[HN Gopher] Europe bets once again on RISC-V for supercomputing
___________________________________________________________________
Europe bets once again on RISC-V for supercomputing
Author : muxamilian
Score : 160 points
Date : 2025-03-09 17:04 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.theregister.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.theregister.com)
| mrweasel wrote:
| If we want this to go anywhere, not just super computing, the
| first step is to get devices, useful devices, in the hands of
| enthusiast. That means funding projects similar to the Raspberry
| Pi, but for RISC-V, and perhaps mini-itx boards.
|
| We need these cheap-ish computers in the hands of people who will
| port software to the platform. Without a good selection of ready
| to go software, the hardware is pretty irrelevant.
| markus_zhang wrote:
| Yup. We need hobbyists to bootstrap the process. Preferably in
| schools too.
|
| I know there is Orange Pi Riscv but maybe there are other cheap
| hardwares.
| tux1968 wrote:
| https://milkv.io/duo
|
| Gives you something to play around with, very inexpensively.
|
| But really, virtual machines may be preferable; at least to get
| started.
| hulitu wrote:
| > But really, virtual machines may be preferable; at least to
| get started.
|
| And what shall one emulate in a VM ? A nonexisting physical
| processor ? /s
| tux1968 wrote:
| https://www.qemu.org/docs/master/system/target-riscv.html
| XorNot wrote:
| Wouldn't this be ideal though? Emulate the processor we'd
| like to have and work backwards to see if it can be built?
| Yoric wrote:
| I'm almost certain that this is exactly how it works in
| processor design. You start building your compiler before
| the processor is finished, and test it with the emulator.
|
| At least, in quantum computing, that's how it works.
| ndsipa_pomu wrote:
| I posted this link to HN not very long ago:
| https://liliputing.com/orange-pi-rv2-is-a-single-board-pc-wi...
|
| Discussion here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43309376
| Palomides wrote:
| 98% of debian packages build for riscv already, and a variety
| of pi like boards are available
| anotherhue wrote:
| The framework main board is surely that?
|
| https://frame.work/products/deep-computing-risc-v-mainboard
| littlestymaar wrote:
| Awesome, thanks for sharing that.
| camel-cdr wrote:
| No it's not. For HPC good software support for the vector
| extension is basically everything that matters, and the
| framework main board doesn't support that extension.
|
| I would currently recommend the BananaPI BPI-F3 or the
| OrangePI RV2 for that purpose, as they both have the same
| SpacemiT X60 cores, which support the vector extension.
|
| Sadly there are currently only in-order cores with RVV
| support available. Getting a cheap out-of-order
| implementation is the next most important thing for improving
| software support.
|
| Tenstorrent has announced they will release a 8x Ascalon
| devboard and laptop next year:
| https://youtu.be/ttQtC1dQqwo?t=1035
| knorker wrote:
| Thank you! I've been waiting for a viable RVV board for a
| long time. Just ordered the OrangePi RV2.
|
| This unblocks me properly working to optimize for vector
| support in software. OOO and even wider RVV registers will
| then automatically speed things up, without even a
| recompile.
|
| Yes, I know I could use qemu, but it's not the same. I feel
| like this is what unblocks me on the software side.
| marssaxman wrote:
| Such things have existed for several years already! Here are
| some examples:
| https://sifive.com/boards/hifive-premier-p550
| https://sifive.com/boards/hifive1-rev-b
| https://www.beagleboard.org/boards/beaglev-fire
| https://starfivetech.com/en/site/boards
| https://milkv.io/docs/duo/getting-started/duo256m
|
| There is even a Raspberry Pi model which includes two RISC-V
| cores alongside its ARM cores:
| https://www.raspberrypi.com/products/rp2350/
| Levitating wrote:
| Milk-V has much more than the duo. I have a few of their
| products and they're very cool!
|
| The biggest problem with them is software. Many boards only
| have buildroot SDKs or niche and outdated. Fedora related
| images.
|
| Though if you're experienced you can port your own linux
| distributions to these boards.
| nine_k wrote:
| But Duo is a device in the form factor of Arduino Nano that
| can run actual Linux (the 256MB RAM version at least). It's
| quite a leap.
| matt-p wrote:
| Surely arm is a better choice?
| daveguy wrote:
| RISC-V is an open standard. ARM still needs to be licensed.
|
| The world is abandoning rent seekers.
| briandear wrote:
| Is ARM better than RiSC? How many RISC computers can I go buy
| right now at the local Carrefour here in Barcelona? Weird
| definition of "abandoning."
