CEO of the foundation: risc-v "world hegemony" needs the support of Intel and other enterprises

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RISC-V International Foundation CEO of Calista Redmond In an interview with  The Register  In an interview , She hopes to make the emerging open source processor technology " Rule the world ". But to achieve this goal , Non profit organizations need the support of various other organizations ; Even organizations immersed in a dominant proprietary Architecture , for example x86 Intel Corp .

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Redmond Think , Need to support in the form of paid members royalty-free Of CPU Instruction set architecture （ISA） The sustainable development of , In order to better with x86 and Arm ISA competition .“ We must have some money , In order to operate and manage our special competitive competition .”

And point out that , Join in RISC-V International Foundation Will make Paying member stay ISA Have more say in the future development of , With proprietary ISA（x86 and Arm comparison ）, The foundation provides a more level playing field for technology companies .“ What everyone gets from it is everyone's vested collective interests , so to speak ,' My fate is not pinned on any one or five companies . Everyone is investing together , therefore , My risk level is much lower '.”

Intel and this year 2 month Join in 了 RISC-V International Foundation , And become Premier member ; This makes Intel on the board of directors and Technical Steering Committee of this organization （ Responsible for decision making ISA New features and specifications ） Has a place in . But while gaining privileges , Intel and others 19 individual Premier Each member is required to pay 25 $10000 . Besides intel , other Premier member The company includes Alibaba cloud 、 Google 、 Huawei 、 Purple highlights 、 Western Digital and ZTE . also Canonical、Nvidia And Samsung , The annual membership fee is also as high as 35000 dollar .

Redmond call , these Premier The members' mind is ：

I want to really support this , Because it helps me commercialize myself ; And building ecosystems , Promote the sustainable development momentum of the whole industry , There I will find development partners 、 Customer 、 New opportunities , Grow all these things , Make some real strategic Sustainability .

Besides ,RISC-V Members of the International Foundation It also includes some universities and government related entities . Not long ago , The Indian government announced that it had become a member of the organization  Premier member , And revealed that the plan is  2023 Deliver world-class products at the end of the year RISC-V chip . The Chinese Academy of Sciences is also the foundation Of  Premier member .

Redmond Expressional scale , The foundation will not restrict the participation of any party , But will make changes when necessary .“ If things go to national sanctions , We may need to change , We will abide by the law while , Learn more about what other open source and global organizations are doing .”

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On the other hand ,Redmond According to , Those traditionally associated with proprietary ISA（ Such as x86 or Arm） Relevant member companies are paying attention to RISC-V To spread the risk . It also provides these companies with another ISA, To support their growing heterogeneous computing needs .“ It makes business sense .”

For Intel , The company is committed to using... For others x86、Arm or RISC-V ISA Our company makes custom chips , As part of a larger comeback plan . Regarding this ,Redmond Think join RISC-V It's good for their business . Although in many people's eyes , Intel supports RISC-V Your behavior may be different from the traditional x86 Business conflict , but  Redmond Think ,RISC-V Will not pose a threat to survival .

“ This is not inside information , But I'm sure they're not too worried about their x86 Business . Well, I mean , Their business is very mature . Many of their customers have invested millions in this area . People usually don't give up their existing investments .”

meanwhile ,Redmond Also see RISC-V In emerging workloads The opportunity ; She thinks , as time goes on , Equipment and IT Infrastructure will increasingly move to open source ISA On ; And x86 and Arm Not necessarily outdated . contrary , She suspects that technology companies will increasingly RISC-V、x86 and Arm ISA As a tool of the same type ; This results in the equipment and IT Use more... In infrastructure ISA Combine .

for example , Intel will Arm The core design is used for some products , Including Mount Evans Infrastructure processing unit .AMD rely on Arm Provide hardware based security for its processor , It is said to be still considering RISC-V Integrate into future products . although Nvidia Passing upcoming servers CPU Extend it to Arm Use , But it's also in its GPU Use in RISC-V, Supporting the architecture Imagination So it is with .

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It is worth noting that , in the majority of cases ,RISC-V Leave for server and PC The power provided by mainstream processors is still far away .RISC-V design company SiFive CEO of Patrick Little Once said , He is expected to be in 2025 Not before the end of the year PC See using the commercial processor designed by the company , The server side is more distant . and Arm It has just begun to become... In the past few years PC And an important competitor in the server field .

however Redmond Pointed out that , Google and other so-called mega companies are " secretly " Conduct RISC-V project , And point out that ISA It is also used in microcontrollers of storage devices of companies such as western data and Seagate . She also highlighted Dark iron of Alibaba cloud RISC-V processor , The processor has been used in network devices 、 Gateway and edge server [PDF].

also  Esperanto Technologies The company is working with Samsung IT Service departments and other companies test their 1000 nucleus RISC-V AI chip ; And start-ups Ventana Micro Systems Also under construction RISC-V Server chip .

Redmond promise , There will be more servers and... Later this year PC Of RISC-V Examples appear . And said ,Arm Spent about 20 It took years to achieve today's achievements , but RISC-V It will only take about five years to make the same progress . However, the five-year timetable is not an accurate figure , because RISC-V International Foundation And its members also need to fill in some additional functions in the instruction set and software support , To cover a wide range of applications . 

As the foundation gets more and more organizational support ,Redmond Yes RISC-V Be optimistic about the future development of ,“ The reason why we can achieve our goals faster , Because we have a larger shared investment pool in the whole community , This process is being driven .”