[HN Gopher] Barcelona Supercomputing Center presents Sargantana:... ___________________________________________________________________ Barcelona Supercomputing Center presents Sargantana: new open- source RISC-V chip Author : pimterry Score : 327 points Date : 2023-12-14 11:55 UTC (11 hours ago) (HTM) web link (www.bsc.es) (TXT) w3m dump (www.bsc.es) | paulluuk wrote: | > The BSC, Europe's leading developer of open source computing | technologies | | > The fact that the [..] architecture [..] of these new | processors is open source, and therefore non-proprietary and | accessible to all, reduces technological dependence on large | multinational corporations | | I hadn't heard of either BSC nor Open Source Computing before. | I'm curious though, are there a lot of people out there who are | not tied to large corporations and who have the knowledge and the | means to produce computer hardware? Are there hobbyists out there | producing their own custom chips and graphics cards? | alfonsodev wrote: | I don't know about hobbyists but there are less known companies | doing open source hardware for sure, [1] here is an example of | cool stackable parallel computing project. I participated on | the campaign and received mine, but not sure how are they doing | today, it was a while ago. | | Edit: Andreas Olofsson the original founder seems to be still | active in the field [2] | | - [1] https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/adapteva/parallella- | a-s... | | - [2] https://x.com/zeroasic?s=21&t=xSlFhUGn5i8d8RkXrsgAIg | tecleandor wrote: | The BSC has been featured a bunch of times around here due to | their Marenostrum Supercomputer. A month ago someone posted a | virtual visit to their Marenostrum 4 location, that's kinda | surprising/interesting because is located inside an old chapel: | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38160675 https://en. | wikipedia.org/wiki/File:MareNostrum_4_supercomputer_at_Barcelon | a_Supercomputing_Center_1_br.jpg | | Their Marenostrum 5 is number 8 in the TOP 500 supercomputer | list ( https://www.top500.org/system/180238/ ) and I think it | recently started working or it's about to do it now ( | https://www.eetimes.com/bsc-about-to-dispatch-marenostrum-5-... | ) . They had to change its location as it didn't fit in the | church anymore, though. | ciberado wrote: | But they will keep the Marenostrum 4 in the chapel this time, | instead of replacing the old generation with the new version | :). | tecleandor wrote: | Nice! The real Computing Church! | jacquesm wrote: | If they ever get AGI going it will have come full circle. | You can go there to pray to your very visible god. Prompt | engineering will be the new praying, you read it on HN | first... | bee_rider wrote: | Training in the Cloud, fine tuning in old churches, | inference in your home shrine. | malwrar wrote: | If anyone likes ambient music, an artist I like produced an | album from recordings of marenostrum: | https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=1EGmWY91Vus | | I find it oddly relaxing. | rwmj wrote: | They co-hosted the RISC-V Summit back in 2018: | https://riscv.org/proceedings/2018/05/risc-v-workshop-in-bar... | kinow wrote: | For anyone who hasn't heard about the BSC, you can check out | the website or, if you are more inclined to read code: | | - https://earth.bsc.es/gitlab/es/autosubmit/ - project I joined | last year to work on, a workflow manager used in MareNostrum to | run mainly (but not exclusively) climate experiments - | https://earth.bsc.es/gitlab/es/ - other projects from my | department - https://gitlab.bsc.es/explore/projects - general | projects | | There are also lots of interesting projects, like Aina, a | project in partnership with Generalitat de Catalunya (like the | council? prefecture?) to foster the Catalan language with | models and tools using HPC resources: https://projecteaina.cat/ | MoSattler wrote: | https://archive.ph/TDj5W | Y_Y wrote: | For those of you who don't speak Catalan, "sargantana" is a | common little local lizard (Podarcis hispanicus, "Iberian wall | lizard"). Of course the chip family (Lagarto) just means "lizard" | in Castilian. | iamsaitam wrote: | (bonus).. and lagarto is the same in Portuguese as well | germandiago wrote: | Warning, offtopic but funny: FWIW "lagarta" in spanish slang | is a girl with a lot of ambition looking from things from men | taking advantage of them. Not a "worker" but a dangerous | person. Lol | MoSattler wrote: | same in aragonese | znpy wrote: | I don't know, I'm not a lizard expert but that lizard looks the | same as the ones I saw when I was a kid in the south of Italy. | | I guess if I ever start a chip fab there I'm gonna call my chip | stranvicula or something like that. | Anduia wrote: | They are very similar. The Iberian ones are smaller, with | broader heads, and are sometimes more colorful. I'm pretty | sure that a Catalan would call the Italian ones 'sargantana'. | vlugorilla wrote: | Spanish, castilian does not exist | dragonwriter wrote: | Castilian absolutely exists, and us more specific than | "Spanish". | | https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/Castilian | cosmojg wrote: | From Wikipedia[1]: | | > Castilian (castellano), that is, Spanish, is the native | language of the Castilians. Its origin is traditionally | ascribed to an area south of the Cordillera Cantabrica, | including the upper Ebro valley, in northern