| daveguy wrote:
| Both ARM and RISC-V are Reduced Instruction Set Compute
| (RISC) instead of Complex Instruction Set Compute (CISC aka
| x86) architectures. So it's more about the tooling that
| makes one better than the other. And like all open source,
| the tooling will be better over time as people and
| organizations recognize they get more back out of
| contributing to open systems.
| tgv wrote:
| That's way too optimistic. If it's like "all open
| source," it will have some improvements, forks and then
| nothing. There are only so many people who can contribute
| to chip development, and they all have jobs.
| daveguy wrote:
| Wait. I thought the Musk-Trump regime was going to usher
| in a glorious post-scarcity economy based on the genius
| and purity of crypto?
| 6SixTy wrote:
| RISC-V is probably no different than ARM at it's core.
| Also, both of them are RISC ISAs.
|
| Right now, you are far more likely to use RISC-V and not
| know it than to knowingly interact with RISC-V directly.
| For example, since about 2015, Nvidia has used RISC-V as an
| onboard controller for their GPUs.
| 3eb7988a1663 wrote:
| Western Digital also announced they were looking (have
| already?) to move to RISC-V.
|
| If you manufacture items at scale, getting away from ARM
| licensing costs per unit makes financial sense.
| Especially if you already have in-house expertise who can
| design chips tuned to your specific requirements.
| timeon wrote:
| I'm not native English speaker but I think that the current
| and near situation in local Carrefour would be influenced
| by "abandoned" rather than "abandoning".
| ndsipa_pomu wrote:
| Depends on what criteria you use for "better". ARM is surely
| more advanced technologically, but RISC-V may be a more future-
| proof decision as you're not necessarily tied in to one company
| that may change their licensing costs in the future.
| johnnyjeans wrote:
| Not if your goal is to decouple from the US.
| CharlesW wrote:
| ARM Holdings is a subsidiary of SoftBank Group, and so not a
| US company. In what other sense is it coupled with the US?
| nabla9 wrote:
| ISA differences are very small. Not enough choose one over
| another when there are more important issues at stake.
| boredatoms wrote:
| The EU is better off trying to build a local capability, riscv
| is the best bet as you dont need an architecture/ISA license or
| dependencies on geopolitics
| 6SixTy wrote:
| Choosing RISC-V here is more about how much soverienty a
| country has over the IP than anything else here. The US can
| probably consider most-all ARM IP to be dual use technology and
| immediately deny use of it.
|
| RISC-V being based out of Switzerland, the ISA being under a
| permissive Creative Commons license, and most software tools
| being FOSS is definitely why it's being adopted here. It's
| completely isolated from all geopolitics.
| 3836293648 wrote:
| And non-Apple Silicon is British?
| turtletontine wrote:
| ARM Holdings is British. Anyone making ARM cores (Apple,
| Qualcomm, Amazon's Graviton...) is paying licensing fees to
| a British company.
|
| Arm even tried to cancel Qualcomm's licensing agreement
| back in the fall. Using RISC V entirely circumvents not
| only royalty payments, but legal battles like that
| (frivolous or not).
| Someone wrote:
| > The US can probably consider most-all ARM IP to be dual use
| technology and immediately deny use of it.
|
| The US (certainly the current US) can do that, but
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arm_Holdings):
|
| _"Arm Holdings plc (formerly an acronym for Advanced RISC
| Machines and originally Acorn RISC Machine) is a Japanese-
| owned British semiconductor and software design company based
| in Cambridge, England"_
| 6SixTy wrote:
| There are still ARM offices in the US in which their work,
| IP, etc would be subject to export restrictions.
| boredatoms wrote:
| ARM in stock listed in New York, it cant avoid US
| assertions
| matt-p wrote:
| So what, there's nothing done in America that can't be
| brought back to Cambridge or London just as easily as we
| offshored it.
|
| If Europe is making a serious investment then it has more
| than enough power to say "you'll get the contract if you
| divest of X,Y,Z"
| danieldk wrote:
| I'm all in for RISC-V, but ARM Holdings is British (and owned
| by the Japanese SoftBank group). ASML is in the The
| Netherlands. And there are some European ARM CPU vendors
| (NXP, ST Microelectronics, etc.). So Europe could also
| standardize on ARM without sovereignty issues?
| omnimus wrote:
| Why risking doing that if you can go to ASML and those
| vendors to manucature you RISC which isnt owned by
| Softbank...
| matt-p wrote:
| Because almost all software runs on arm today, almost
| none (comparatively) runs on risc-v.
|
| Or perhaps because ARM is miles ahead of risc-v today.
| danieldk wrote:
| I think we should definitely invest in RISC-V, open is
| preferable, especially in a continent-wide initiative.
| I'm just contesting that the US could unilaterally
| sabotage ARM use in Europe.
| matt-p wrote:
| ARM is a British company. We are in Europe.
