Apple to Move a Part of Its Embedded Cores to RISC-V

  • This is a two paragraph, highly speculative "summary" of [0] which was posted earlier [1].

    But even reading the original article, it barely mentions Apple and CharlesW highly editorialized that submissions title:

    The Apple bit:

    > For example, Apple’s A15 has more than a dozen Arm-based CPU cores distributed across the die for various non-user-facing functions. SemiAnalysis can confirm that these cores are actively being converted to RISC-V in future generations of hardware.

    The original title:

    > SiFive Powers Google TPU, NASA, Tenstorrent, Renesas, Microchip, And More

    The bulk of the article is about Google and hyping Risk-V, not Apple.

    [0] https://semianalysis.substack.com/p/sifive-powers-google-tpu...

    [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32872927

  • 10 billion RISC-V cores were shipped last year - mostly you wont see them because they're heavily embedded - in disk drives/etc - used to be every flash drive had an ARM core in it and paid a few pennies to ARM, that's likely to change quickly

  • Jim Keller's slide [1] on RISC-V. Simple words. Grug like.

    [1] https://www.techgoing.com/jim-keller-innovation-is-happening...

  • They had a job posting a few months ago which asked for RISC-V experience.

    edit: they still have them.

    https://jobs.apple.com/en-us/details/200349341/system-archit...

  • I wish I could buy stock in RISC-V (in the abstract).

    See also today: https://twitter.com/SiFive/status/1570880204804849671

  • Testing the waters.

    Notably, Apple was among main investors when ARM was a startup; they're not doing this to save in ARM fees.

  • This is based on Dylan Patel’s speculation, and he quite commonly just comes up with something that he wants to be reality and presents it as fact.

  • What benefits does RISC-V have over ARM besides it being open/free?

  • Apple end game:

    Apple ISA. Might take them a decade, but in the end, they will eventually do all their own thing.

  • riscv64gc-apple-darwin

  • Bit of a RISC-Y manoeuvrer no?

    *Badumph*