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Re:Can MIPS Leapfrog RISC-V? by dragontamer on Friday March 22, 2019 @10:17AM (#19462693)
The difference is that most of us don't own million-dollar fabrication labs. At best, we would be tinkering with FPGAs with custom cores, but FPGAs are an order-of-magnitude slower than traditional CPU ASICs.

So we the typical user can't make use of open source designs.

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An open source "conglomerate" of companies may work. But I haven't fully thought about the economics of it.

Re:Can MIPS Leapfrog RISC-V? by bryanlarsen on Friday March 22, 2019 @10:22AM (#19462739)
Linux is funded by billion dollar companies (https://www.linuxfoundation.org/membership/members/), and it is put into phones & cloud servers by billion dollar companies.
Re:Can MIPS Leapfrog RISC-V? by dragontamer on Friday March 22, 2019 @12:18PM (#19464027)
How many of those billion dollar companies own a fab?

Realistically, only Samsung, Intel, and TSMC can make next-generation chips. (Global Foundries just quit the 7nm race. They're going to be stuck at 12nm). Intel is fully proprietary tech, so that leaves Samsung and TSMC as the only companies that make chips for other companies.

At the end of the day, an open-source chip isn't really much benefit when there are only two manufacturers of chips.

Re:Can MIPS Leapfrog RISC-V? by jdsully on Friday March 22, 2019 @01:23PM (#19464702)
Intel actually does do contract fab work - they just happen to be really bad at it so they don't get much business.

But there is a long tail of chip-making at older nodes to reduce cost, and for analogue integration. Risc-V is getting its start here. I hope we'll see a practical desktop version at some point, but that's not necessary for Risc-V to win.

Re:Can MIPS Leapfrog RISC-V? by thesz on Saturday March 23, 2019 @05:09AM (#19469699)
TSMC is fab-only.

It does not compete with its clients who produce chips.

Thus anyone with a contract with TSMC can be a chip producer.

Re:Can MIPS Leapfrog RISC-V? by jes5199 on Friday March 22, 2019 @10:47AM (#19463002)
quite a bit of open source software is maintained and consumed by megacorps nowadays - like, OSS really does become a way for conglomerates of companies to share tech (when the alternative is monopoly-supplied monocultures, it makes a lot of sense). The hardware world seems analogous to what the software world was like in the 90s - a small number of proprietary platforms.
Re:Can MIPS Leapfrog RISC-V? by abfan1127 on Friday March 22, 2019 @10:35AM (#19462887)
I think the open source hardware has more appeal in that end-users can "audit" their hardware... I'm not sure how true it is, but that's the idea...
Re:Can MIPS Leapfrog RISC-V? by erk__ on Friday March 22, 2019 @10:40AM (#19462921)
Maybe a bit like the OpenPOWER project?
Re:Can MIPS Leapfrog RISC-V? by dragontamer on Friday March 22, 2019 @11:41AM (#19463615)
Yeah, but its a bad example. Because OpenPOWER doesn't need an open-source chip to function. POWER9 is still owned and controlled by IBM.

OpenPOWER is basically a set of documents and specifications that is analogous to IBM's original "PC" specification. This is good for sure, but it doesn't mean that POWER9 is open source like RISC-V is.

If anything, I think OpenPOWER is a good example of why an open-source chip is unnecessary. It shows that a group of companies can work together and build a major platform without the need of open sourcing the chip. I'm unsure what RISC-V gains above and beyond the OpenPOWER consortium.