| zipy124 wrote:
| It was founded in Britain, but it is a Japanese company ATM
| as per it's SoftBank ownership.
| matt-p wrote:
| So what? Japan are Europe's enemy now? Could the EU not
| just buy 25% or something?
| omnimus wrote:
| Its specifically Softbank which might be japanese but its
| very much aligned with US and VC funds. It might as well
| be VC fund.
| matt-p wrote:
| So what? What's the scenario here?
|
| The USA pressures Japan to stop selling licences to
| European Fabs? Why, what would push them to such
| extremes?
|
| Fabs can still produce those current designs (they just
| don't have licences). Now Europe can buy SoftBank out, or
| Britain can just walk into ARM Cambridge and say it's
| been sequested for the war effort.
| xbmcuser wrote:
| It is not for the rest of the world who are banned from using
| advanced US technology so best for the world is for China to
| get to parity on node size as well as rest of the world to
| adopt RISC-V.
| simne wrote:
| When making sophisticated big projects, usually weighting many
| considerations, not just architecture.
|
| Even more, some considerations could have more weight then
| architecture for particular case.
|
| Examples are good compiler/libs/frameworks, some specific
| software, good support, experience on similar contracts, big
| number of professionals with military clearance.
|
| That's why some long time IBM won most govt contracts on
| supercomputers.
|
| But once IBM decided, govt is not interest enough client and
| after that moment, most contracts won by Intel.
| simne wrote:
| Also in Intel case at 8086 years, very important was large
| number of support chips, greatly surpass any concurrent.
|
| Examples was video chips, io chips, MMU, numerical
| coprocessor.
|
| At that time (8086) Intel produced even RAM and ROM chips, so
| govt could buy all from one contractor, and this is also good
| in some cases.
| cmrdporcupine wrote:
| RISC-V's vector extension ("V") is markedly "Cray"-like.
| rsynnott wrote:
| ARM Holdings is, ah, not necessarily the easiest company to
| work with. See the Qualcomm saga:
| https://www.theregister.com/2025/02/06/arm_qualcomm_nuvia/
|
| The _current_ big EU supercomputer initiative does use ARM
| designs
| (https://www.theregister.com/2024/05/14/sipearl_rhea1_specs/ ),
| but you wouldn't necessarily want to be totally dependent on
| them if you can help it.
| hajile wrote:
| ARM just sued their largest customer.
|
| ARM just announced they are manufacturing their own chips for
| the first time further threatening their customers (despite
| testifying the exact opposite in court a couple months ago).
|
| Since SoftBank took over, their company has shifted and proved
| that when a standard is controlled by one company, there will
| eventually be issues.
|
| Switching to RISC means those issues won't ever happen again.
| throwaway888abc wrote:
| China recently moved that direction. That would be nice
| collaboration to see between EU and China.
|
| China to publish policy to boost RISC-V chip use nationwide,
| sources say https://www.reuters.com/technology/china-publish-
| policy-boos...
| ndsipa_pomu wrote:
| I think it'd be nice for collaboration across all nations that
| want to take part.
| briandear wrote:
| If the goal is to decouple from the U.S., why would the EU want
| to collaborate with a totalitarian state like China?
| brendoelfrendo wrote:
| The US and the Soviets were able to cooperate on space
| missions in spite of their enmity. It's not unreasonable to
| think that Europe could work with China on a scientific
| mission, even if the EU or its member states want to keep
| China at arms-length otherwise. There's an interesting moral
| quandary there, as to whether cooperation with a totalitarian
| regime helps diminish or consolidate the regime's power, but
| this daylight savings thing here in the US is throwing me for
| a loop so I'm going to have to leave that unanswered for now.
| danieldk wrote:
| _There 's an interesting moral quandary there, as to
| whether cooperation with a totalitarian regime helps
| diminish or consolidate the regime's power, but this
| daylight savings thing here in the US is throwing me for a
| loop so I'm going to have to leave that unanswered for
| now._
|
| To be honest (I say this as an European), we have tougher
| nuts to crack the worrying whether cooperation with China
| will diminish or consolidate it's power. Our focus is now
| on defending peace and democracy in Europe (and on a larger
| scale non-US NATO). To say that China has its issues is an
| understatement (everyone has), but they are too far away to
| be a threat short- to midterm. Plus China also values
| international trade stability. So it would be silly not to
| look where we can (cautiously) cooperate.
|
| Ideally we would like to continue to work with the US. But
| the US is less interested in Europe now and that creates a
| vacuum that will lead to new trade alliances.
| gregman1 wrote:
| While it's important to steer clear of political debates,
| it's also crucial to acknowledge that the European Union,
| like any other political entity, has its strengths and
| weaknesses.
