Explaining RISC-V: An x86 & ARM Alternative

[Music] welcome to another video from explaining computers this time i'm going to talk about risk 5 which is an alternative processor technology that's already being used in microcontrollers and embedded devices and which may one day power mobile desktop and server computers specifically risk 5 is a free and open instruction set architecture or isa that may become a major competitor to the closed is using today's x86 and arm cpus in this video i'm going to provide a non-technical overview of risk 5 starting with the difference between open and closed isas i'll then discuss the origins of risk 5 introduce some of its key market players and explore current and potential future hardware and applications finally i'll say something about risk 5 global politics and limits on international trade as these will play the most significant role in determining risk 5's success today practically all computers are based on one of two closed instruction set architectures the first of these is x86 or technically x8664 with most desktops laptops and servers having an x86 processor from intel or amd the x86 isa was created by intel and then extended into its current 64-bit incarnation by amd with the two companies having licensing agreements that allow both of them to design and sell x86 cpus alongside x86 today's other dominant isa is arm with practically all android and ios devices and new apple computers having a processor based on arm intellectual property many different companies design and manufacture arm processors but because the arm isa is closed they all have to pay license fees to arm limited which hence maintains control of its technology in contrast the risk 5 isa is free and open this means that anybody can design and sell a risk 5 processor core without any constraints on their actions the designs for risk 5 cores may then be used in the design of microcontrollers cpus systems on a chip or other components which may in turn be manufactured in a fabrication plant whilst the risk 5 isa is free and open it's up to the designers of risk 5 cores and chips to decide whether the intellectual property they have created will be placed in the public domain this means that not all risk 5 technology is open hardware with some risk 5 core and chip designs being open and some being closed in addition to having no intellectual property restrictions the risk 5 isa can also be freely extended new instructions are added via a custom isa extension which does not break compatibility with the main risk 5 specification this gives designers great flexibility to incorporate new instructions for their particular applications which can be particularly liberating when creating custom processors for use in cars robots and a wide range of other industrial and consumer products risk stands for reduced instruction set computing and describes a computing architecture that executes a large number of simple instructions to complete a task an alternative to risk is sisk which stands for complex instruction set computing and executes a small number of more complex instructions to complete a processing activity today the difference between risk and cisc is more blurry than it used to be but we may still describe the x86 isa as cisc and the arm isa at risk so what about risk five well risk five is a specific risk processor architecture whose development commenced in may 2010 in the parallel computing laboratory at the university of california berkeley one of the first ever risk architectures was created at berkeley between 1980 and 1984 with risk 5 getting its name because it's the 5th generation of berkeley risk risk 5 was initially created to support research and education with the first risk 5 instruction set manual published as an open source document in may 2011. to make it possible for risk 5 to be used in industry in 2015 a non-profit governing body was established this was initially called the risk-five foundation and based in the united states however due to concerns relating to the potential impact of future u.s trade regulations in 2020 risk five's governing body relocated to switzerland and became risk five international today risk five international has over two thousand member organizations with premier members including alibaba cloud google huawei intel cy5 star 5 and western digital strategic members also include all winner arduino ibm nokia nvidia qualcomm raspberry pi rockchip samsung seagate and sony so as we can see there is widespread support for risc-5 development across the computing industry many organizations have also developed risk 5 processor cores a leading player is sci-5 which was founded in 2015 by the team who designed the risk 5 isa at uc berkeley in 2016 sci-5 became the first company to release a risk 5 system on a chip and has now developed three families of risk 5 cores that span from energy efficient microcontrollers to high performance processors able to run full operating systems these core designs are sold to other companies to use in their products with sci-fi reporting that billions of chips have already been shipped based on their risk 5 cores just one high-profile customer is samsung who incorporates sci-fi cores into components that include ai image sensors and 5g modules another leading player is t-head t-head is the semiconductor division of alibaba and over the past few years has introduced a family of risk five cores called shantae applications range from basic microcontrollers networking and 5g telecommunications to industrial automation information security computer vision and autonomous driving in october 2021 t-head open source for design of four of its shantae cores as well as indicating that it would open source more risk 5 cores in the future according to the company over 2 billion cpus with ashante architecture have now been shipped in addition to sci-5 and t-head other notable developers of risc-v