Spain, around | the 8th and 9th centuries; however the first written | standard was developed in the 13th century in the southern | city of Toledo. It is descended from the Vulgar Latin of | the Roman Empire, with Arabic influences, and perhaps | Basque as well. During the Reconquista in the Middle Ages, | it was brought to the south of Spain where it replaced the | languages that were spoken in the former Moorish controlled | zones, such as the local form of related Latin dialects now | referred to as Mozarabic, and the Arabic that had been | introduced by the Muslims. In this process Castilian | absorbed many traits from these languages, some of which | continue to be used today. Outside of Spain and a few Latin | American countries, Castilian is now usually referred to as | Spanish. | | [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_language | Y_Y wrote: | From the page you linked: | | > Name of the language | | > In Spain and in some other parts of the Spanish- | speaking world, Spanish is called not only espanol but | also castellano (Castilian), the language from the | Kingdom of Castile, contrasting it with other languages | spoken in Spain such as Galician, Basque, Asturian, | Catalan, Aragonese and Occitan. | | > The Spanish Constitution of 1978 uses the term | castellano to define the official language of the whole | of Spain, in contrast to las demas lenguas espanolas | (lit. "the other Spanish languages"). | anthk wrote: | It's the same language. I'm a Spaniard, so I know it | well. Name it the way you'd like, it can be called | Spanish, Espanol or Castellano everywhere from Mexico to | Patagonia, and from The Canaries up to the Pyrenees. | Narishma wrote: | It's mentioned in the article. | ansible wrote: | Here's a pre-print paper I found: | | Sargantana: A 1 GHz+ In-Order RISC-V Processor with SIMD Vector | Extensions in 22nm FD-SOI | | https://upcommons.upc.edu/bitstream/handle/2117/384912/sarga... | | RV64GC with a subset of the v0.7.1 vector extension. 1.26GHz | nominal clock on a 22nm process. | DeathArrow wrote: | >22nm FD-SOI | | That's kind of not good news. I was hoping for 4nm to have some | alterative to Intel/AMD/Apple. | imiric wrote: | It's unrealistic to expect these chips to compete with modern | manufacturing standards. Still, it's very impressive the | progress RISC-V has made in the last few years. It's actually | a viable option for many projects now. | bibanez wrote: | Guess what you need to develop 4nm (spoiler, it's a lot of | money). There are many applications where 22nm is a good | tradeoff. | rwmj wrote: | You don't do your first experimental test chips on 4nm. | That's where you get to when you have raised hundreds of | millions after you've gone through several iterations to | prove to investors you know what you're doing. | stefs wrote: | i guess this chip is not for high end gaming machines or | servers, but rather cars, industrial machine controlling, | smart fridges, that kind of stuff. during covid production of | many appliances ground to a halt because of various chip | shortages. now what if for some reason asian chips became | unavailable in europe (wars, natural catastrophes, ...)? | cheap and easy to build is far more important than high end | performance here. | camel-cdr wrote: | So an in-order core that is slightly faster than rocketchip in | their benchmarks. That doesn't seem all that exciting, except | for the vector extension, although they only support a small | subset of it. Thats sounds similar to spatz [0] and given their | numbers is slightly faster. | | [0] https://github.com/pulp-platform/spatz | ansible wrote: | The previous DVINO was a 5-stage in-order, this Sargantana | core is a 7-stage out-of-order write-back with register | renaming and a non-blocking memory pipeline. | | So it is not a full in-order or a full out-of-order design. | galangalalgol wrote: | Are the vector extensions the fixed size ones or the | originally proposed lanecount agnostic ones? That is the | aspect of riscv i'm most excited about. | ksec wrote: | > in 22nm FD-SOI | | That basically implies being Fabbed with Global Foundry inside | EU ( Germany ). | 0xDEF wrote: | >RV64GC | | >C | | What is the purpose of including the RISC-V Compressed 16-bit | extension set in what is supposed to be a HPC chip? Most | embedded/IoT RISC-V implementations include that for obvious | reasons but why here? | cmrx64 wrote: | the same reasons motivating C still apply at HPC: higher code | density means fewer bits wasted representing redundant | information, better cache utilization, minimization of memory | fetch bandwidth, etc. | | basically, every metric derived from code size is happier | when you have 20-30% fewer bits representing it. | brucehoult wrote: | If you don't have the C extension then you can't run off the | shelf Linux distros such as Fedora, Debian, Ubuntu, Arch and | are limited to what you compile yourself e.g. Buildroot / | Yocto. | | However the actual academic paper says it's RV64G, no C. | cmrx64 wrote: | The RVV here isn't compatible with mainstream Linux anyway. | ansible wrote: | Thanks for the correction Bruce. I was in a rush (never | post when you are in a rush, or drunk, or angry) and I was | so used to seeing RV64GC that I didn't notice the absence | of the 'C'. | darksaints wrote: | That sounds like the perfect high end MCU core. Doesn't say | what the target use case is, but if it's like other RISC-V | announcements, they're probably talking about general purpose | CPUs, in which case those specs are pretty disappointing. It's | a shame that RISC-V has made so little impact in embedded | electronics. | DeathArrow wrote: | Any benchmarks? Does it compares to Intel/AMD at raw power? Does | it compares with Apple at efficiency? | sylware wrote: | It is in an in-order CPU. It is meant for tasks where | prediction and robustness are important. More like hard-ish | realtime stuff in nasty environment (or... security? ahem...) | | RISC-V moving forward. Good. | tecleandor wrote: | Interesting. It'd be nice to know if they're going to focus on | HPC loads or hobby/consumer too. I should check to see if I still | know people around the BSC :P | _fcs wrote: | From the preprint [1] it looks like it is not meant for | consumers. This way, Sargantana lays the | foundations for future RISC-V based core designs able to meet | industrial-class performance requirements for scientific, real- | time, and high-performance computing applications. | | 1. <https://upcommons.upc.edu/bitstream/handle/2117/384912/sarg | a...> | lifeisstillgood wrote: | I would love to see a clear roadmap from the EU (not been | successful searching) | | My take on this is | | 1. this is less about competitiveness at the cutting edge and | more about security and economic on-shoring | | 2. building chips on-shore at the 40-20nm level massively reduces | risk, increases the likelihood smaller states can build locally | and solves for most chip needs | | 3. chips we need are rarely the cutting edge AI stuff. The vast | volume of chios will go in as controllers on screens, USB | connectors and so on. Building plug and play alternatives will | give local manufacturers choices, and incentives will help. | | 4. the big win is security. Does the CEO of sensitive company, | the head of security services and the general in charge of | procurement use keyboards, cpus motherboards and monitors made | from open source chips manufactured in a trusted nation? What is | the BOM for the challenger tank - how many chips in there that | are made by whom and ... | | the process is long and arduous and the risks are huge. | | But we make tanks from steel other materials made in "favoured | nations" - surely the same applies to silicon? | Gravityloss wrote: | There are projects like Helios: Highly Efficient and | Lightweight Input/output Open Silicon | | https://cordis.europa.eu/project/id/190183836 | | But AFAIK this is just a small part of large amount of multiple | projects. | FirmwareBurner wrote: | A lot of EU semi research goes on at IMEC in Belgium, but EU | still lacks the actual means of put any of it into production | on their own soil. EU fabs have given up going beyond 12nm as | it was deemed too capital intensive. | ksec wrote: | >building chips on-shore at the 40-20nm | | >the process is long and arduous and the risks are huge. | | Plenty of 28nm+ chips Fabs are inside EU. And more are coming | online. This isn't a _long_ or _arduous_ process. | | Edit: Should have been Plenty of 28nm and above. As the | original quote state. | FirmwareBurner wrote: | _> Plenty of sub 28nm chips Fabs are inside EU._ | | Which are those "plenty" sub-28nm fabs exactly? | | AFAIK only Global Foundries Dresden goes down to 22nm and | 12nm, and I think that's by far the most cutting edge fab | currently in EU, making the Ryzen IO dies and other such | things. | | But even TSMC's future Dresden fab starting construction next | year(hopefully) will start making mostly automotive chips for | NXP, Bosch and Infineon chips at 28nm and 22nm all the way in | 2027(!), with plans to go to 16nm and 12nm in the further | future. | | Your view on EU cutting edge semi fabrication seems very | optimistic. | wiz21c wrote: | and TSMC is not exactly a european company... | FirmwareBurner wrote: | Of course they weren't gonna export their crown jewels | outside of Taiwan, the same way how the west didn't | export their crown jewels to Asia when they did the | technology transfers for semiconductor manufacturing in | the '70s, making sure to keep their Asian partners at | least a node behind. | | Well well, how the turn-tables. | toyg wrote: | Everything gets out in the end. My Italian hometown had a | "golden age" of silk manufacturing for a while, thanks to | bugs smuggled out of China. It lasted for a couple of | decades and then they were again smuggled out to other | Italian towns. And then of course you have the nuclear | shenanigans. | | If European countries wanted the tech bad enough, they | would find ways to get it. The problem is not the know- | how but the massive investments needed to productize it. | formerly_proven wrote: | > massive investments | | EU is turning back towards Austerity 2.0: Electric | Saveroo these days. | FirmwareBurner wrote: | _> The problem is not the know-how but the massive | investments needed to productize it._ | | Are you telling me the EU, the richest block in the | world, has less money to spend on fabs than TSMC, as if | the EU is scrapping for change behind the couch cushions. | | If only you knew how much money the EU wastes through | various useless and vanity projects that accomplish | nothing except getting certain well connected people | rich, we could have built 3x TSMCs. | | But unlike Taiwan, we're lacking in visionary well | educated tech leaders, and drowning in clueless | politicians and established