| swarnie wrote:
| What's the real difference?
|
| I know the US get to have elections but its always between
| family dynasties, billionaires or corporate stooges. The
| choice is an illusion.
|
| Lets cut out the middleman and know we're working with a
| different system for societal structure rather than one that
| pretends otherwise.
| dgellow wrote:
| The US is extremely chaotic and unpredictable. China is
| fairly stable and predictable.
| ratatoskrt wrote:
| This is it. China might be authoritarian, but it's acting
| way less eratic than the US right now.
| janice1999 wrote:
| That may be in part to their 'president for life'.
| Leaders are not immortal though and transitions between
| them have seen large and sometimes catastrophic changes.
| China designed its modern political system to avoid that,
| only for Xi to undo it and purge younger potential
| challengers.
| jimbob45 wrote:
| For life and is 71 in arguably the most stressful job in
| the world. The risk of mental decline cannot be ignored,
| particularly as he has now served longer than any US
| president in all of history.
|
| Although I say that and then I went down the rabbit hole
| of trying to find which individual had the longest tenure
| of presidency and vice presidency combined. It seems like
| it's either Nixon, HW Bush, or Biden.
| akie wrote:
| The US is not just erratic, it wouldn't be a stretch to
| call them hostile towards the EU right now.
| pipes wrote:
| "right now" being the key phrase here. On what length of
| time due you judge stability? The last 75 years or so in
| China... well amoung other things they killed over 50
| million of their own people with a man made famine. The
| question is if the institutions that produced USA can
| hold. China on the other hand lacks the self correcting
| mechanisms that USA has built in.
| ben_w wrote:
| > The last 75 years or so in China... well amoung other
| things they killed over 50 million of their own people
| with a man made famine.
|
| Such an event is also one reason India got my
| grandparent's generation to leave.
|
| And the one about 175 years ago in Ireland probably
| contributed to both the (eventual) Irish home rule
| movement and the writing of the Communist Manifesto.
|
| While the Great Leap Forward's famine was avoidable in
| theory, I think that the historical examples of so many
| others having similar experiences during the transition
| from agrarian to industrial, shows that in practice the
| mistakes are very easy to fall into.
| nostrademons wrote:
| China has a tendency to self-destruct every 300-400
| years. The interesting thing is that _many_ regions of
| the globe have a tendency to self-destruct every 300-400
| years. Europe had major continent-wide cataclysms with
| WW1 /2 in the 1900s; the Wars of Religion in the early
| 1600s; and the Hundred Years War + Black Death + Mongol
| Conquests in the 1300s. The Holy Roman Empire lasted from
| about 900 AD to around 1300 AD. The Roman Republic lasted
| about 500 years; the Roman Empire lasted another 400-500.
|
| I think the logic might be that China just _had_ their
| civilization-ending cataclysm, and so they 're on the
| upswing now. Ditto Europe. This is probably not the end
| of the United States either, more like the Crisis of the
| 3rd Century. But it's just as logical to look back on the
| 400-year cycle and think "Better invest in the countries
| that have already had their crisis and dealt with it than
| ones that are starting to decay internally" than to look
| back on the last 75 years and think "Wow, that was
| chaotic, the next 75 years will be equally chaotic."
| nine_k wrote:
| Predictable to an extent. President Xi has effected a
| number of rather drastic changes internally; it's possible
| that external policy changes may follow.
|
| It's not as crazy as electing Trump, of course.
| hagbard_c wrote:
| Most authoritarian states are 'stable and predictable'.
| When you meet a lion on the savannah the beast is stable
| and predictable in that it will most likely try to eat you
| unless it isn't hungry. Step on a snake and the outcome is
| stable and predictable in that you will get bitten.
|
| It is good for Europe to learn to stand on its - our - own
| legs, to become less dependent on the USA for territorial
| defence and probably also to learn the hard way that peace
| and tranquillity is the exception rather than the rule. Si
| vis pacem, para bellum. It is not good for Europe to swap
| dependence on the USA with dependence on China, we're more
| than 500 million people with access to most of the
| resources we need to stand on our own legs so let's get
| crackin'.
|
| Also, let's drop the silly panic around Trump, the man is
| doing what he was elected to do which is _put America
| first_. We should do the same, in a serious way. Not in an
| isolationist way but sensibly. Stop importing the world 's
| problems, stop with the silly self-chastisement around
| 'climate' and 'colonialism', stop the import of islamism
| and make serious work of getting rid of the islamist
| factions which have been allowed to establish themselves or
| Europe as it once was - the birthplace of the enlightenment
| - will succumb to the sectarian infighting which destroyed
| Lebanon after they invited Arafat and his PLO.
