RISC-V is expected to become technology innovation since 'Moore's Law'

The development of " RISC-V (Risk Five) " of Instruction Set Architecture (ISA) of CPU developed by open source from university is now the participation of namesite companies such as Microsoft, IBM, Qualcomm, Micron, Samsung, Huawei It has become one big project to do. RISC-V that opens ISA, which is the key to hardware development for CPU, is expected to have the potential to greatly change the future computing and ecosystem that appeared in the era of " Moore's Law " there is.

Semiconductor Engineering.:. RISC-V: More Than a Core
https://semiengineering.com/risc-v-more-than-a-core/

Stanley Williams of HP Laboratories said, "The end of Moore's Law may be the best thing to happen in computing since the Moore's Law began.The end of the era is the creative new It is because it leads the times, "I expect that new technical innovation will be born by the end of Moore's Law which dominated the semiconductor industry for many years. As this post-Moore's law technology, open-source ISA "RISC-V" attracts great attention in the semiconductor industry.

In traditional CPU development, ISA was a "closed" existence that can only be used by limited companies. For example, use of x86 is limited to only Intel and AMD, and it was necessary to pay a license fee to Arm to use Arm ISA for mobile. For this reason, existence of ISA in chip development had an aspect that functioned as a barrier to entry.

RISC-V, which is developed as an open source, is gathering expectations as a way to open this closed world. First, since license fee is unnecessary to use RISC-V, there is a possibility that custom device development will become popular for the arrival of IoT era. However, the benefit of RISC-V that anyone can use for free is dominated by not only the interests of small developers but also "there is a ecosystem born in the whole industry".

"People need a" standard software base "throughout the product, as SiFive co-founder co-founder Kurst Asanovich said, although we may be doing well in a limited area now, "We are hoping for a role that RISC-V will play in getting out of past ways such as Arm, Intel, ARC, and Tensilica.

According to Mr. Asanović, "The old model was the way to choose ISA from the core (CPU) vendor.In contrast to this, in the new model, after first selecting RISC-V (ISA), the vendor In other words, different vendors can be used for each chip for each product, it is possible to use an open source core or a commercial core, "said Hardware Selection The flexibility of the product and the design flexibility of the product is described.

In addition, the merit that industry and academic collaboration is born thanks to RISC-V is pointed out. One of the reasons why RISC-V was born at the University of California, Berkeley was "There is no way to develop chips using industrial ISA". In the academic world, research activities are carried out "Building even more new knowledge on the knowledge that others made, but intellectual property rights such as patents are intricately involved in commercial ISA, and with other people I could not do the task of sharing work. For this reason, RISC-V was created to enable researchers' desired research, but now the foundation for obtaining academic feedback by industry is created by RISC-V which has been adopted in industry It is.

As a result, the problem discovered in the industry is being brought to a university and other academic institutes and a virtuous circle is being created in which the solution is returned. In addition, as the technical cooperation between industry and academia is enhanced by industry-university collaboration, student researchers who conduct cutting-edge researches can move smoothly to the industry after graduation, and companies are also in an academic world It is expected to be able to utilize cutting-edge technologies and experiences being studied more effectively.

Furthermore, cooperation within the industry is expected to become active by RISC-V. That is why new value will be created by collaboration with competitors that could not have been done in the past and completely collaborating with other cultures.

Whether RISC-V will succeed from a long-term perspective depends on a powerful software and ecosystem that supports it. "RISC-V's ecosystem is not yet as rich as Arm, but it is outperforming the IP (intellectual property) of other third parties," said Neil Hand, director of marketing at Siemens , Thanks to a number of companies, including IP vendors that are drawing attention, adopting industry standard RISC-V and moving to the RISC-V platform. "

With the end of long-running Moore's Law, the semiconductor industry is looking for alternative directions, and RISC-V is increasing its presence in that trend. "In 2019 we will see that a number of remarkable RISC-V designs will win in the application of domains where legacy architecture dominated," Crissip 's Chris Jones predicted It is.