ARM: “RISC-V Architecture: Understand the Facts”

[gruturo]

If this article is genuine (there are many comments arguing it might not be) I would consider it an excellent endorsement of RISC-V. If a company with an awesome engineering, like I consider ARM to be, is scared to the point of authoring some FUD, RISC-V has to be _really_ promising!

[TomVDB]

When I search for "risc-v basics arm" in Google, this article comes up first as a paid Ad.

So somebody is paying google to make this thing come up on top.

[redshirt]

This is an utterly stupid move by ARM...if it's legit. Looks like it's a different domain registry than all the other ARM websites...not sure why, but that seems a bit fishy.

[jchw]

Some of the "facts" here are pretty weak. The "years of security expertise" is not really a feature I'd be proud of given the recent processor-level vulnerabilities that in fact, paint a very different picture about how traditional processor vendors treat security.

Even if there is some validity here, this is in surprisingly poor taste. I've known people who have worked for ARM. I wonder what they think about this.

[vardump]

While I wouldn't choose a new architecture so eagerly, existence of this page (if real) does to some extent validate RISC-V as a potential solution.

Instead, of say, ARM M4+, A7, A53/A55, etc.

[blablabla123]

Yeah, this years of security scrutiny argument is getting disproved. The recent processor vulnerabilities are one example. Another is how big corporates treat internal software: upgrade rarely and test very extensively. This has proven very fatal: WannaCry wouldn't have been possible if people had been at least updating to the most recent release and update.

I'd be happy to try out a RISC computer, actually it's quite sad that the CPU diversity got so little due to Intel/AMD.

[deepnotderp]

OoO risc-v processors are also vulnerable to spectre...

[cptskippy]

How would an open source processor be better from a security perspective? I might still be a little shell shocked from my attempts to setup a MythTV Box 10 years ago but this is what's running through my head:

"Did you RTFM?"

"Debain CPU doesn't have that issue."

"Just disable the ALUs in firmware, they're not necessary in modern processors anyways."

"That's been patched, just download processor v2.3.4.432 and send it to your FAB, they should spin you a new CPU in 8-12 months."

[AdmiralAsshat]

This page should be archived alongside the Halloween documents as a reminder of the endless FUD campaigns against FLOSS software/hardware.

[MisterTea]

I call shenanigans, this is a fake page. First off the page isn't coming from arm's own domain yet it appears to mimic the look and feel of the arm site. No cookie acceptance policy and the missing links from the bottom of the page are further proof.

[Laaas]

This part however is hosted on ARM's own website: https://www.arm.com/-/media/global/company/arm-risc-v-infogr...

[blauditore]

Yeah, WHOIS lists DomainsByProxy.com - why would they hide their name in the domain registration if they write "arm" on the header in big letters, linking to arm.com?

This actually looks like a smear campaign against ARM.

[flyinghamster]

Not to mention the domain's registration is anonymized.

[Uberphallus]

A friend works in ARM and was extremely surprised (negatively) when I shared this link with him

RISC-V may, perhaps, compete in two fields with ARM: education, where ARM doesn't give a fuck, and hacker boards, which is a tiny market compared to smartphones, smarttvs and so on. There have been around 15 million Raspberry Pi (the most popular SBC) sold in 6 years. Samsung sold 321 million smartphones last year alone.

Whoever is thinking today about replacing some production anything with a RISC-V is insane to begin with, but this campaign ups the insanity further.

[dragontamer]

https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/12/01/wdc_risc_v_edge_str...

https://www.wdc.com/about-wd/newsroom/press-room/2017-11-28-...

> Western Digital’s leadership role in the RISC-V initiative is significant in that it aims to accelerate the advancement of the technology and the surrounding ecosystem by transitioning its own consumption of processors – over one billion cores per year – to RISC-V.

Western Digital is moving to RISC-V. I'd say ARM has begun to notice the shift and needs to begin damage control.