|
| So, 'Europe first' in the sense that the ideas which formed
| the continent are worth defending and so are people who
| subscribe to those ideas no matter where they come from.
| Those who want to get rid of these ideas to replace them
| with their own intolerant society - whether that be an
| islamic caliphate or a Chinese-style fascist [1]
| surveillance state - are not welcome. I realise this
| includes a number of EU bureaucrats who are enamoured of
| the latter system and I would be pleased to see these
| individuals removed from power, preferably by truly
| democratic means.
|
| [1] Fascism and Communism are closely related so it is not
| that odd to call the current government form in China by
| the former name even if they claim to be the latter. See
| https://www.britannica.com/topic/fascism for a definition
| or read what Mussolini had to say about the subject and
| you'll see the parallels.
| nis0s wrote:
| For secular and democratic nations, multiculturalism
| isn't inherently dangerous if there are principles and
| ideals around which newcomers to any nation can
| assimilate and integrate. America attempted that to some
| degree of success with its melting pot ideals till the
| 90s, but there wasn't enough emphasis on civic duty, from
| either the commoners or the elite. The US founding
| fathers included everyone in their vision, btw, including
| Muslims. The failure in any integration and assimilation
| goals from the past few decades result from enabling
| unjust narratives which pose America as the only country
| with the social ills and issues it's being criticized of,
| when there isn't any other country in recent memory with
| a more socially diverse congress.
| alienthrowaway wrote:
| > It is good for Europe ... to learn the hard way that
| peace and tranquillity is the exception rather than the
| rule
|
| I don't know if you're being serious here, but this
| (Ameri-centric? C21-centric?) view is laughable. Europe
| is well-acquainted with war and never saw lasting peace
| for much of it's history until the _second_ half of the
| 20th century.
| piokoch wrote:
| Yup, relying on sadistic, communistic regime that puts
| people into concentration camps is a great idea! What can
| go wrong!? For instance trading with Russia, Nord Stream,
| didn't have any bad results...
|
| Oh, crap, no, we have some full scale war going on in
| Europe now, because Putin thought he keeps Europe on the
| gas & oil leash (and he was almost right).
| addicted wrote:
| If it's open source it doesn't matter who the state they're
| collaborating with is.
| svorakang wrote:
| Well. I have worked quite a bit with Chinese businesses and
| let's just put like this: It does not matter much whatever
| license you think the SW or HW has. Whatever is available
| will be used and modified to the liking of the customer.
|
| It is common for new employees to walk in with code bases
| of previous projects they have worked with and there is a
| great deal of administration involved in ensuring that no
| one else gets to work with more code than they absolutely
| need. Local builds and copying binary archives is common
| practice!
| com wrote:
| I hate to break it to you but it's extremely common for
| Western employees to do the same. I had to investigate
| what seemed like a new employee attempting to begin an
| exfil of our source code only to discover what looked
| like all of EMC's core code, the new employee's last
| employer, in a gdrive folder.
|
| Incredibly common.
| znpy wrote:
| > It does not matter much whatever license you think the
| SW or HW has. Whatever is available will be used and
| modified to the liking of the customer.
|
| yeah, china is just not playing the stupid licensing and
| copyright game. chinese companies infringe trademarks and
| break licenses all the time. doing so boosts their
| business/economy overall so the state just doesn't bother
| with enforcing anything.
|
| the annoying thing is that we're not really playing the
| game either, or at least, we have laws that get enforced
| "randomly". it was recent news that meta torrented some
| 80 terabytes of stuff (https://arstechnica.com/tech-
| policy/2025/02/meta-torrented-o...) and essentially
| nothing happened. back in the day aaron schwartz was
| driven to suicide over a way smaller chunk of scientific
| papers downloaded.
| tntxtnt wrote:
| Because in spite of the west's propaganda, Xi is a good
| dictator. Singapore was/is also a totalitarian state yet many
| do business with it.
| f1shy wrote:
| Is there "good" dictatorships? My personal opinion is there
| is no good dictator (ok, in HN context, BDFL in a SW
| project) I like no totalitarian regime. No one.
| bruce511 wrote:
| A benevolent dictator is the best form of government.
| Unfortunately though power corrupts and they have a habit
| of becoming self serving, and very much not benevolent.
|
| I'm not just talking at the nation-state level, but at
| community, company, sports and so on. There's no shortage
| of Open Source projects run using the Benevolent Dictator
| approach.
|
| Compare that to companies run by committee (or
| governments run by dead-locked congresses) which preport
| to "represent the people" but just turn into "nothing
| gets done" factories.
|
| So yes, there are good dictatorships. They're especially
| good at getting stuff done.
|
| There are also obviously bad dictatorships.
