cease and desist sd gen 2 w/ nuvia ip.

When they said RISC-V was more efficient than other architectures, they talked about the reference implementation of the RISC-V core in that new high-level hardware description language. Those claims were made based on hardware benchmarks on the same process node. So yes, if you believe the benchmarks and data, it is, in fact, more efficient (but this is old information from several years ago, so these things could have changed possibly). That doesn't translate to real-world gains unless you use it as a microcontroller with the appropriate process node and implementation. For servers and desktops, as well as cellphones, there is a lot of work to do in terms of optimisation and tunning of the existing code (video codecs and other performance-sensitive code) for RISC-V.

Interesting video. I don't know a great deal about hardware since I work with software but I've heard about RISC-V and it made to sound like it is somehow going to shake up things. Even then, I never bought into that because it's not like any person in a garage can make it, but takes a lot of capital to get a good chip design. It'll be something to see how RISC-V expands, especially with Chinese companies.

Hi. I have read somewhere that Apple is interested also by this risc-5 architecture but maybe not for the main chip but for less demanding tasks.

Interesting, let’s see how far it may go.

My only concern about RISC-V is that I don't want it to slow down ARM overtaking x86 in the near future. I want to see more competition in the Laptop/Desktop space and x86 only enables Intel/AMD, ARM has far more competitors using their IS. Once x86 see's less than 50% market share in the laptop/desktop space, I am all for a load more instruction set competition going forward.

Hi Gary. Big fan. Love your explainers. Lately, I have been struggling understand these terms like 3nm process or 5 nm process. I saw in wikipedia these "nm" values have nothing to do with any actual physical property. These are just marketing terms. Can you please clarify the clutter and actually provide details.

Is it full support like video accelaration? A hardware that can run everything Arm runs?

What was the soc for the Palm OS (Garnet 1996)?

RANDOM QUESTION! Is the phone in the thumbnail a Pixel 2 XL?

Reminds me of Linux in the mid 90s vs Microsoft. Not really competitive for most uses and users. Now it's different. As innovation rate declines it will be easier to catch up. That said with RISC V you still need a hardware design and layouts for a lithographic process. This is like saying each piece of software has its own compiler and assembler in the software world. Things might change as there are benefits to the industry to have standardised tooling and ways of doing things. Google are pushing this but only on 20 year old process nodes and not TSMC 3nm etc.

I am a keen hobbyist and the main attraction of risc-v processors is price. I only need very basic functions and 10p a chip is very attractive for experimentation.

Gary, maybe I’m mistaken cause it’s been a few decades but I remember the RISC vs CISC debates. I recall that RISC is a classification. Therefore a Qualcomm Snapdragon is a RISC chip by classification. So is RISC-V a brand name of a RISC classification chip or am I misinformed?

Just a clarification: " What is the license model? - The RISC-V ISA is free and open with a permissive license for use by anyone in all types of implementations. Designers are free to develop proprietary or open source implementations for commercial or other exploitations as they see fit. RISC-V International encourages all implementations that are compliant to the specifications. Note that the use of the RISC-V trademark requires a license which is granted to members of RISC-V International for use with compliant implementations. The RISC-V specification is based around a structure which allows flexibility with modular extensions and additional custom instructions/extensions. If an implementation was based on the RISC-V specification but includes modifications beyond this framework, then it cannot be referenced as RISC-V. Does that mean free for industry to use and play with, but then we pay if we produce a product using this ISA? -The RISC-V ISA is free for product use too. Those who want to use the RISC-V logo should join RISC-V International (see question No. 1). " (from the RISC-V website)

I think it would have been great to discuss what RISc-V is and why the hype. You have done a great job throughout the video managing people’s expectations but have not really helped us understand what the big deal about it is. The way I understand it and what has me interested and probably fall in the 45.68% of people saying Yes for sure, really is all about the geopolitics around the semiconductor industry. You mentioned the eagerly awaited Oryon CPU from Qualcomm courtesy of Nuvia. The legal battle between ARM and Qualcomm has made RISC-V gain huge momentum. As a result Google have upgraded it’s status to Tier 1. It is not that we think we will be getting open hardware, but rather the manufacturers we rely on to develop the processors now have an open standard. They are not limited by their license from ARM or Intel/AMD. We have seen the consequences of geopolitics on brands like Huawei when they were blocked from using ARM or TSMC. Having an Open ISA can accelerate innovation and security.

Is it actually any more power efficient when compared to ARM and x86 or is that just a myth

If there is a beginning there is hope.