gentrified industry players | who lobby the funds go to their projects instead. | qwytw wrote: | > the funds go to their projects instead. | | To me it just seems like relying on government funding to | drive innovation in sectors where private companies have | incentives to compete is extremely foolish. | dataking wrote: | > Are you telling me the EU, the richest block in the | world, has less money to spend on fabs than TSMC | | That could very well turn out to be the case in practice, | not for lack of money, but inability to provide the | promised subsidies according to Financial Times: | | https://www.ft.com/content/898454ba-8fc2-4b00-a14f-5f9ee1 | 52d... | FirmwareBurner wrote: | Having a company an industry dependent on generous | subsidies from states is a race to the bottom. TSMC will | just pit you against other countries on the basis of | "which one of you is gonna give us more of your tax- | payers' money and we'll build our fab there" | toyg wrote: | _> Are you telling me the EU, the richest block in the | world, has less money to spend on fabs than TSMC_ | | I didn't say we don't _have_ the money, but that it 's a | problem to _commit_ the money. It 's basically the norm | that EU countries unanimously agree that "something | should be done" on a certain issue, but then disagree on | how much it should cost and where the money should come | from. This gets more and more complicated the bigger the | cost is (and this is an expensive idea) and the farther | we are from the regular 7-year-budget process (it was | last agreed in 2020, so jockeying for big items will | probably resume in 2025-26). | | I don't disagree on the overall lack of vision in | European political classes (hardly a fault of the EU, | it's common to basically all countries and all levels of | government), but even a visionary leader would have to | work hard to get agreement on such a big project. | JAlexoid wrote: | Em.... ASML, a Dutch company, produces the tech behind | these nodes. | | It's a question of supply chains - not tech. | cduzz wrote: | My understanding is that a 40nm fab is only economically viable | if it's spent the first several years of its life producing | high margin chips. | | In other words; the life cycle of a 40nm fab is: | 1997: start building fab 2000: fab goes online and starts | producing CPUs 2006: fab upgraded 2012: fab | switches from CPUs to video and memory controller chip sets | 2018: fab switches to USB controllers and embedded chips | 2019: fab offline for 2 months because an antiquated but | critical part is broken and is only brought back online because | another similarly old fab went offline and sold off their parts | 2020: fab shut off because of covid 2021: fab found to be | a write-off because too many things broke while fab was | offline. | | So if you skip straight past the profitable phase, you end up | spending billions of dollars to make a fab that makes $0.30 | parts, and it'll never be profitable unless those parts are $10 | each, which in turn makes the product they're in unprofitable. | FirmwareBurner wrote: | You are correct. Building fabs today only for fabbing much | older nodes will not be profitable. You have to target 22nm | and below otherwise you can't afford to jump in the semi fab | ring. | hajile wrote: | TSMC is building a lot of new 28nm production with plans to | shut down all their older nodes and move everyone over in | the next few years. | | GlobalFoundries (formerly AMD fabs) created a brand-new | 22nm planar process specifically for older chips as an | upgrade to other company's 28nm processes. | | Profits seem possible if you approach it the right way. | throwup238 wrote: | The math works out a lot better when you're upgrading | pre-EUV fabs or expanding an existing facility. A lot of | the gear and setup is mostly the same such as wafer | cleaning, HVAC and isolation, etc and the local | challenges to setup and labor have been figured out. | FirmwareBurner wrote: | We're talking about different things here. I was talking | about building new fabs for 28nm nodes and you're talking | about TSMC upgrading existing fabs from older nodes to | 28nm production. | | Of course upgrading an existing older "sunk-cost" fab to | 28nm production will be profitable, but not building a | new one from scratch just for that same older node. | zozbot234 wrote: | You will always have pure analog electronics and other | bespoke things that basically don't benefit from anything | finer than these nodes. Even for digital chips, it makes no | sense to use leading edge nodes for very simple logic where | a lot of the area is just contact pads. | janekm wrote: | But you can only really make those profitably for a few | industries (military, medical, seismic come to mind). The | EU does have the chip fabs for those industries, of | course... | phkahler wrote: | >> But you can only really make those profitably for a | few industries | | I think it's more like they're only profitable if the | equipment is already paid for. And even then the margins | may be low. | jacquesm wrote: | It's not about what you can do or can't do. It is about | what you can do _profitably_ and that 's a completely | different thing. | voakbasda wrote: | I have to wonder if the ability to profit depends | entirely on the established cartel of semiconductor | manufacturers. They determine the current prices of chips | in the marketplace. | | If entering that marketplace