| kibwen wrote:
| _> So yes, there are good dictatorships. They 're
| especially good at getting stuff done. There are also
| obviously bad dictatorships._
|
| All dictatorships, by definition, are better at getting
| things done than organizations that require non-
| unilateral assent.
|
| Instead, the difference between a good dictatorship and a
| bad dictatorship is that in a good dictatorship,
| dissidents are eliminated quietly or, if not quietly,
| then with enough spin that everyone considers their
| elimination to be a good thing.
|
| In other words, what good dictatorships are _good_ at is
| PR.
| XorNot wrote:
| Also you can look at the history of the Nazis and it
| becomes apparent that they weren't good at much of
| anything except that: so successfully that "efficient
| Nazis" became a trope for decades after the war despite
| all the evidence lying around to the contrary.
| ebalit wrote:
| The analogy between projects/companies and governments is
| missing big components though.
|
| - "Benevolent Dictators" of companies or projects have to
| obey the law - They can't forbid competition or
| alternatives - Every participant can leave at any time -
| If they burn the organization to the ground, the worst
| case scenario is the organization get replaced and people
| move on
|
| I think it shows that we're using the word "dictator" way
| too casually in that case.
| dijit wrote:
| There are plenty, Singapore is an example.
| sashank_1509 wrote:
| How is a dictatorship different from a monarchy? There
| have been plenty of good monarchies throughout history.
| Frederick The Great, created the Prussian State. Stuart's
| were well loved that they ended parliamentary democracy
| to restore the Stuarts. Victorian, Elizabethan era were
| also prosperous and well known. Ceasar was the final
| monarch who united the enmity between the nobles and
| plebs.
|
| The problem is we look at those states and all we see is
| the existence of slavery (that existed in all societies
| till at least 1800AD), women being relegated to a
| different social role etc. But it is wrong to assume that
| any of those were due to monarchy and that a monarchy in
| the modern age would not rule based on modern values.
| Just look at Singapore, for a small example of a monarchy
| ruling based on current social mores. Unfortunately since
| WW1, monarchies throughout the world have vanished, and
| all we have are liberal democracies, so we can't say
| either way.
| Yoric wrote:
| I'm going to assume that you're speaking of monarchies in
| which the monarch is the actual ruler, rather than UK,
| Belgium, the Netherlands or Canada for instance.
|
| In that case, I'd say that a monarchy is essentially
| dictatorship + a (usually) clear line of succession.
| sashank_1509 wrote:
| Fair enough, yes I mean monarchies proper, where the
| government is actually monarchical, not a ceremonial
| monarch.
|
| Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Thailand, Bhutan might be the only
| monarchies left. (Monarchy + clear form of succession).
| goodpoint wrote:
| > there is no good dictator
|
| A good dictator is a...
| simion314 wrote:
| At UN votes when voting about Ruzzian invasion China abstain
| while USA voted with Ruzzia and other most despicable
| dictatorships. Still waiting for a MAGA explain this 5D chess
| move and explain what the USA citizen won from this.
| wraaath wrote:
| "MAGA" voted in the manchurian candidate. Dismantling
| oversight, accountability, throwing out old alliances and
| siding with the global aggressors. The US government is
| rapidly turning into a kleptocracy.
| regularjack wrote:
| At this point, I'd rather my country collaborates with China
| than the US. And I dislike China's government as much as the
| next person.
| tehjoker wrote:
| Simple: China is only totalitarian in western propaganda.
| "Yellow Peril" is a tired trope, it's a democracy. It's
| difficult to characterize the U.S. as a democracy, and our
| social progress is rolling backwards.
| geysersam wrote:
| I'm very impressed and fascinated by the Chinese society
| and their progress. I love the country and it's rich
| history. But is it a democracy? No not according to my idea
| of what that word means.
|
| It's a great country nonetheless, people are free in China,
| they have their own system and it works for them, good! Why
| pretend it's a democracy?
| Barrin92 wrote:
| It's worth debating because China describes itself as
| such: http://en.moj.gov.cn/2024-03/05/c_967573.htm
|
| The Chinese would say the point of democracy is to
| translate the will of the people into action, it's to
| efficiently solve problems that people have, it's in
| their understanding neither liberal nor representative.
| In fact they'd likely turn your question around, if
| democracy is merely a set of procedures or rituals
| without concerns for the will of the majority, the demos
| which is in the name, why do you pretend to be one?
| toxik wrote:
| What absolute hogwash.
|
| Can you criticize and ridicule your government? No? Not a
| democracy.
| happymellon wrote:
| Because RISC V results would be something the Europeans could
| produce?
|
| We are reliant on the US as only 2 companies can make the
| x86/64 chips. I don't think Europe would be completely
| against working with a US or Chinese company like Hi
| Five/Star Five, as long as we weren't dependent on them, and
| could pull ties if they abused their position of control.