I am an computer engineering student, we just learned to code in risc-V should I put more emphasis on studying it, or focus on other languages

I can see Chinese companies adopting RISC-V in order to avoid future US technology sanctions in at least that area. For those companies already bought into ARM, then it's going to be a balancing act over whether continuing to pay ARM for licensing is cheaper than going down an entirely new development path and having to re-learn what they already know. Also, there's all the other parts of the ARM SoC ecospace that needs to be taken into account. I can't see Apple changing yet again, but then they have surprised me before. Of course none of this is relevant to the area of bespoke processors where it looks like RISC-V has a big commercial advantage as it's much more flexible. That, of course, leads to it's own issues if RISC-V starts "forking" making use of that flexibility.

I can see risc-V being strong competition to ARM in the micro- controller market at the cortex M and cortex R levels. But I am not holding my breath in the Cortex A7xx and cortex X cores. Not saying never but......

If risc v can compete with arm Maybe after 1 decade atleast it will create competition and companies could buy it for lesser price and then sell the phones or processors at lesser price. All depends on their success. Seems very unlikely for now. But u never know.

I'm expecting an AV1 RISC-V mediaplayer

Wow Good Job

#RISC_V/Open-Source Hardware & Software is the FUTURE!!! by the end of 2023 we might be able to get a RISC-V smartphone to play with!

technically, chip companies won't have to pay royalty to ARM anymore which saves them money. but initial R&D is higher which brings in newer costs. so user wont see any effect on the front end if a risc v phone did come out. Its boring for users but very exciting for devs

this may be more for embedded android then for a smartphone

i think that risc-v has the potential to replace both arm and x86_64 architecures. if all the companies try to go that way, mobile, desktop, microcontroller and even servers can use risc-v in the future. compile once and run everywhere! in this case even technologies like webassembly and jvm can become obsolete and every compiler will directly produce risc-v code.

I would love to have an android Visionfive 2 version

RISC-V is inherently cheaper, but not more performant, so the top tier would be only competitive with the mid or low tier of the others unless it has the same investment.

But will apps follow suit? The main thing that fucked Windows RT was the lack of popular software that people use. No-one wants to use Windows RT if a certain browser, media player, downloader software etc etc isn't avilable for it.

I wish I had the resources to make hardware. Would love to make stuff based on RISC-V.

There is an effort to bring RISC-V to everything from IoT to desktop to server. This is something that is just not available for ARM, there is no ARM desktop, and no Raspberry Pi does not count. SiFive/Intel horse creek is going to be interesting.

as far as I know RISC-V is not totally free. The part that is free depends on who make the risc-v chip. But at least there is a possibility of being more free. It would te same as that say that all the software is free... It can be but not all the software is free as we al know.

Great

I just hope that all the software's will be built with hardware accelerator in mind. What RISC-V need now is to take all the programing language libraries and just make any code written in those language can be easily converted to RISC-V with all the Hardware Acceleration built-in. - if you're a programmer with the source code of your program, it would be nice to just select it to compile to RISC-V instead of ARM or x86. - The libraries subs & functions for RISC-V will have to use the same names as the original in ARM & x86.

Frankly I would prefer a phone that was not android or Apple. Yes, a RISC-V SoC would be a very good feature, but it is the intrusive OS that worries me more.

Does the OS come to the architecture, or the architecture come to the OS 🤔... Either way, it takes two to tango 🤣

Well you can see what's on a chip You can scan layer by layer put it in a spreadsheet and run it virtually.

What do you think that in the USB-C connector the VBus Pin is directly adjacent to the signal Pins? When you are charging you laptop with 20V can it damage the USB Controller if this VBus. Pin accidently comes into contact with other Pins?

"RISC architecture is gonna change everything."

Some people aren't interested in the same performance as current anymore for smartphones. They're plenty fast already, and even if one is as fast as a mid range processor from 3 years ago you can do anything you need. What it does bring is a more open hardware platform, where manufacturers and customers aren't subject to the whims of the overlords, like with the Arm/Qualcomm lawsuit. Maybe for licensing the RISC-V name some can get in trouble, but that's about it. Stop using the name and you're fine again.

I always wonder why the Chinese (mediatek, Huawei etc...) doesn't pick up riscv and build upon it? I think in 5 years time they can have something viable... Well google up there, linux kernel is there i think i saw arm emulator that run on riscv. I mean in the long run they can save million upon millions on licensing for arm... Will see...

Hot take: A completely open source SoC will eventually happen. We just need some organization to do the hard work and nail it. Who will it be?

The most basic yet important question is: Will we be able to run Doom on a Risc V Android phone?