requires competing with | them, then I am not sure _anyone_ that is not already in | the market can ever win. The margins are too low and the | startup costs are too high. | | Government intervention seems to be the only possible | solution, and that option hardly sounds viable when | considering that cartel's collective lobbying power. | jacquesm wrote: | The capital expense on a new fab is crazy. There may be a | cartel factor but that usually would work to the | advantage of the manufacturers, so that doesn't seem to | be the case here. | mardifoufs wrote: | There's no real cartel for older nodes. It's not even | really possible considering how many fabs exist and how | many players are operating those older fabs. | cf1241290841 wrote: | Number of producers of these fabs is still quite limited | though. | cduzz wrote: | I don't think this is a "cartel of semiconductor | manufacturers" so much as it's been a "shambolic cluster | of organizations running crappy old fabs into the ground | producing cheap chips that were subsidized by a prior | decade's worth of very expensive products." | | I can afford to sell gazillions of chips at $0.08 per | chip if I'm running a fab I didn't pay to build. I'm only | (barely) paying for the inputs. When Stan, the last guy | who understands how to run the widget verifier, or | Elaine, the last lady to understands how to run the | polishing machine retire, I'll have to close up shop. | | Those $0.08 per chip devices have been absurdly | subsidized in that a replacement infrastructure to make | them would require that they cost $10 per device, and the | ecosystem of things built on $0.08 chips isn't viable in | a $10 per chip world. | | In order to have a fab make $0.03 per unit devices, you | first have to have the fab spend 10 years making $300 per | unit devices, regardless of the underlying node size of | those $300 per unit devices. | | Likely you couldn't even go back and make a fab that | makes large volumes of 60nm-90nm node sizes at all, for | any amount of money, because the equipment to do this | (new) hasn't been made in 2 decades and no company is | willing to invest the money to make new crappy old | equipment. | | It's not a nefarious oligopoly as much as a synchronized | "run the asset to failure" lifecycle of the | infrastructure. | | How much does it cost to make a 300 year old tree? | photonbeam wrote: | > How much does it cost to make a 300 year old tree? | | Aside from your main point, I found this an interesting | thought exercise thinking about cost of air, sunlight, | soil, water and then 300 years of security | cf1241290841 wrote: | >Likely you couldn't even go back and make a fab that | makes large volumes of 60nm-90nm node sizes at all, for | any amount of money, because the equipment to do this | (new) hasn't been made in 2 decades and no company is | willing to invest the money to make new crappy old | equipment. | | I believe your argument assumes that there is a fixed | cost to produce even 180nm or 350nm ICs that hasnt | changed since the first one was produced. | | We still need 300 years for a 300 year old tree, but 25 | year old technology might now be relatively easy to build | if we start from scratch. | | What was high tech then might be relatively easy to solve | now. One example might be https://github.com/circuitvalle | y/USB_C_Industrial_Camera_FPG... being open source | instead of a multi year, multi million dollar project. | cduzz wrote: | Yes, my argument is that producing at industrial scales | even chunky nodes requires enormous capital expenditures | and may be impossible without rebuilding large chunks of | an antiquated and abandoned supply chain. | | Even if it is 10% the cost of making the each of the | individual components involved in making a relatively | simple 90nm chip, you're still looking at vast costs. | | If you're talking about making 30 chips in a university | fab, sure, I'll concede that it is "possible" but if | you're talking about propping up an industry built on | products that require a herd of standardized "$0.30" | parts made on legacy 90nm fabs, that ship has sailed. | | Update your BOM and recertify or raise your costs by an | order of magnitude. | cf1241290841 wrote: | First off, you are definitively making a very solid | point, cost for getting mass production right are a | killer once the institutional knowledge is gone. For | example, its very visible in the field of battery | technologies if i am not mistaken. Going from lead to | lithium was a gigantic task and the inertia going | forwards hasnt reduced enough at this point. | | But realistically this is a matter of going back far | enough, to lower the cost far enough? 