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> RISC-V is 25x slower than a top of the line Apple M-series chip

I don't think anyone has put the kind of money into a RISC-V processor that Apple has in order to develop the 3nm M4.

I was going to say it isn't an apples to apples comparison but I will restrain myself.


True, but who is going to put in the money? It's not a foregone conclusion that RISC-V will get enough investment to ever be competitive with state-of-the-art Arm or x86 chips.


This question is sort of like, how is Linux ever going to be competitive with state-of-the-art proprietary Unix?

Suppose Facebook are tired of paying a premium to Cisco et al and decide to commission their own network equipment. That stuff doesn't have to be competitive with x86 on single thread performance, it just has to be reasonably power efficient. So they take some existing free RISC-V core and make a few improvements to it and use that. But they publish the improvements, because they're not actually trying to be a hardware OEM and if someone else takes their design and does the same thing, they know they get those improvements for their next generation.

So then that happens. Google want the same thing and make more improvements. Netgear use it in a consumer router, and they're not big enough to improve the chip, but they ship it in a product that sells a million units, so widespread use causes the community to optimize software for it and fix bugs. At this point Samsung or Qualcomm realize they only have to improve the SIMD support a little and they can stop paying ARM for their low and mid range phone SoCs. But if half of Android devices are now RISC-V and Qualcomm are already designing the high end cores themselves, why pay ARM for that either? So now it's in the high end phones, and someone starts putting the same chip into laptops.

All it really takes is for enough people to not want to pay ARM to create an ecosystem that allows everybody else to do the same thing. The free designs eat the low end of the market and then the high end uses the same architecture because why wouldn't it?


I’d imagine anyone who doesn’t have Apple super-duper special ARM license from the 90’s (or whenever) will be better served by RISC-V in the long run, right? Why deal with license issues?

I don’t know if it will happen, but it would be extremely funny if Intel cut off Arm and went with RISC-V. (False reports of the death of x86 have been around for decades, but it is bound to happen eventually, right?)


Absolutely fair point. I'm only pointing out the fact it hasn't been proved to be a limitation of the architecture yet.

Can't write off the first car only able to go 15km/h because your horse is able to do 40km/h.


Well, the good news for RISC-V (I say this with half honesty, half sarcasm), is that most of the RISC-V investment is happening in America and China. Their access to venture capital, talented engineers, and a decent economy makes the UK (where ARM's fighting from) look like Mississippi backwaters. ARM is disadvantaged against RISC-V geographically, economically, and politically; and judging by their interest in scare tactics a few years ago, I think they know it. Perfect conditions for a possible quick erosion of their technological lead.


> makes the UK (where ARM's fighting from) look like Mississippi backwaters

Most of ARM's design work is done in the US (Austin), India (Bangalore, Noida), and China (Beijing), though ARM China should basically be treated as a separate company at this point due to corporate shenanigans.

That said, in the chip design space (which tends to be concentrated in the US, Israel, India, and China), RISC-V has become much more popular for commodity embedded usecases because of the less restrictive licensing meaning better profit margins, which is allowing fabless chip startups to potentially leap ahead of ARM


There's also the fact that ARM has a total of like 2 architecture licensees, and everyone else has to use piss-slow Cortex designs. If there was competition happening between ARM cores it would be a more interesting story, but right now ISA has taken a backseat while OEMs fight over TSMC access.


There's more like a dozen architectural licenses but they're mostly used for server chips that were canceled. The Cortex X925 is getting close to Apple/Nuvia BTW.


> has a total of like 2 architecture licensees

And that probably only happened because Apple co-founded ARM.


That was before the breakup of the USSR, let it go.


Europe Supercomputer project is well funded and they are investing quite a bit. Large European industrials are also getting into RISC-V because they are building things like trains that they will have to maintain for 50+ years.


Yeah I came here to say something similar. This is ARM's game to lose, and they need to remember that their architecture was in the same situation as RISC-V is at some point. The only thing that stops RISC-V right now is that everyone is focused on ARM. If ARM gives their IP users a reason to switch by raising IP costs or making bad architecture decisions then RISC-V will take advantage of that to make inroads. History is full of incumbents that go on to lose their entire market when they get complacent.


Right now it looks like China will the one dominating RISC-V


Right now they are the most enthusiastic and putting in a lot of work, yes.

That's other people being short-sighted, not China doing anything wrong or sinister.

There are in fact quite a lot of exciting non-Chinese developments being announced recently, including at the RISC-V Summit that is on now, but those things will take several years to make their way in to the market.


> it isn't an apples to apples comparison

It's not about how great the teams behind these CPUs are.

It's about how great the CPUs are.