You can create a RISC-V softcore processor in a FPGA, so that is a way you can create a processor without spending a small fortune :) So in that way it's more like your $50 pc doing opensource...

Apple silicon is aproaching to a limit. Apple cant make a larger monolitic SOC Apple is looking for RISC V experts.

If the problems between ARM and Qualcomm don't get resolved, will Qualcomm take the Risc-V route?

Actually, in regards to searching for malware on the microprocessor, I don't see why you can't audit the process of going from microprocessor specs to the physical hardware... after all, YOU have the hardware and the specs in your possession... and there have been so many ways these chips get reverse engineered in the last 25 years that it's gotten to the point where the hobbyist can play along... Duo Labs has a cool article where invasive analysis is used after acid etching to recover firmware off of a microcontroller. If that is within the reach of hobbyists, just think what guys in bunny suits can do in a billion dollar lab. I'm sure some independent security researcher funded by the competition would love to nail a huge company for putting malware on their microprocessors.

I get the sense that Gary is upset that RISC-V is popular.

Id love you to do a video on ChatGPT and your thoughts on the future of... everything! - with AI coming on in leaps and bounds!

It all depends on everyone's RISC appetite

We working on a AI primary phone based on RISC 5 Java Hardware Accelerator with new Java AI functions. Maybe a year 18 months out. Multi-billions investment. Compute in memory so Gary from another Gary, this AI CPU is beyond anything you’re discussing here. Already early adoptions of new network resource from another Gary!

All the points you make about RISC-V not being "Linux for hardware" are true for ARM too, but much worse.

“Opensource” seems quite like what my experience of “peer review”. Sounds awesome but when the peers are a bunch of quacks it’s a sham. Have been on GitHub to find specific bits of code from big programs and they are often so badly documented or named that It’s be given up. If you’ve not got a job and hours spare to search it’s fine but how is the average user supposed to find the bit they have time to read… it’s not really open source when it’s just hidden using obscurity, just like it’s not really peer review if every peer is a quack.

I believe that we will see the first RISC-V mobile phones in the Chinese entry market as soon as they can actually make them. China needs some sort of chip independence from the West/Taiwan, and RISC-V is an opportunity for them. Making a competitor for the high-end market is a completely different thing.

Or in other words: Far from everybody can pull a M1 out of their hat, which is why they need to keep their fruit pie in the oven for a bit longer still if they want to wow the market.

First comment. Great content Gary, keep it up.

Hi

I think this video's take on why people voted the way they did is completely unfair to the intelligence of the community. People are sick of being dictated to. Sick of having features pulled away in favour of walled gardens. Take the whole bootloader situation for example. Sure RISC-V isn't going to fix that out of the box because it's still down to proprietary implementations per individual chip and whatever each company decides to do. At least with RISC-V, the barrier is lower for it to possibly happen. For a company to enter the space and make a chip that is more open, and have a shitshow of it even running because the platform at least supports it's generic level specification. RISC-V doesn't guarantee a better outcome for consumers at all. But it at least ALLOWS it. There is no way that's ever going to happen with ARM or x86. Let alone the barrier of license fees, the control of an overbearing body who can dictate terms under the gun of yanking licensing means that freedom is quashed from the start. Dismissing excitement for RISC-V as fanboyism really insults the intelligence of the consumer in general given the context (android authority) At least with RISC-V, it's POSSIBLE for an underdog to exist, and niche markets that target specific demographics with different needs to the breadth of consumers.

I think RISCV on android could've a big boost if Google decided to make the next tensor chip using that instead of ARM, but odds are any support you see for that would be for that RV-tensor chip and not RISCV on android in general.

sure my next phone will be r-v , being me a penny pinching

Android should get rid of Java, and use Julia instead for speed

I think RISCV based chips will take over the entire Chinese market

You Should talk about ChatGPT, Do you think it will be able to replace Google? if so, when?

A few things: Your initial tirade was not needed. No one expected or thought RISC was going to be free. And even if it was, the phone itself would still cost money anyway. That was never a concern for anyone. Neither was security. No one can verify whats in ANY chip. Let alone Risc. However you are WRONG about the fact its not free. It IS from a design perspective. OF COURSE it will cost money to make a chip You gotta pay a fab to built it. But to design and use it, there is no fee like Arm does. With Risc i can design my own Risc chip and make it. And the only cost to me is the cost of physically making it. NO licensing. However Risc for Android does two things. 1. It allows more options. More competition which is not only good for consumers but google as well. They dont want themselves locked into and reliant on a single source of hardware for phones. Which qualcom basically has done. Google wants more variety to ensure THEY have full control of Android designs and usage and its also good for us consumers to have competition. It either will drive costs down or spur more advancement instead of the incredmental bumps qualcom has been doing since they really have no true competition on the high end.. 2. Risc comes with some benefits. Its more modular. And because it has no licensing fees and is open source, you can fully customize it for ANYTHING cheaper and easier than ARM. So forget phones. Were talking SOCs that run machinery, IoT devices, etc... basically you arent a slave to ARMs demands. You can make a super custom super niche very specific chip for your companies needs WAY cheaper than Arm. And because its super customized for what ever niche specific thing it is going to be used for, it will most definitely have a performance gain over arm do to that.