| XorNot wrote:
| Isn't the supplier of lithography machines for TSMC Dutch?
|
| While that's not the entire process, and it would be a 20
| year endeavour, it seems like funding the development of
| local capability here would be eminently doable.
|
| Europe is also the current heavy hitter for fundamental
| physics research, so attracting talent and maintaining an
| ecosystem should be much more achievable.
| omnimus wrote:
| Manufacturing the processor itself is different issue
| from what architecture that processor will be. If Europe
| produces any consumer processors like that it wont be
| x86. It will be Risc-V (maybe arm? its UK but owned by
| Softbank so nope)
| matt-p wrote:
| Just because SoftBank own it now, do you really think if
| Europe went to it and said "can we buy half, if so we'll
| buy $X amount of licences otherwise we'll start
| (effectively) a serious competitor in risc-v.
| gmueckl wrote:
| Most of the machines for the rest of the process also
| come out of Europe. Building the factories wouldn't be
| all that hard. Actually developing and running a full
| production sub-10nm process is a different beast
| entirely.
| mahkeiro wrote:
| STmicro is producing chips at around 14-18nm. ASML is the
| one producing the leading lithography machine, and we are
| not talking about ARM, Infineon or NXP. Europe has the
| capacity to produce their own processors if needed.
| andreasmetsala wrote:
| > We are reliant on the US as only 2 companies can make the
| x86/64 chips.
|
| The x86-64 architecture is on its way out globally thanks
| to Arm. RISC V is not needed for decoupling from the US.
| matt-p wrote:
| Because if the US are aligning with Russia and shunning
| Europe, then it makes sense for Europe to partner with China
| and break them off from Russia/USA
| znpy wrote:
| because we already collaborate, sell and trade with them all
| the time.
|
| might as well collaborate with them on this as well.
| MaxPock wrote:
| EU is friends with totalitarian states like Bahrain,Syria,
| Qatar and Saudi Arabia.What's wrong with working with another
| totalitarian state ?
| duskwuff wrote:
| Chinese firms have been moving in that direction for some time
| now. One early adopter was GigaDevice, which started offering
| RISC-V versions of their microcontrollers (e.g. GD32VF103 - a
| RISC-V adapted STM32 clone) around 2019.
| tw04 wrote:
| If you ignore the military ambitions of China and the fact
| they're openly sharing technology with Russia, perhaps.
|
| I don't see anything but regret for Europe several decades from
| now if they decide to start providing China with the technical
| expertise they're currently lacking in this space.
|
| This is all about China trying to find a way to escape the
| pressure of sanctions from Europe and the US.
| amelius wrote:
| Didn't ARM start in Europe?
| znpy wrote:
| in uk, so in continental europe, yes.
| tsukikage wrote:
| It was in the EU when ARM started as well, fwiw.
| thomasahle wrote:
| The EU has to start working more with China, for better or
| worse.
|
| Not as friends or allies, but there aren't a lot of those
| left anyway. It's only rational in this multi polar world to
| have some level of engagement with all parties.
|
| Most of the sanctions Europe have on China were just to
| please the US anyway.
| MaxPock wrote:
| "This is all about China trying to find a way to escape the
| pressure of sanctions from Europe and the US" Is this
| supposed to be a nefarious Chinese activity?
| qwerty456127 wrote:
| Everybody who "bets on RISC-V for supercomputing sovereignty"
| will probably end up buying Chinese anyway.
| muxamilian wrote:
| Why? Genuinely curious
| turtletontine wrote:
| (Jumping to assume what the original commenter meant:)
|
| China is pushing RISC V aggressively, and might be a lot more
| likely to succeed in making competitively powerful cores than
| EUR240M pounds spent in Europe, where money won't go nearly
| as far.
|
| I imagine one of the biggest constraints on success here is
| just expertise. If Apple's hardware team, or Qualcomm's Oryon
| team were tasked with making a high performance RISC V CPU,
| I'm sure they could crank out something incredible pretty
| quick. But I have a feeling practical expertise on this sort
| of cutting edge hardware design is a rare thing. Frankly no
| idea how this human capital compares between Europe and
| China, but I'll be excited to see progress and genuine
| competition on open architectures like this
| IshKebab wrote:
| I work in this space and I would say it's pretty even
| between Europe (the UK in particular, but also other
| countries like the Netherlands and France) and China.
|
| > where money won't go nearly as far
|
| I'm not sure about this either - apparently high tech
| salaries in China are not out of line with Europe (both are
| way less than America).
|
| But China does have more enormous companies that can fund
| their own chips (e.g. ByteDance).