10% are a good | start but to stick to the topic, physical gyroscopes from | decades ago are now replaced with MEMS ICs where the | reduction in cost is magnitudes more then down to 10%. At | a certain point the reduced cost makes it viable. The | question is just has it been long enough? | | While we wont get 90nm cheap enough, the question is what | can we do on a hobby level (vs academia)? Because going | from there (neglectable cost and technological | requirements) to mass production will at some point be | cheaper then the cost of setting up reproducible tooling | for older high tech systems. | | I am likely still off with 180nm, but there should be a | level at which this makes economical sense. A level that | gets cheaper to reach with technological progress / time. | cf1241290841 wrote: | Relevant to mention MEMS (micro-electromechanical | systems) in this context, which use much older nm tech. | Be it digital micro mirror devices1 or gyros2. Or | photo/laser diodes. | | Given the physical limitations, as well as the problems | we have with code base security it might be time to aim | for cheaper production of something in the region of | 180nm instead. | | Looking at how old much of the standard weaponry used | today is (TOW 50 years with an actual physical gyroscope, | Javelin still 25 years3), the demand from the military | alone should cover the initial cost. Especially if you | look at the ludicrous prices western countries payed for | even dumb artillery shells. | | 1 Texas Instruments DMD from a DLP projector from | @AppliedScience https://youtu.be/9nb8mM3uEIc?t=428 | | 2 Explanation of MPU-6050 from @BreakingTaps | https://youtu.be/9X4frIQo7x0?t=664 | | 3 Teardown of both from @lelabodemichel5162 | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s7-6hgX7-zQ | | Sorry for late edits | cduzz wrote: | "But I've got a product that's certified with this part | that's running on a 40nm process that has these | specifications that are deeply tied to features of that | 40nm process; things like voltage ranges and temperature | tolerances! If you force me to switch to a comparable but | not identical part at 22nm I'll have to re-certify my | widget with 18 different regulatory agencies!" | Someone wrote: | If those are your needs, you order all the parts you need | over your product's lifetime up-front or get (= pay for) | a contract with the manufacturer that makes them promise | to sell you the parts for X years (they probably wouldn't | keep producing old parts, but would stockpile enough of | them to be able to deliver working ones years later) | | (Or you prepare for having to go to eBay for working | parts. https://www.nytimes.com/2002/05/12/us/for-parts- | nasa-boldly-...) | Workaccount2 wrote: | There might be an argument then that it would be worth it | for the state to take the hit. If shit hits the fan and you | have zero semi-manufacturing, then you are going to be | pretty screwed. | qwytw wrote: | > If shit hits the fan and you have zero semi- | manufacturing, then you are going to be pretty screwed. | | I don't really understand this claim at all. Chips are | not exactly fungible, unless you force your local | companies to use you "state sponsored chips" in their | products just being able to produce "chips" wouldn't be | that useful. What are you going to do with them? | 15155 wrote: | Guide munitions if needed. | black_puppydog wrote: | So the cost of building a fab hasn't come down in the last | decades, huh? Genuinely asking, is there some^W^W^W what is | the "uncompressible" cost in fab-fabbing? I'd totally guess | that staff and the building itself are not it? | RobotToaster wrote: | How does an entire semiconductor factory become FUBAR from | being offline for a year? | cduzz wrote: | The example is hypothetical, but complex machines can be | complex to keep running, and often suffer catastrophically | when shut down. | | If the fab was barely profitable before shutting down, it | doesn't take much to total it. Fabs are full of machines | that cost tens of millions of dollars when they were new | and there are simply no spare parts of vendor support for | them now, and you can't just swap in a modern replacement. | Fabs are full of extremely sensitive environments (no dust | here, acid that will kill you if you touch it there, | constant temperatures, no humidity, etc). If any of that is | compromised, it's now just a toxic waste dump. | | Again, I have no specific knowledge in this domain, but I | imagine most of the time the owner's happy enough just to | walk away from the headache. | tyingq wrote: | There's also the brain drain aspect. All the process | engineers and techs that understood all the various | "recipes", quirks, etc, of the various machines moved on | to other work. | | A new crew will eventually work it out, but there's a lot | of trial and error getting to the right bake time/temps, | spin rpm, etc, etc. Yield and rework suffers while they | do that. | TheCondor wrote: | Not an expert, but there are additional start up costs that | need to be spent to "start it up." With any significant | downtime, those could eat up any possible profit unless | it's a newest technology fab. | JAlexoid wrote: | Dust is the simplest example. | | Once you shut off the dust extraction, you may just end up | with too much dust collected in the equipment to make it | utterly useless. | BiteCode_dev wrote: | Not all ventures need to be profitable. The EU may decide to | take a loss on this solely for strategic reasons. | qwebfdzsh wrote: | > strategic reasons | | Such as? I can't really think of any benefit besides | providing jobs and funding for contractors (so kicks backs | etc.) | | Then again it's not particularly surprising, the EU is well | know for wasting massive amounts of money on all sorts of | nonsense while ignoring things that actually matter. | mbauman wrote: | There's both supply-chain and runtime security. | cduzz wrote: | Don't forget the MBAs willing to burn it all down to | juice the Q2 profits. | KerrAvon wrote: | Have you looked at a Pentagon budget lately? It's | entirely welfare for defense contractors. | mcbits wrote: | Sounds like there is a need