[Symmetry]

There's an important third group, companies that want access to custom instructions they need and have the resources to modify a RISC-V design but don't want to spin a full custom design. I think both WD's and NVidia's use of RISC-V is in this category. It looks like NVidia was willing to spend for custom and WD's had been making due with larger ARM cores than they could get away with when they customized their processor - that's me reading between the lines as best I can - but WD's certainly been lost as an ARM customer and probably there'll be more in the future. Only a few companies, probably, but ones that are relatively big.

[394549]

> RISC-V may, perhaps, compete in two fields with ARM: education, where ARM doesn't give a fuck, and hacker boards, which is a tiny market

Those seem like very similar markets to those that Linux started out with.

AFAIK, Sun never ran FUD/attack ads against Linux, but this feels similar to a hypothetical world where they did so very early in 1993.

I doubt FUD will ultimately be able to prevent the adoption of RISC-V, but it may be able to delay the inevitable for a few years.

[snvzz]

>Whoever is thinking today about replacing some production anything with a RISC-V

You're saying they're all wrong?

https://riscv.org/membership/

[graycrow]

Assuming that this is not a fake - who is the target audience for a such page? They are not talking about baby diapers there, but CPU architectures. I just can't imagine that someone responsible for choosing a CPU architecture will base his/her decision on a page like this. Then why it exists? To show us that ARM is afraid of RISC-V? Ok then, message received.

[deepnotderp]

You think that all CPU architects and semiconductor company employees are elites who can't be fooled by marketing.

You'd be surprised...

[Fnoord]

> Then why it exists?

Propaganda ("FUD"). SEO.

[flyinglizard]

ARM is playing a very, very dumb game here. Do they seriously think any prospective RISC-V user has not taken this information into account? Whomever goes on to design an ASIC probably knows what they are getting into well enough.

ARM would be much wiser to embrace RISC-V early, spearheading this effort and bringing RISC-V users into their tools and ecosystem.

[snvzz]

ARM is apparently and unsurprisingly scared shitless about the RISC-V threat.

[graycrow]

They may be scared and this is completely normal. What is not normal - it's the fact that there is a person placed high enough in the ARM's chain of command, who sanctioned this dumb page - like "oh, that's really nice - it will help us a lot, publish it".

[SlowRobotAhead]

IDK...

Everyone freaking out about how "disruptive" an open source core would be... You still need someone to place it on silicon (unless you want to waste most of your FPGA on a soft core) and you need someone to make peripherals which lets be honest is 80%-95% of what Cortex M-type embedded processors are doing at any given time. These seem like the major barriers that aren't solved by removing a licensing fee for the core.

Maybe I just don't get it, but it seems a LONG way out for RISC-V powered top tier phones.

[sillywindows]

Are we sure this is published by Arm? The whois and certificates seem a bit anonymous.

[detaro]

The header tags reference a copy of the "infographic" hosted on arm.com: https://www.arm.com:443/-/media/global/company/arm-risc-v-in...

[littlestymaar]

The hn title could replace «Facts» with «FUD» since this is literally what this campaign is.

[rwmj]

It is rather desperate. ARM could easily head off RISC-V by releasing a few low end cores under an open source license, but instead they're being disrupted. Rather classic case of the Innovator's Dilemma.

[antpls]

I'm a rather uninformed reader, and I would be interested to read about sources that say the facts presented here are wrong, rather than just read "it's a FUD campaign". At the end of the day, no camp rigoursly shared information

[legulere]

I have to say that I’m surprised that it seems to be pretty factual.

The main points seem to be that RISC-V is not there yet and that customization is expensive. I guess for most projects you currently use ARM processors ARM will make most sense for a while. RISC-V will probably slowly eat a growing piece of that market though over the next years to decades.

[Dylan16807]

When it starts off saying there are "currently" no royalties, as if royalties could be added in the future, I'm not inclined to call it "pretty factual". Maybe "contains some facts, among other things".

Also point 4 is pretty useless, and point 5 is basically nonsense. It's implying that you should avoid the higher costs of customizing by using Arm instead of just... not customizing.

[dankiq]

https://www.arm.com/-/media/global/company/arm-risc-v-infogr...

The article is not fake

[sligor]

what I read: RISC-V is a very serious competitor for ARM

[topspin]

Indeed. We've arrived at the 'fight' stage of ignore, laugh, fight, win.