| pjmlp wrote:
| Naturally the next step is to also rely in OSes and programming
| languages not controlled by export regulations.
| sylware wrote:
| RISC-V is interop as the ISA level. No wonder EU and even china
| are moving towards this US standard.
| dan_can_code wrote:
| Could you maybe explain this a bit more? I'd like to understand
| better what the value is.
| camel-cdr wrote:
| Here are some relevant slides from hpcasia25:
| https://github.com/RISCVtestbed/riscvtestbed.github.io/blob/...
|
| I also found this report on their FPGA Emulation Platform:
| https://www.riser-project.eu/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/RISE...
|
| So from these resources it seems like they develop a vector
| processor with Semidynamics out-of-order Atrevido core as a
| scalar core and their Vitruvius VPU.
|
| There is a paper about a previous iteration of the VPU:
| https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3575861
|
| In the more recent report they have a vector length of 16,384
| bits, with 16 lanes (8 in FPGA, 16 in the diagram, final version
| could be more), so total of 16*64=1024 bits of ALUs.
|
| Slide 15 seems to indicate that they want to create a chip with
| 32 of those cores, a shared L3 cache, and access to HBM.
| trollbridge wrote:
| There's a certain irony here as ARM is 100% British European.
| pjmlp wrote:
| If they feel like offering licenses, I bet European companies
| will appreciate.
|
| Besides they are no longer 100% as you mention.
| omnimus wrote:
| Sorry to break it to you but its owned by Softbank. So
| technically its Japanese and ideogically its heavy US VC funds
| aligned.
| LightBug1 wrote:
| RISC architecture is going to change everything
| lokimedes wrote:
| RISC is good.
| nine_k wrote:
| No, an _open_ architecture that 's widely accepted and
| implemented is going to.
| Yoric wrote:
| RISC? RISC has changed everything 20 years ago. That's done
| already.
|
| Or did you mean RISC-V?
| cmrdporcupine wrote:
| it's a movie quote
| wg0 wrote:
| It rather should be for general computing too starting with
| government office computers.
|
| Yeah they'll be slow but nothing can be slower than an x86 loaded
| with a Windows 11 or something on it.
| fransje26 wrote:
| > Yeah they'll be slow but nothing can be slower than an x86
| loaded with a Windows 11 or something on it.
|
| I nearly spit out my tea laughing.
|
| That's going to be hard to beat, yes..
| light_hue_1 wrote:
| There's nothing to celebrate here. This is another sad moment for
| Europeans everywhere.
|
| > The first phase of this six-year endeavor is backed by EUR240
| million (PS200 million, $260 million) in funding.
|
| For this to be a serious effort it would take another two zeros
| at the end of that number. This is 100x too small.
|
| In 6 years, we'll have spent a pittance, to realize that we got
| basically nothing for it, and we're even further behind the US
| whose companies are spending tens of billions to develop new
| accelerators.
|
| Let's take one US company at random, Groq, they've raised 10x
| this amount of money. That's one startup. Never mind Cerebras,
| SambaNova, Tenstorrent, etc. How is this effort going to compete?
| And they're giving the money to "38 leading partners" instead of
| one focused entity. It won't compete. It's just a waste.
|
| The EU is still thinking too small. In an era where the US is no
| longer a reliable partner (maybe even a rival), and where Taiwan
| could disappear overnight, this is extremely stupid and
| dangerous.
|
| I don't understand why the EU can't get serious about tech. Why
| does every investment need to be peanuts? Why can't we pay people
| well so they don't all leave to the US/Canada? Why can't we
| seriously invest in startups?
| ajmurmann wrote:
| Who in Europe would fund something bigger? Governments are
| tight on money and in many countries a aging population is
| overwhelming the welfare state while at the same time defense
| spending must go up dramatically and yesterday.
|
| Private investors in Europe don't have the very deep pockets of
| US tech investors and there is much less of a culture of risk
| taking in investing in Europe on top of that
|
| Edit: to be clear, I agree with your general point.
| Yoric wrote:
| You make a point. However, I'm not sure how it'd be possible.
|
| The US has been funded by an insane level of debt for the last
| 60+ years. Debt that might come calling quite soon, according
| to Donald Trump's own treasure secretary, iirc, and might even
| be the reason for all the current apparent international Trump-
| craziness (well, Trump being a narcissist certainly doesn't
| help).
|
| While the EU has serious debt, if I understand correctly,
| that's several orders of magnitude smaller when compared to
| GNP, which limits the ability of the EU to invest.
| CaffeineLD50 wrote:
| Given the stunningly low performance of risc-v chips that make a
| raspberry Pi look fast, I'm wondering how soon this is supposed
| to pay off.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2025-03-09 22:00 UTC)