for investment into innovation | beyond just building the next-generation fab for $2^x | billion. Bringing the cost of a new less-advanced fab down | from $2 billion to $100 million, and then building 20 of | them, could also be profitable (though less exciting). There | is a national economy that's actually been growing quite well | for a few decades now by applying that general idea to other | industries. | londons_explore wrote: | > What is the BOM for the challenger tank - how many chips in | there that are made by whom | | In today's world, it would seem more sensible to just stockpile | enough of all the components for 5-7 years of tank production, | knowing that if your enemy tries any evil tricks then you have | half a decade to figure out how to redesign or make the | components yourself. | | Keep a close eye on anything that looks like an antenna and it | isn't so bad having the enemy backdooring your chips either. | jes wrote: | This has been my take as well. There is a lot of disruption | in a company when a key part, like the FPGA that serves as a | communications nexus in the product goes EOL and everyone | scrambles for a year trying to engineer in a replacement. | | Buy enough parts for expected product life, make good use of | the time you didn't waste on scrambling, and when your | product is EOL sell any left-over parts on the secondhand | markets. | mastax wrote: | I agree that often the less cutting edge chips are important | but doesn't the EU already have that handled with ST | Microelectronics, NXP, Infineon? What's lacking is very high | end CPU, GPU, high end memory, high end FPGA. | qwytw wrote: | > about security and economic on-shoring > increases the | likelihood smaller states can build locally and solves for most | chip needs | | I'm not sure what does that mean? What specific chip needs that | would that solve and what benefits would this provide? If those | chips are not competitive nobody would buy them? So what would | governments do with them? Stockpile them for the future just | 'in case'? | | The problem is that unlike grain or oil chips are not exactly | fungible if your military production or other vital industries | lose access to their current suppliers they wouldn't be able to | use your slow, outdated and overpriced chips anyway (and | forcing them to do that under normal circumstances would make | your products less competitive). | | > BOM for the challenger tank | | How many other components does the Challenger tank contain | (IIRC it's not really produced anymore anyway) which are not | manufactured in the UK? In any case stockpiling necessary chips | etc. just in case the UK won't able be able to acquire anything | from the US/Germany/etc. seems like a practical approach than | trying to develop everything inside the country. | anonymou2 wrote: | security, yep! they will run Microsoft Windows, Google | proprietary javascript, and Whatsapp for "secure" communication | on these chips!! | incompatible wrote: | Is there some reason why you wouldn't be able to run a purely | open source software stack on it, if you wanted? Does | Microsoft Windows even run on RISC-V? | rwmj wrote: | Is this based off CVA6? That's not mentioned. | m00dy wrote: | I am one of the fortunate people who could afford to pay a visit | to BSC. | capableweb wrote: | Since when does it cost money? I'm fairly sure it used to be | free to visit... | kh_hk wrote: | Must be poor phrasing and choice of words I guess. I concur | it's free to visit. | manuelabeledo wrote: | It technically does, if you don't live there. | kinow wrote: | It still is. You can just book it with reception directly, or | if you attend a meeting or conference. Whenever I get friends | in Barcelona I always invite them over too (anyone that works | there can request a visitor badge and schedule the visit -- | necessary avoid conflicts). | cmrx64 wrote: | What about this chip is open source? As far as I can tell, | nothing. It frustrates me to no end that closed, secret efforts | inherit the "open source" branding just because the specification | they implement is participatory and royalty free. | ThePituLegend wrote: | In fact, you can get the RTL here: https://github.com/bsc- | loca/sargantana :D | cmrx64 wrote: | !!! perfect, thank you. I'm annoyed now at myself for not | having found it... | gchadwick wrote: | It's a cool project but I do wish these open source processor | initiatives targetted more realistic design points. | | In particular there's often a desire to push out of order design | into the micro-architecture where the resulting performance just | doesn't justify it. In this they're achieving a CoreMark/MHz of | 2.44 (from the paper here: | https://upcommons.upc.edu/bitstream/handle/2117/384912/sarga...). | This is very low performance (on a par with the Arm M0+). Now | CoreMark certainly isn't the be all and end all of Benchmarks. In | particular it has very little relevance to high performance | compute or application cores in general. However it's a useful | performance smoke test. It is easy to perform well e.g getting | close to 1.0 IPC for a single issue design such as Sargantana, | CoreMark doesn't really stress the memory system so a major | source of stalls that you need to hide latency for just isn't | there. So if you're not hitting that you've definitely got work | to do on the microarchitecture. They may well have been better | off trying to build something