Fine, but the CPU with more money to work on the architecture often winds up being the better CPU.


right now, because one of them had a lot of investment and the other less so.


- "I was going to say it isn't an apples to apples comparison but I will restrain myself"

That's the ignoble rhetorical device of applephasis


Life changing isn't it? Coupled with a holder attached to the bed I feel like I read twice as fast when I'm using it rather than holding the kindle, side effect being that I look like the people in WALL-E.

I understand that people would prefer if it were built into the device but in all honesty it isn't really that much of an inconvenience when you're already only using it while it's stationary.


This is wonderful! There's so many aspects of a house that it's virtually guaranteed to have an apt analogy for any situation.

I'll be keeping this on file, thank you.


I've been here for 5 years and am almost thirty years old. I still have people regularly asking me where I went to secondary school. They are obsessed with class.


I've been here for 30 years, and am 30 years old, and I don't think anyone has ever asked me where I went to secondary school.

What kind of people ask you that?


I somehow keep ending up working at places where 90% of the employees grew up with staff in the house. Dozens of people with wikipedia pages about their families.


So, people who grew up with staff in the house are obsessed with class. That's perhaps disappointing, but not really surprising.

I'd bet, in the US, you'd find the same among people who grew up with staff in the house. The difference may be that, in the US, it's a lot harder to find people like that.


I've never been asked that and I'm in my sixties.


They always try to be vague when the truth is difficult to defend.


You both are actively lying. I'm not talking about Tyler Kay, I'm talking about Wayne O’Rourke, whose tweets did not advocate for murder at all, let alone “set fire to all the fucking hotels full of the bastards”. Not once did I mention Tyler. That's something you fabricated to deceive and mislead.

It's people like you that enable authoritarianism around the world by gaslighting others and justifying suppression of speech.


Oh, that guy posted "Today was a terror attack by a Muslim...heads must roll" which again sounds like a call to violence to me.

Sorry I picked the wrong guy calling for racial violence, my mistake.


I'm curious, what do you think "heads must roll" means? Is English your first language?


Heads must roll has two meanings to me

1. The original meaning is that people must be killed.

2. The more common meaning these days is that people must be punished in some less dramatic way (usually fired).

It is typical of racists to use phrases with double meanings like this. The idea ia that when their words are quoted back at them they can attempt to avoid consequences by claiming they intended the other meaning.

I am a native English speaker.


>> It is typical of racists to use phrases with double meanings like this.

Using phrases with double meaning (euphemisms) is a sign of people who read a book or two and have the intelligence to understand the play on words. Some people unfortunately don't have this ability and they take everything as literal.


You actively lied about the person that was jailed to further a political agenda of suppressing free speech, protest, and democracy. That's not a mistake, that's malice. Your bad indeed.

Moreover, it's pretty clear that "heads must roll" is a euphemism used for people being punished or losing their job, and is almost always used in a non-violent context: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/heads%20will%20ro...

There's no clear call to violence here. You are actively trying to justify tyranny.


I didn't lie, I got the wrong guy because you weren't specific. In the context of his tweet I think it was clearly a call to violence. Almost always is not the same as always.


> I got the wrong guy because you weren't specific

That doesn't make it any less of a lie - you said something factually false about the person I was referring to. You also made an assumption that you knew could be false in order to push a political agenda and deceive others.

> Almost always is not the same as always.

This is grasping for straws, and has the tyrannical premise of "guilty until proven innocent" behind it. I really hope that you're not in a position of power in my country, or any one for that matter.


> and has the tyrannical premise of "guilty until proven innocent" behind it

No it doesn't, for three reasons.

1. This is an internet forum not a court of law

2. He already plead guilty to his crime and been convicted, hes no longer in the "innocent until proven guilty" phase

3. Calling for violence wasn't even the crime he was convicted of. That was "publishing written material to stir up racial hate" [1].

Now you can reasonably say (and I expect you would) that you don't think that publishing written material to stir up racial hate should be a crime. Personally I think it should, because stirring up racial hatred is pretty damaging.

[1] https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1986/64/part/III/crossh...


> 1. This is an internet forum not a court of law

This doesn't matter. "Guilty until proven innocent" is not exclusively a legal concept. Furthermore, you're making this opinion about a legal case, so even if it was exclusively a legal concept, you'd still be making an opinion about what should happen in a court of law.

> 2. He already plead guilty to his crime and been convicted, hes no longer in the "innocent until proven guilty" phase

This demonstrates a lack of experience with the real world, as it's very common for innocent people to plead guilty. This is trivially verifiable with quick internet searches[1]. Ergo, this claim is false - guilty plea status is irrelevant, especially if we're discussing the merits of the case or verdict.

> 3. Calling for violence wasn't even the crime he was convicted of. That was "publishing written material to stir up racial hate" [1].