I think you should mention two aspects: 1.) China and 2.) Qualcomm. China is looking at alternatives to proprietary western standards like ARM and X86. And RISC-V just fits that bill. Due to political support and pressure, chinese companies will invest heavily in actual RISC-V hardware. Actual RISC-V phone platforms will probably first come from Chinese manufacturers. Google supporting the ecosystem will make this a lot safer bet for them. They can sell the phones with Google services in the west and just use the open-source parts of Android with a Harmony OS-like skin and homegrown services in the domestic market. And even if there is another era of sanctions, China will thus not be cut off from interoperability with the wider ecosystem, as many mainstream apps (Instagram etc.) will certainly be compiled for RISC-V as well. The other story is ARM sueing Qualcomm: This will lead to many chipmakers looking at the possibility of doing the same thing they were doing with ARM with a different ISA (without having to fear legal hassles). This will at first not impact Smartphones and server chips as much, given the dominance of the established players there. But in other speciality applications (Smart TVs, automotive, industrial) where the user experience is much more locked-down anyway and you don't have to worry about installing 3D games, RISC-V might become more interesting if there is a readily available codebase for it like Android.

but risc-v is cool

The world have to develop! Are we going to stick to Google for eternity?! There always must be an alternative. it doesn't matter if it takes 4-40 years but it must be done.

I think we have reached the end of an era with the proprietary chip makers and ISA's. A heap have popped up and fallen in the past 50 years. Now we have an open ISA, we are no longer going to have vendor lock-in. Having to use a particular OS that is bound to a specific ISA (windows) is going to be a thing of the past. If there is going to be any proprietary ISA's, its probably going to be limited to the 'Accelerator' space. I can see that we will probably even see a huge shift in the GPU space in the next 5 years. Couple this with the fact that we are approaching the end of a 70-year run of programming languages that are based on ideas that first appeared in LISP, the next big thing will be 'memory-safety'. Things are looking really rosey :)

More like Android coming to RV.

It will be another decade before we buy risc v phones

i have did research on riscv and riscv has horrible energy efficiency over arm.

If Nvidia adopts riscv instead of arm it would become the dominant architecture in the near future.

Did you consider the possibility that several companies contributing to an open ISA or chips based on it would be tremendously beneficial and competitive? ARM hides things about their designs but RISC-V doesn't. There is good reason that Android phones have done so well, and it isn't that Android itself does all the work. Several companies contributing and using ARM processors make better and better products as long as it makes them money. RISC-V chips will give them another opportunity to make even cheaper devices, to make more money. It's yet another step away from Intel and now ARM. Companies will be able to design their own chips and chipmakers like Qualcomm will be able to design better chips because they'll have full control over the design. There is a lot to get excited about in theory, but like you say, it's not going to happen overnight. It will happen quickly, though, like in the next couple of years, and because it has so much in common with ARM, it will not take a lot to port programs over. No, I'm not suggesting this because I'm actually sure or experienced. It just makes too much sense for it not to be true. What I don't remember you mentioning is why RISC-V is suddenly a thing worth the attention of Google and OEMs. ARM can't be counted on to remain neutral. Just like Valve has invested heavily in gaming on Linux because Microsoft seems to want to become a software vendor, Google and Samsung will invest heavily in RISC-V because they don't want to find themselves at the mercy of ARM for their chips. RISC-V may not actually change everything, but it could. It could make things so much better all around that ARM, Intel, AMD, and Nvidia have to make everything RISC-V just to stay relevant. It could make things cheaper, or it could make phone makers so much more money that they have room to be competitive in more meaningful ways than they could with razor-thin profit margins. This is big. This is huge. If I had $1 million to bet, I might bet it on the success of RISC-V when people like you don't understand what it means yet. This is another big step toward greater control, competition, and profits. I want this to happen because it would be an improvement, a way forward technologically. The greater control for all companies means less control of companies over each other, which means greater competition, which everyone but the greediest benefit from.

the free android is Glodroid.