simpler and putting more design | time into improving the performance of the basic | microarchitecture. | | The other crucial aspect that's often overlooked is verification. | This is a major part of producing a new production quality CPU | design and it doesn't appear to be discussed in the paper at all. | Maybe once they've released the RTL they'll also release the | testbench so you can see what they have done. | gchadwick wrote: | Though on the CoreMark benchmark they haven't published the IPC | achieved. You get a large swing in results depending upon the | compiler used and switches (For RV32 at least I've found GCC | out-performs LLVM comfortably). | | They do have an IPC number for Dhrystone (another tiny | benchmark that tells you little about real-world performance | but you should be able to perform well on), that looks to be | 0.7. | phkahler wrote: | Any of these efforts not performing as well as BOOM may be | suffering from "not invented here". Its already there and | getting good IPC. Why not start from that. | cf1241290841 wrote: | I believe we might be at the point where supply chain security | (and code base security) might warrant the question why you | cant implement something on an M0+. | | If you really need higher speeds for reaction time, use an ASIC | or FPGA. We already do this with USB3 or Ethernet controllers. | pantulis wrote: | Unrelated note: BSC is a location in the unapologetically crazy | HBO series "30 coins" season 2, some cool sequences there | involving a group visit. | dtjb wrote: | As far as data centers go, it's beautiful. Like something you'd | see in a Mission Impossible heist. | | https://my.matterport.com/show/?m=oj5FSKsTt7o | ashvardanian wrote: | Does anyone know a decent RISC-V developer kit that one can buy | in the Bay Area today? Or rent somewhere in the cloud? I want to | start porting our C libraries to RISC-V. | LeonM wrote: | There are plenty, SiFive and MilkV sell boards for example. You | can also just run emulation. | ashvardanian wrote: | There are plenty that exist, but i haven't heard of anyone | using them or any stores selling them. | | Emulation isn't enough. I need to benchmark the libraries. | Emulation will add significant overhead. | LeonM wrote: | > I need to benchmark the libraries. Emulation will add | significant overhead. | | Do not expect good performance from RISC-V processors at | the moment. | | Emulation on a modern X86 CPU will outperform any | commercial available RISC-V processor at the moment. | camel-cdr wrote: | This isn't true in my experiance, especially when dealing | with the vector extension. | | But emulation doesn't offer any usefull performance | insights anyways, except for maybe dynamic instruction | count. | brucehoult wrote: | > Emulation on a modern X86 CPU will outperform any | commercial available RISC-V processor at the moment | | That's not true. | | qemu-user is a little faster than the single-issue HiFive | Unleashed from 2008, but qemu-system is slower. | | Against either the dual-issue U74 cores in the JH7110 or | the small OoO cores in the TH1520 and SG2042 qemu doesn't | sand a chance on a core for core basis. | | It used to be the case that qemu could win on x86 by | throwing more cores at the problem, but with the 64 core | SG2042 in the Milk-V Pioneer that possibility has | disappeared too -- not to mention that the Pioneer is | $1500 for chip+motherboard (need to add RAM and storage), | while a 64 core x86 is $5000 just for the chip. | camel-cdr wrote: | It depends, mostly on if you need vector support. | | Right now, I'd recommend the canmv kendryte k230 which has a | C908 rvv 1.0 capable core. | | If you can wait a bit, mid/end 2024, I'd go for the vision five | 3 (or whatever is will be called), as it will have RVA22+V | (iirc) or for the sg2380 which has SiFive P570s and X280s both | RVA22+V. | | If you don't care about vector, then currently anything based | on jh7110 should be good. | | But if you have the time to deal with very slow execution and | the potential need to report hardware bugs, I'd consider | benchmarking on rtl simulation of open source cores. (BOOM, | tenstorrent-bobcat, XiangShian, ...) | dataking wrote: | > The Barcelona Supercomputing Center [...] presented on | Wednesday the new Sargantana chip, the third generation of open | source processors designed entirely at the BSC. | | > Researchers from other universities and research centres such | as the Centro de Investigacion en Computacion del Instituto | Politecnico Nacional de Mexico (CIC-IPN) [...] have participated | in the development of Sargantana. | | So this was designed entirely in Spain but it is also joint work | with a university in Mexico ;-) Nice project though; I've visited | BSC and they do a lot of cool work there. | 999900000999 wrote: | Very cool, I just got a MangoPi and I'm excited to get some stuff | running on it. | | I imagine RISC-V is the future. None wants to pay licensing fees | to Arm | mkehrt wrote: | So, uh, why's it named after a demon? | cf1241290841 wrote: | Shout out to affordable subsidized | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multi-project_wafer_service | | Be it googles OpenMPW Free Silicon Chip Program | https://developers.google.com/silicon (still active?) | | Or the EU subsidized multi project wafer https://europractice- | ic.com/schedules-prices-2023/ ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2023-12-14 23:00 UTC)