That's even worse. If you read the definition of the law:

> A person who uses threatening, abusive or insulting words or behaviour, or displays any written material which is threatening, abusive or insulting, is guilty of an offence if—

> (a)he intends thereby to stir up racial hatred, or

> (b)having regard to all the circumstances racial hatred is likely to be stirred up thereby.

...you'd see that it's far less clear and more subjective than calling for violence.

> Personally I think it should, because stirring up racial hatred is pretty damaging.

This is a non-argument because "Stirring up racial hatred" doesn't mean anything. The law is written so broadly that it can be interpreted to mean almost anything. It's also a concept almost exclusively used by the UK government that is used to prosecute political opponents with zero clear harm identified. And, the concept is exclusively legal, not moral/ethical - if you ask a random person on the street of any country what "stirring up racial hatred" means, you'll get wildly different answers, and more than a few confused looks. This also means that "stirring up racial hatred is pretty damaging" doesn't mean anything, because you can't even quantify the meaning of the phrase, which makes assessing effects/damage completely impossible.

Even if you're acting in genuinely good faith (which is not the case in the UK) and only personally intend to use this law to prosecute people who are calling for violence (which is already illegal), it's extremely clear that the law is so broadly-written that it can be used against your political opponents (or, you, in case the party in power changes).

Not-so-ironically, you can see the exact same situation in the HN submission article - "Shanbehzadeh was sentenced to five years for alleged pro-Israel propaganda activity, four years for insulting Islamic sanctities, two years for spreading lies online and an additional year for anti-regime propaganda."

Like "stirring up racial hate", none of those terms mean anything (except what the state wants them to mean when it wants them to mean it in a legal context to persecute opponents), all of them are extremely broadly applicable, and all of them are actively being used by the state to suppress speech it doesn't like. You can take your statement "Personally I think [publishing written material to stir up racial hate] should [be illegal], because stirring up racial hatred is pretty damaging." and swap out the nouns and get "Personally I think spreading lies online should be illegal, because lies are pretty damaging" and you've just justified what the state of Iran did with exactly the same logic.

[1] https://www.criminallegalnews.org/news/2021/may/15/study-sho...


Dude, cool your jets. The site guidelines call for you to assume good faith; you are failing at that.

While you're at it, look up the definition of "lie". It doesn't mean "made a mistake out of confusion".


You're right, I should be better about assuming good faith - I'd say that at this point there's at least some evidence that the user is not acting in good faith, but it's still pretty tenuous, and I wasn't acting that way to begin with. Thank you for calling that out.


Well, see, I've never assumed bad faith... um... at least not today... so far...

Thanks for listening when called out. That's not easy.


I would have loved to pay monthly for IRC Nitro™ back in the day to use… uh, forbidden ascii art?


Not a fan of paywalls, but the framing of the pricing comparison is just so funny to me.

Like the guy who comes into the pub offering to sell dubiously acquired meat for a bargain price.


You have to either be entirely detached from reality or deliberately cruel to make statements like this alongside $20,000pa.

Willing to bet the latter given Per Se was charging 5% of that salary for a single dinner.


Honestly explicit sarcasm indication should just die out entirely. Might as well be writing it longhand as "Just in case you missed it, this is a joke haha." every time you tell a joke.


I’m not sure if you’re being serious or not. I’ve never met you and tone isn’t conveyed over text.

I’m assuming you’re joking, but maybe that’s exactly why we need explicit sarcasm demarcation.


Exactly right, and what I would add is that this is a Poe's Law thing.

I might even offer a corollary to that law, which is that the more unclear a statement is, the more inscrutable a it's intent, the more likely the original author will insist that it was 'obvious' sarcasm.


This reasoning is nonsensical.

There is nothing to refute in it, but, just to prove it wrong: sarcasm is commonly denoted in spoken English by intonation.


And as we all know, it is impossible to imply tone in written text.


Exactly, it is the illusion of transparency. Have someone read something you've written out loud, you'd be surprised how often they use a different tone than you had in mind. Add to that a variety of cultures and backgrounds.


The comment you're replying to was being sarcastic. (I'm not sure about you!)


Ironically, proving the (wrong) point


Yes, I read it that way too. Which meant that they were under the impression that it is easy to infer tone, so I replied with a serious explanation why it may not be.


It is possible to do that, but sarcasm in written text uses a different notation: /s, which you just proposed to abolish above.

I don't like your replies, so I stop this conversation with you.


Not sure why Fediverse needs a symbol but it looks great.


I'm struggling to identify with a "Starfish Triforce".

https://typo.social/@FediverseSymbol/113005945049360750


Perhaps the idea is more like "anal cluster"?


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