processors include undased technology all winner cloudbear codasip iconic works nuclei star 5 sintercore and western digital at the time of making this video at least 111 risk 5 core designs have been placed in the public domain by 55 organizations or individuals along with the designs for 12 complete risk 5 systems on a chip other risk 5 cores and socs have been developed but remain closed source this is also to be expected and as previously noted we should not expect the designs of all risk 5 cores or final processors to become open source the first company to launch a risk 5 processor and development hardware was cy5 when it released the freedom everywhere 310 soc and its first high-five development board in 2016. as we can see this board has since been discontinued that's hardly a surprise but since it was released billions of risk-fired processor cores have been incorporated into microcontrollers and embedded devices which means that risk 5 is already becoming mainstream in this marketplace the work of western digital who have developed a family of risk 5 cores called swerve to use in ssd controllers also indicates how many of us are increasingly going to be using risk 5 technology even if we're unaware of it when it comes to desktop computing risk 5 hardware currently remains developmental and in recent videos i've reviewed these single board computers specifically here we have the vision 5 which is based on a star 5 soc with two sci-fi view 74 cores and the nasar which is based on an all-winner soc with a single t-head c906 core both of these development boards can run a full linux operating system with a graphical desktop and hence demonstrate the potential for rs5 to one day join x86 and arm in the tablet laptop and desktop marketplace absolutely there is some way to go before we have risk 5 chips powerful enough to make high performance price competitive desktop computers and servers but unlike some in the computing industry i do believe that this is going to happen there are i think two key reasons why risk five is going to become a mainstream end-user computing platform and the first of these is what we could term the nvidia effect because for some time it looked like nvidia was going to purchase arm limited and that made many companies rather nervous because they're worried about whether nvidia will continue to license to them the arm isa and even though the deal has fallen through nvidia is not going to purchase arm limited it has left a legacy with companies more nervous more aware than they used to be but they rely on licensing the arm isa from arm limited and they can't guarantee the future of that company and inevitably this is making companies go towards the idea of using list five in their products secondly and related and far more significant is the fact that over the past 30 years or so all countries have become far more dependent on microprocessors in in their economy that's obvious we all use computers all of the time and in parallel with that we've seen a liberalization of globalization and of international trade and so across the past 30 years even though all countries have become very dependent on microprocessors they've done so in an environment where they haven't been too concerned about the fact that access to those microprocessors could be constrained however in the past few years that has started to change for start we've seen significant trade barriers going up between united states and china and very recently we've seen russia's invasion of ukraine and all the sanctions being placed on russia as a result of that and this has got lots of countries thinking about the fact that they aren't guaranteed to always have access to microprocessors with close isas chips from intel and amd and chips with our ip license from arm and so it's not a surprise that the chinese government is investing in risk five other chinese academy of sciences it's not surprising that russia has announced plans to build risk fire processes to use in laptops and government computers and it's not surprising that for example india has got an initiative for semiconductor self-reliance and is also looking towards risk five and i think we're going to see more and more countries recognizing they are dependent on micro processors and that closed isas are potentially not a very good thing to be reliant on in that context and looking towards developing their own microprocessor industries and basing that around risk five and to me it doesn't seem treadable that that will happen and that we'll see some countries starting to use risk five in their desktops and laptops and servers and things and other countries won't i think once the technology exists to use ritz 5 in a mobile device in the desktop in the server it'll start to be using those devices all around the world and that doesn't mean that risk 5 will become the best technology it might not be as good as x86 has on for many of these purposes but it will work and it will be available and so i think in five to 10 years time we won't have two dominant isas x6 and arm we will have three which will be x86 arm and risk five anyway that is now it for this video if you've enjoyed what you've seen here please press that like button if you haven't subscribed please subscribe and i hope to talk to you again very soon [Music] you

Channel: ExplainingComputers

Views: 337,476

Keywords: RISC-V, what is RISC-V, understanding RISC-V, RISCV, explaining RISCV, RISC-V International, RISC-V China, RISC-V organizations, SiFive, StarFive, T-Head, Alibaba RISC-V, Western Digital, SweRV, RISC-V Russia, RISC-V India, RISC-V sanctions, international trade, trade barriers, Christopher Barnatt, Barnatt, Samsung RISC-V, T-Head RISC-V, VisionFive, RISC-V SBC, RISC-V tutorial, RISC-V vs x86, RISC-V vs ARM, x86, ARM, open ISA, closed ISA, instruction set architecture

Id: Ps0JFsyX2fU

Length: 14min 24sec (864 seconds)

Published: Sun May 08 2022