[deepnotderp]

Yes, it's from arm, who has a vested interest, yes it's in poor taste, and yes, it's stretching in some places, but it's not necessarily inaccurate...

[dtech]

I do not understand the commotion either. As far as attack ads go, this keeps very close to the truth and points out legitimate concerns.

This so far away from the early 00's Microsoft anti-Linux campagin that you can't even really call it FUD

[zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC]

Haha, that reads so much like Microsoft's FUD in the early 2000s targeting Linux ... so I guess we can conclude from that that ARM's assessment is that RISC-V is a viable alternative that's worth using and investing in?

[bmcusick]

Looking forward to "The Year of the RISC-V Desktop" articles.

That's a joke, but I think Windows vs. Linux is the right reference frame here, assuming that RISC-V proves out. Those who want to roll their own and control their own destiny may go with RISC-V, while those who want a packaged solution will go ARM. And ARM will have to get better to compete.

Western Digital has gone with RISC-V for a controller, because Western Digital is the kind of company that wants to commoditize its inputs so it can sell a packaged solution to its customers as cheaply as possible. I can also see Amazon or Google finding uses for RISC-V in their data centers.

Phones ... I'm not so sure. Maybe Apple could go that way, as they're vertically integrated and already make their Ax chips in house. But the Android OEMs wouldn't unless Google leads the way.

[flurrything]

Jokes aside. Since February you can already buy RISC-V SoCs that run Linux... at pretty high prices, e.g., https://www.crowdsupply.com/sifive/hifive-unleashed costs 1000$ bucks and the expansion board costs 2000$...

Still not practical for the masses, but not more expensive than similar extravagant architectures like PowerPCs (IIRC a PowerPC9 desktop system costs about 9000$ today).

Someone joked that you could get a 30$ xeon system on ebay from a couple of years ago that would crush these on pretty much any benchmark, but who knows, maybe some day riscv chips will become cheaper and more powerful. What we are seeing in the market today are the very first such systems, from the very first vendors.

[harias]

Can somebody please verify the authenticity? Why didn't arm use a subdomain of arm.com?

[dchest]

Good question. Domain is registered with wildwestdomains (GoDaddy), anonymized:

    Domain Name: RISCV-BASICS.COM
    Registry Domain ID: 2277459939_DOMAIN_COM-VRSN
    Registrar WHOIS Server: whois.wildwestdomains.com
    Registrar URL: http://www.wildwestdomains.com
    Updated Date: 2018-06-20T21:54:44Z
    Creation Date: 2018-06-20T21:54:44Z
    Registry Expiry Date: 2019-06-20T21:54:44Z
    Registrar: Wild West Domains, LLC
    ...

    Registrant Name: Registration Private
    Registrant Organization: Domains By Proxy, LLC
    Registrant Street: DomainsByProxy.com

Hosted on Azure:

      Name Server: NS1-07.AZURE-DNS.COM
      Name Server: NS2-07.AZURE-DNS.NET
      Name Server: NS3-07.AZURE-DNS.ORG
      Name Server: NS4-07.AZURE-DNS.INFO
   

SSL cert is from GoDaddy. This is very different from arm.com.

At first sight, I'd assume it's fake.

Link to arm.com though has GA tags for tracking:

    ?utm_source=riscv-basics.com&utm_medium=website&utm_campaign=18.06_riscv-ds-eval-confidence_riscv_na_na_web_pg2956a1_02

HTML has:

    <meta name="server" content="ARMGSCD2" />

which matches arm.com

    <meta name="server" content="ARMBPCM1">

Of course, these can also be fake.

But maybe it's real.

EDIT: It's real:

https://www.arm.com/-/media/global/company/arm-risc-v-infogr...

[rwmj]

Compare: https://www.arm.com/-/media/global/company/arm-risc-v-infogr...

[baybal2]

"Get the facts"... sounds way to familiar...

[wsterling]

This is a marketing page with little if any information, how did it get voted up?

[zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC]

The information isn't in the text itself, it's in the fact that ARM feels like publishing this is a good idea. They don't publish such nonsensical marketing for competition they consider irrelevant.