Hardware Podcasts

Cooperation and Competition Behind the Scenes in the RISC-V Community

Moore's Lobby · 23 Apr 2024 · 51m · Episode 8

What this episode covers

Mark Himelstein, CTO of RISC-V International, explains how the open standard instruction set architecture (ISA) fosters a community of cooperation and competition among chip designers, from startups to multinationals like Qualcomm and NVIDIA. He details the organization's structure, which includes 70 technical groups working on specifications like vector extensions and upcoming matrix operations for AI, while navigating supply chain challenges and the transition from proprietary ISAs. Himelstein highlights that the shared software ecosystem—compilers, OS, and tools—is the primary glue keeping the community together, as no single entity can afford to build a new ISA alone. The episode covers the rapid ratification of specifications, the importance of development boards, and the strategic focus on Android support and AI/ML acceleration.

Most relevant to

large enterprises

Topics

Mentioned

Companies
RISC-V International, Qualcomm, NVIDIA, Esperanto, Inspire Semi, Pine64, MIPS, Sun Microsystems
Products
Android
Tools
GCC, LLVM
Also
Berkeley, Cheri

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